Jump to content
Science Forums

Autism And Nervous Tension?


Recommended Posts

Autistic people suffer from poor social interaction. They bottle up emotions and internalize them, leading to pent up frustration. Poor communication prevents them from opening up to others. Is this a plausible reason for them staying single and being workaholics ?  :innocent: 

Can you cite evidence for your claim that autistic people "bottle up emotions"? I have never heard this before.

 

I would also be surprised if many significantly autistic people were workaholics, since I would have thought that significantly autistic people would have difficulty getting the sorts of jobs in which workaholism can show itself.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you cite evidence for your claim that autistic people "bottle up emotions"? I have never heard this before.

 

I would also be surprised if many significantly autistic people were workaholics, since I would have thought that significantly autistic people would have difficulty getting the sorts of jobs in which workaholism can show itself.   

 

Can you cite evidence for your claim that autistic people "bottle up emotions"? I have never heard this before.

 

I would also be surprised if many significantly autistic people were workaholics, since I would have thought that significantly autistic people would have difficulty getting the sorts of jobs in which workaholism can show itself.   

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Friends-with-a-Nonverbal-Autistic-Person

 

 Many autistic people bottle up their feelings and have uncontrollable breakdowns when they can't hold it in anymore. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I'm in the middle of a nursing essay writing (SPAMlink removed) for a local medical school. I love kids and everything related but this disease is so hard to get and look at in kids[/size]

 

For crying out loud - this is not a disease. Assuming for a moment that Asperger's is a form of mild autism, then I am most certainly somewhere on the autism spectrum. There are positive and negative traits of this mental makeup, depending on your point of view. Because social interaction is designed for neurotypical people, autistic people have a hard time dealing with it, mainly because they can't process the sensory input of, say, social interaction at a party.  I personally have a huge problem with groups of more than 4 or 6 people. 

 

One positive trait is the ability to focus on one specific topic for unusual amounts of time. It is not surprising, and I have seen it very clearly myself, that there is a preponderance of Asperberg's people (now, autistic) in academia, where being stuck away in a library writing very clever theses is more preferable than trying to deal with social situations in the real world. This might tend to a certain preference for being a workaholic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I for one do not know if Autism is social, genetic, or biological.  I will say that my niece and nephew have been diagnosed with Asperger's,  but I think they could function normally with some social integration.  Their father was a doctor, but has been a recluse for the last 10 or so years.  He does not come to my parent's or his parent's house for the holidays, and as far as I know he almost never leaves the house.  Their mother (my sister) used to be a teacher, and she home schools the kids.  I suppose that is the cause of the lack of social integration, but I don't think throwing them into the public school system would be a good idea, and the family can't afford a private school.  They are doing very well academically, but have no social skills to survive in the real world.  I have some friends whose only son Andrew is severely autistic.  His parents had Andrew quite late in life, so I have to wonder if that was a factor.  Jenny McCarthy's assertion that mercury preservatives (Thimerosol) in vaccines are responsible absolutely ludicrous and without any scientific merit.  I have used saline contact lens solution containing Thimerosol for over 25 years and have had no ill effects...effects...effects...effects...effects.

:crazy:

(had to reformat)

Edited by fahrquad
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I for one do not know if Autism is social, genetic, or biological. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean with a difference between genetic and biological. But I have 3 brothers, 2 of whom are neurotypical, and I and 1 brother are certainly somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum. I can see no reason why the there should be a social element.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure what you mean with a difference between genetic and biological. But I have 3 brothers, 2 of whom are neurotypical, and I and 1 brother are certainly somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum. I can see no reason why the there should be a social element.

I mean inherited versus environmental cause (i.e. Thimerosal).  In the case of my niece and nephew, they would most likely not have been diagnosed by the shrink with Asperger's if they had more socialization.   I think doctors are far too quick to diagnose Autism (or ADHD which was the fad of the last decade)(a lot of people got rich dispensing what is basically amphetamines to adolescents).

Edited by fahrquad
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For crying out loud - this [autism] is not a disease.

Like many cognitive and pervasive developmental disorders, autistic spectrum disorders are symptomatic diagnoses, not pathologies, so I agree that it’s inaccurate to say “autism is a disease”. However, many autistics, especially the low-function ones, who have practically no hope of learning to read and write or live unassisted, are almost certainly suffering from an incurable brain disorder that occurred during gestation.

