"Could you be autistic?" Topic

I know it's a fairly blunt question but it seemed the easiest way to put it.

A little background. Earlier this year at the age of 41 I became aware that I suffer from high functioning autism. I'm coming to terms with it and it's helping to make sense of my life, looking back I can see so much that's been shaped by it and I can see it in my son as well.

The reason I'm asking this is because I think there may be more autistic people in the war gaming community then we are generally aware of. Autistic people can be socially awkward, can exhibit obsessive behaviour and can find rules very important in their life. Now let's look at the stereotype of a war gamer, socially awkward, obsessive… I'm sure you see my point.

I think the need for order and the obsessive behaviour can make people feel at home amongst a group of gamers. The importance of rules that everyone understands seems to me to be the big one. When you're somewhere on the autistic spectrum a lot of life can be very confusing, things that seem natural to other people can be confusing to you, things like understanding other people's expressions and body language. Autistic people may seem to be very serious, they can take things quite literally and may struggle with things like jokes and sarcasm.

High functioning autistic people are normally average or above average intelligence and may be quite successful in their life. For all the struggles with social interaction they can still be in committed long term relationships and may have been lucky enough to find a job that fitted their obsessions, much like I did. I served in the RAF for 18 years without realising I had this, it's purely chance that my wife knows someone with an autistic son that made me examine myself and look up the symptoms.

There is much more I could put but I'm not sure how to put it so will instead put a link in to the National Autistic Society on their page about Asperger's, which is effectively high functioning autism. It's reading this page that made me realise what I am. And I am happy with what I am, I think that point needs to be made.

link

If any of what I've written seems familiar to you about yourself or someone you know, please have a look, it could change your life.

I know it's a fairly blunt question but it seemed the easiest way to put it.

A little background. Earlier this year at the age of 41 I became aware that I suffer from high functioning autism. I'm coming to terms with it and it's helping to make sense of my life, looking back I can see so much that's been shaped by it and I can see it in my son as well.

The reason I'm asking this is because I think there may be more autistic people in the war gaming community then we are generally aware of. Autistic people can be socially awkward, can exhibit obsessive behaviour and can find rules very important in their life. Now let's look at the stereotype of a war gamer, socially awkward, obsessive… I'm sure you see my point.

I think the need for order and the obsessive behaviour can make people feel at home amongst a group of gamers. The importance of rules that everyone understands seems to me to be the big one. When you're somewhere on the autistic spectrum a lot of life can be very confusing, things that seem natural to other people can be confusing to you, things like understanding other people's expressions and body language. Autistic people may seem to be very serious, they can take things quite literally and may struggle with things like jokes and sarcasm.

High functioning autistic people are normally average or above average intelligence and may be quite successful in their life. For all the struggles with social interaction they can still be in committed long term relationships and may have been lucky enough to find a job that fitted their obsessions, much like I did. I served in the RAF for 18 years without realising I had this, it's purely chance that my wife knows someone with an autistic son that made me examine myself and look up the symptoms.

There is much more I could put but I'm not sure how to put it so will instead put a link in to the National Autistic Society on their page about Asperger's, which is effectively high functioning autism. It's reading this page that made me realise what I am. And I am happy with what I am, I think that point needs to be made.

link

If any of what I've written seems familiar to you about yourself or someone you know, please have a look, it could change your life.

It is a spectrum. We all have traits. I'm on the spectrum …

Aspbergers and high functioning autism are so commonly self-diagnosed by nerds in order to explain their odd and anti-social behavior that this sort of thing has it's own meme on the net.

There is now criticism regarding the frequency with which such conditions are overly diagnosed in children by the medical profession, whereas in adults self diagnosis seems far more prevalent, and as has been pointed out such self diagnosis is often regarded as little more than an excuse to justify socially unacceptable behaviour.

Many people exhibit the traits of Asperger's to differing degrees since it is a spectrum condition, though strictly speaking it is a neurological condition that most commonly comes about through excessive nerve connections to the pre-frontal cortex overwhelming executive function usually to the detriment of signals from the amygdala. Such things can be identified by various complex brain imaging technology but the net result is usually that IQ tends to go up as EQ goes down.

