Autism and Bipolar: A Surprisingly Common Combination

According to HealthyPlace.com, here are the symptoms of Autism.

Impairment in social and emotional reciprocity that ranges from abnormal social approaches and failure to participate in typical give-and-take conversations to diminished sharing of interests and emotions as well as failure to respond to social cues and interactions.
What does that even mean???? I guess it means that we have general problems and difficulties with social interaction. But a little more deeply, I guess it means that in conversations we tend to either do all the talking or let the other person do all the talking. We may approach people in a way that is a bit abnormal, which may entail diving straight into our chosen topic without pausing for small talk. Don’t look at me funny; These are just guesses. We may share too much or too little of our interest and/or emotions. We may also fail to see when the other person is getting bored, or when the other person may be trying to make friends with us or take advantage of us.
Impairment in use and understanding of nonverbal communications used in social interactions, such as inability to make eye contact and abnormalities in body language. These children also have difficulty understanding the use of physical gestures and often have a complete lack of facial expression.
This basically means we have difficulties understanding and using body language.

Impairment in developing and maintaining social relationships
Well, this one is obvious.
Read More

Introduction

4 Comments

Hello, everyone. I’m Misrael. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get in on this blog. I was extremely reluctant at first, but then Joel reminded me that I had previously agreed to write for him. I tried to back out, but then Joel told me that I have a bad habit of backing out of commitments to him and that i’d better follow through this time. So i’m here.

One of the reasons I was reluctant to write for this blog is that I actually have very little to say on mental illness. Other than the lithium and risperdal pills that I pop in the morning and at night, and the weekly therapy (which everyone would benefit from, in my opinion), and the weekly socializing and chitchat at support group, mental illness really doesn’t affect my life much. Maybe it’s so normal to me now that I don’t notice it anymore.

On the other hand, mental illness has affected my past. Bipolar runs on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family. Schizoaffective and schizophrenia run in my ex-stepdad’s side of the family. Asperger’s and autism also run in my mother’s side, and I have a schizophrenic uncle on my Dad’s side. That’s a lot of mental illness for one family, and it has affected me quite a lot.

I have bipolar 1 and high functioning autism. I don’t show a lot of the symptoms of autism anymore, and I really don’t have typical autistic issues. As a result, although I am technically autistic, I don’t identify with the label much.

In other news, I am genderqueer and gray-ace/asexual. I am also gray/aromantic. I have a best friend that I try to see every week, who has issues with anxiety. I will call him Abaven on this blog. He’s 73. I’m 20. I don’t know whether I can say i’m in love with him yet, because I haven’t known him long enough for that. He’s also definitely not interested in me that way, which is a relief in some ways and a pain in others.

But this blog is going to be about mental illness, not about my love life (unless the two intersect). So you probably won’t be hearing much about Abaven on this blog, unless you tell me in the comments that you want to know more.

Any question and suggestions as to what to write about would be appreciated. Like I said, the reason I was so reluctant to write for this blog is that for me…blogging about mental illness is like blogging about having brown eyes. Yes, my brown eyes are beautiful. Yes, I can see because of them. Yes, I need glasses. Yes, I have been gifted with a beautiful pair of tortoiseshell glasses that bring the brown out. It gets boring after a while, because there’s only so much you can say on brown eyes.

But if you still want to hear about me, let me know. Post suggestions and questions in the comments. And until then, see you on the first.