Life with Aspergers

Not all people with Asperger's syndrome are introverted, in fact there are many flamboyant and loud people with Asperger's (and that category deserves a post of its own). I'd venture to say though, that most of the people I've met with Asperger's have tended to be the shy, quiet type. Of course, that might just be me as being shy and quiet myself.  After all, I'm far more likely to be open in discussions with introverted individuals.  There's nothing wrong with Introversion  In western society, it often feels as if introversion is a problem that needs to be “cured” but it's not. Introverts, particularly those with Asperger's, are often perfectly capable of “acting” extroverted when a situation calls for it. It's important to remember though that it's just an act and it takes a lot of effort to maintain. We often find ourselves feeling more stressed and grumpier after having had to act that way for a while. Being introverted or e...

In my last couple of posts, ( 1 , 2 ) I've discussed the way in which our special needs children use the media to accelerate their learning. I've talked about how critical the media is for visual learners and how these kids learn in a completely different manner to their peers. Now however, we need to look at the negative aspects of this media obsession. I've already discussed the possibility of learned violent behaviours, irresponsibility (jackass) and bad language.  In this post, I want to look at some of the less obvious types of negatives. Inattention and Immediacy In the last decade have become an immediate society.  We expect our movies to start with action sequence immediately and without introduction. If the film is a slower one then often the action is the film's credit sequence itself; Panic Room for example.  I've noticed that many kids and adults today simply don't have the patience to watch an older film and it's one of the main reasons ...

Here's some unofficial figures from two separate surveys (both done in 2008) of the Jung/Briggs-Myers Introversion test. The results are from a survey done on WrongPlanet.net (which is - in my humble opinion - the best aspergers forum on the internet - if you haven't been there, it's well worth a visit. Some Scores My apologies for the Image Table, I couldn't get blogger to properly render a table. You can get to a text version of the table here . Introversion Ratios Comparing the scores in this table, there are a few interesting conclusions that we can reach; First of all, of the 299 responses, 93% were introverted and only 7% were extroverted. This suggests a much higher than anticipated percentage of aspies who are introverted however there is one important factor to consider. This test was done on the internet. A person with an introverted personality is much more likely to do a test on the internet than a person with an extroverted personality. Aspie Personalit...

It's a well known fact that the percentage of introverted personality types amongst Aspergers people is considerably higher than the percentage amongst the neurotypical community but this often leads to the belief that all aspies are, by definition, introverted. Measuring Introversion There's an online test based on Carl Jung and Isabel Myers-Briggs typological approach to personality which you can try at; http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm My Scores Just for the record, my scores on this test were; INFJ Introverted 33% Intuitive 25% Feeling 38% Judging 22% This makes me: moderately expressed introvert moderately expressed intuitive personality moderately expressed feeling personality slightly expressed judging personality So, translating; I have a "source of energy expression mainly in the internal world" and rely more heavily on my internal feelings and creativity than external sources. Strangely, despite being quite a logical person, I make the ma...

A lot of the more common behaviours and feelings associated with Aspergers seem to lend themselves to a definition of Introversion and it's tempting to see aspies as simply "introverts" but this clearly isn't the case. It is true however, to suggest that there are more introverted aspies than extroverted ones. Most aspies feel very much like "a fish out of water" at social gatherings. Often, we don't care for a lot of social contact and we need a lot of "alone-time" particularly following intense social gatherings like school, work and parties. It's fairly accurate to describe aspies as "nerds" but that shouldn't imply that we are all scientifically minded and boring dressers. Can Aspies be Extroverts? Many aspies will do extroverted things to their appearance, like get a tattoo, dye their hair or wear "loud" or colourful clothing. Unlike NTs though, they'll do this because they personally like a particular loo...