Anyway the reason I'm familiar with all this is that I too at the age of 40 decided I was likely a little further along the spectrum than most, so out of academic curiosity researched the subject, mentioned it to my doctor and 12months later received a professional diagnosis from a specialist clinical psychologist.

Long and the short of it all though is that everyone has their own issues to deal with and work around. By and large you find your own ways of functioning socially and getting along with others as making excuses for rude behaviour doesn't make others like you any more… far better just to learn how others behave and emulate them when necessary. It's just for some this learning happens naturally in infancy, for others it becomes more of a formal ethnographic study of their own social circle conducted in adulthood.

As above, I'd seek a diagnosis from a medical professional if this is a concern.

Go see a doctor, yes. Two, preferably. Being obsessive about toy soldiers and socially awkward does not autism make. You really need a couple of doctors' views on this. And "a couple" because it seems there's no standard when it comes to diagnosing people with Aspbergers. This is one of the reasons it wss taken out of DSM V.

A man a little younger than me used to attend my church along with his parents. He was eventually diagnosed with Asberger's Disease. His father was kind enough to share some information with other people and me, because he knew that we cared about his son.

His son's symptoms eventually became bad. He was extremely smart, but he couldn't hold a normal job. Maybe I shouldn't use this word, but he eventually became paranoid. (Some bad coworkers might have had a part in worsening this symptom.) Our friend became convinced that people everywhere wanted to hurt him and became reluctant to leave home.

As this young man's father told me about his son's condition, I found myself wondering if I didn't have this affliction or autism in a milder, non-crippling way. It's something I haven't really haven't felt the need to look into. Still, the fact that the young man's symptoms got worse as he got older got my attention.

I join the others who have suggested seeing a doctor (even two.)

In 2014 the UK Channel 4 programme Embarrassing Bodies had a piece on autism which invited viewers to take a test link Over 400,000 sets of data from the online test were analysed by the Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge. The Week, 14th. November 2015, carried a brief report on their study which concluded "… people with high scores shouldn't need to seek help unless their autistic traits are causing them stress or other difficulties".

I like to point out the stereotypes as much as the next guy but, as with all stereotypes -- gamers in this case -- the stereotype does not hold true across the vast majority of the population. If a significant numbers of gamers exhibited characteristics of the stereotype, I would not attend conventions and, in all probability, would not even be a gamer.

Self diagnosis can be a dangerous thing. If you feel the need to find out the truth, go to at least one doctor who specializes in Autism.

Personally I think we are too quick to attach labels, people are people whether good, bad, fat, thin, part this, with a hint of that. It's all labels and not the measure of the individual.

I think you might be onto something in describing how wargaming might hold a special appeal to people who are mildly autistic. However, I have gamed with people with a wide variety of personalities, and I certainly do not think that anything like a majority of gamers could be characterized that way. The negative stereotype of wargamers is pretty much like any other stereotype in being based on observation of a few extreme cases (and I have seen a couple myself). If I wanted to, I could come up with a pretty damning profile of sports fanatics, but it would not be any more universally applicable than the way outsiders to wargaming tend to view us. I will refrain from giving you any advice, but do want to wish you well.

My youngest brother is Autistic, and I don't mean highly functionally autistic or Aspergers, but only functional enough to get along with assistance. He holds a job doing janitorial work, and can converse with you, but only in a very odd way. If you've seen rain man, that's several steps higher than my brother's ability to communicate. Growing up with him was difficult as I defended him from constant verbal abuse and yet felt often frustrated because you simply could not have a meaningful conversation with him. He got mildly better into adulthood, but will always be under care by social workers and caregivers.

Autism is a very wide spectrum, and non-functional autism requires 24/7 exhaustive care. These are children who can't go without supervision lest they hurt themselves.

By comparison Aspergers is a mild annoyance and very easily mainstreamable with proper therapy.

Yeah didn't Doc Martin have it?

I don't know about wargamers but I'm fairly certain that many trainspotters are on the autistic spectrum. I sat behind some on a trip and the only subject of conversation apart from train numbers was horse racing. They weren't discussing courses or bloodlines, it was all about winning margins and odds.