 

I know of 2 compelling hard data supporting this

  • There are pronounced anatomical differences in the brains of autistic and non-autistic children. Autistics have more gray matter, especially in specific brain areas. This difference tends to decreases as they age, but some important gray matter structures, especially the amygdala, remain about 20% larger in autistics over 12 years old.
  • The incidence of autism is significantly higher in the children of women younger than 20 and older than 25, and of men older than 45.
  • The identical twin of a person with autisms is very (67%) likely to have autisms.
(sources: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20081101082157/http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/071128/autistic-children-have-more-gray-matter-in-brains.htm, https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/cure-autism-now-science-summary-gray-matter-enlargement, http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-risk-rises-with-mothers-age#1, https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/large-study-parent-age-autism-finds-increased-risk-teen-moms, https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-ties-dad’s-age-risk-autism-other-mental-disorders-kids)

 

I think it’s very important to acknowledge that there are a lot of difference in the disorders considered on the Autistic spectrum. A high-functioning person diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome is very different from a low-functioning person diagnosed with sever autism. There is less hard statistical and neurological data about high-function people diagnosed with ASDs, and fewer professional ASD diagnoses of high-function people. I don’t think we know much about the causes of high-function ASDs. Many people “diagnoses” as Aspies by themselves and peers are, I suspect, neurologically normal people, their “disorders” due to personality and reputation.

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Friends-with-a-Nonverbal-Autistic-Person

Many autistic people bottle up their feelings and have uncontrollable breakdowns when they can't hold it in anymore. [/size]

While I think this wikihow.com article give good advice about “how to make friends with a nonverbal autistic person”, if makes only vague and general statements about a narrow range of autistic people (ones high-function enough that they are likely to interact with a peer who want to make friends with them), and offers no scientific information or references. I wouldn’t consider it good support for the claim that high-function autistic people “bottle up their emotions” more than a non-autistic peer.

 

This advice from the article

Assume that they are of average intelligence. Some autistic people are intellectually disabled, some are gifted, and some are in between, like other groups of people. Start the same way you'd address their peers. Then, if it turns out they're intellectually disabled, tone it down until you meet them at their level.

Is, I think, good, not only for interacting with autistics, but for interacting with anyone. It’s important, though, to note that autistics are much more likely than non-autistics to be intellectually disabled, and much less likely to be “gifted”. Of people currently diagnosed with an ASD, about

16% have IQ<50 (vs. less than 0.05% of all people),

39% 51<IQ<70 (vs. 2.2%), 28% 85<IQ<115 (vs 50%), and

3% IQ>116 (vs 25%).

 

(sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272389, http://edubloxtutor.com/iq-test-scores)

 

Autistic people suffer from poor social interaction. They bottle up emotions and internalize them, leading to pent up frustration. Poor communication prevents them from opening up to others. Is this a plausible reason for them staying single and being workaholics ? :innocent:

Based on statistics from the UK, only about 16% of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment, so I don’t think the choice of a workaholic is usually available to them. After searching nearly an hour, I couldn’t find hard data about marriage of people with ASDs, but suspect that this choice is as available to them, either.

 

My personal, anecdotal experience with adult autistics, however, is that those who marry are as or more successful at it than non-autistic people.

 

(Source: http://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/myths-facts-stats.aspx)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

My personal, anecdotal experience with adult autistics, however, is that those who marry are as or more successful at it than non-autistic people.

 

 

 

Tony Attwood's book on Asperger's was an eye-opener for me, because it identified a number of puzzling characteristics of problematic social interaction which fitted me very well. He provides a list of general characteristics, one of which was that Asperger's males tend to marry women who are emotionally and physically more mature, because they feel safe. He then says that this tends to be a big mistake because they realize after a time that they are living with somebody else's priorities, not their own. This was very interesting for me, because this is exactly what I did for a couple of decades, until I met a female Aspi with whom I now have a far more meaningful relationship. All this happened before either of us could put a label on our mental makeup. This is of course anecdotal, but I'm willing to bet that the more successful marriages are where both parties are somewhere on the autism spectrum.

 

(That second link above doesn't seem to work)

Edited by DrKrettin
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...