I'm a tad bit socially awkward and shy…or at least I can be, as I can rise to the occasion when called for or needed.

I was starting to think I had some form of Aspbergers, but my girlfriend, knowing my childhood history informed me that I was way too quick witted and funny to have any sort of autism and that it was my very odd childhood alone that pretty much shaped me into the person I am today.

I think there's good news buried in there…somewhere.

Every psychologist abd psychiatrist and two familyvtherapusts have suggested I might be on the autism spectrum. If I am, it is too heavily overshadowed by my Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD.

Really, I don't care if I have it or not. I am going to be 50 in a few years, I already know how to fake my way through social interacrion :-)

I think wargaming attracts people who have many of the symptoms of Aspergers. The real key aspects of Aspergers that I think sets the typical wargamer apart from the autistic though is the inability to understand sarcasm and jokes. I had one guy tell me that he couldn't tell if the list he was making for that particular tournament based wargame was an efficient list or if people though it was an exploitative list and he was being a jerk. He simply could not tell if people were getting upset at him becuase they were losing or that he was taking advantage of an exploit in the game that many people though should be changed but hadn't, it was the later.

I've worked with several people who had been diagnosed with Aspergers, including being the manager of one.

Most were indeed attracted to gaming as a structured environment. I always figured it helped remove some of the need for social queues, which typically are hard to detect.

"Full blown" autism can take many forms from generally functional to requiring heavy and near-constant aid.

I've met people who were just trying to have an excuse for being jerks, but never convincingly so.

So, whatever modes are, I see a couple of different things going on here:

0) Players are important. Duh, it's pretty much what wargaming is about. If a wargame happens at a convention and there are no players … oh, wait … that sounds sadly like every game I propose. So, players are the point. Even when one of the "players" is "the rules", "the scenario", or "an automata".

1) Sides are also important. In some ways more important than players to understand the nature of the game. If we play a "side vs side" game, it could be "player vs player", "players vs players" or "player vs players". But sides are not perfectly elastic with respect to players. In the command discussion, there seems to be some concept of a reasonable maximum and/or minimum players on a side.

2) Not discussed above, the thing that really controls the maximum number of players per game or side is not the "command level" of the game – the number and type of figures assigned to a side. What drives it is the number and type of orders needed to control a side, and the activity requirements to execute them. Too much to do, the game drags. To little and you're not engaged. Either way, no fun. (And, of course, too much and too little aren't necessarily standard – newbies, veterans, people with different styles, etc.)

3) On the other side of sides are objectives. That's what really drives sides. A side, really, is nothing more than a collection of forces on the board that have the same objective. This really, is the way that "sides" are picked in real life conflict. The objectives define sides perspective also allows us to handle more complex "sides" concepts (like players changing sides or sides with some common and some different objectives) without making up a new descriptor.

So, that looks like while we like to talk about games in terms of players, the optimal way is to talk about everything else and let that drive how many players. But really, it is talking about the nature of the game and specifying it so that people can make good, situational calls about the best number of players for them at that time.

I'm a bit suspicious of self diagnosed disorders. A bit like classes, anyone who self identifies as working class probably isn't.

Most people, certainly most men have some autistic traits, obsessive behaviour can be regarded as a trait, perfectionism or excessive attention to detail for example. Social awkwardness is another, as is slavish adherence to a routine.

This is one reason why I disagree with early diagnosis of children, kids are naturally a bit social awkward until socialised and they usually find comfort in routine, my kids like to have the same bedtime story every night for instance. I presume it stems from a fear of the unknown, which is a normal rational healthy concern.

As for people claiming to have a condition to pass off unacceptable behaviour, it's just disrespectful. People with actual autism probably won't be aware of making social faux pas, people who don't have autism are aware and trying to justify themselves. And autism isn't a superpower as some people like to claim.

Oddly, the only time I've heard autism directed at somebody as an insult was on TMP (the Naps board, natch…).

My daughter was recently diagnosed with Aspergers after three years worth of visits to speech and language specialists and paediatricians. Girls are generally more difficult to diagnose than boys, but for those interested this school:

limpsfieldgrange.co.uk

…does fantastic work and the presentation videos on YouTube are worth watching.