aspergers or ocd

[Princess]

is there anyone here who has aspergers or ocd? is there any link between these with gender identity disorder?

[MeghanAndrews]

I've seen this post in other forums. As far as Aspergers, it seems like this diagnosis is in fad with psychiatrists these days. I don't want to trivialize it or anything, but I'll try to explain. I grew up in the 80's. We had Atari and the beginning of computers but we pretty much were forced to make friends or be cast out and deal with the harsh reality of being the "different" kid, the ramifications weren't too positive. Getting beat up, labeled, chastised, etc. were the least of your concerns.

Kids today (wow, I sound ancient) have one main things that's different...computers. Now it doesn't matter if you go to school and don't talk to anyone because you have an entire world of friends online. There's Wow and all those other social games, there's forums to go to, chats...you basically don't have to ever leave the house except to go to school. On top of that, study computers and IT and once you graduate college you REALLY don't need to leave the house. The socialization for today's youth seems to exist on the computer vs. face-to-face. The idea of building friendships and not really caring what happens during your school life is very real. When you get home, you can lock yourself up inside your room. I don't think parents force kids to "go outside and play, it's a nice day outside!" anymore.

So, it's not really a surprise that all kinds of kids have socialization issues, really. There's a huge, huge difference between socialization online and socialization irl. In chat many times I feel lost with all the geekspeak and the technical jargon. I don't really know that stuff too well. I think it puts kids today at a disadvantage when it comes to building human relationships and partnerships offline. I think it presents problems for things like interviewing for a job and other places where eye-contact and a strong communication style are important.

Ok, my point is this Princess. I think there may be a correlation between the diagnosis of Aspergers and many gender variant people, but I don't think it has anything to do with anything biological or anything that is gender-specific. I think it's a common occurrence/diagnosis today because the socialization process lends itself so well to it whether you have gender issues or not. You take a shy kid who might be a little overweight and socially awkward and give that person a tool like the internet and they can potentially come out of their shell and excel. They might have socialization issues, but I don't think it's the kind of life that they would have had 20 years ago. I don't know what school life is like today, but I doubt that this same kid who was getting beat up by jocks and popular people 20 years ago would be getting beat up if they had the highest scores (ranks, whatever) in WoW, had a very active online life where other school kids knew they were accomplished online, and basically had something they could brag about. I don't know though, maybe not. Just giving you my thoughts. Meghan

[Genevieve Swann]

 ???Who me? Opinion: no. There may be some OCD. e.g. I tend to be overwhelmed with crosdressing almost always. It controls my thoughts much of the time.

[Princess]

???Who me? Opinion: no. There may be some OCD. e.g. I tend to be overwhelmed with crosdressing almost always. It controls my thoughts much of the time.

i have the same problem. i've actually lost sleep and appetite over it. i can't think of women dressing like men, or men dressing like women.

[metal angel]

I think the first reply is a bit off-track. Yes asperger's is probably a bit of a fad diagnosis, and it is a bit of a case of pathologising normal variation, but asperger's syndrome is much more than just poor social skills. It is a different brain type a different way of thinking. It comes with strengths and weaknesses. And there is a wide range of severity, sometimes people with it have almost no "life skills" and are pretty much like ran man butbetter at talking, other times it is just a case of pathologising geek-ness.

I guess i should list some of the other features. Probably the worst symptom would be "meltdowns" kind of like pannic attacks i guess, where you just can't think, or even move or speak, often associated with some sort of OCD issue, something is just "not right" and you just can't think straight at all to solve it, your brain just switches off. If anything the anxiety aspects are probably a much bigger problem than the social skills aspects.

Also it often comes with OCD, and the OCD can be the real debilitating aspect.

[Myself]

Personally, I have OCD.
Sometimes I feel I am crazy because of it ^^ believing things are happening or have happened even though they are illogical, and the reasons for them to happen due to me not following some stupid sudden compulsion that came with the thought of them happening.

It's very random, related to things that I am anxious about (like my body, my life, friends, and many more deep things)..
But slowly I am noticing how they are not real and not really happening even if they felt or perceived as if they did.

So I might be convinced that something happened one day and wake up another day finding it's back to normal.
Makes me feel stupid and crazy which is why I usually keep it to myself only because I know it is all in my mind.

For it's relation to GID, I doubt it. Perfectionism? highly related.

[metal angel]

That doesn't sound like OCD?

[Myself]

That doesn't sound like OCD?

OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorders.
It comes in many forms, for example, the need to wash the hands.
Some people might turn on and off the light 3 times before entering the room.

Sometimes it is combined with anxiety disorder.
The compulsions are to "throw away" the anxieties.
In some severe cases, OCD can take over and you feel that if you don't do the compulsions, the anxieties might turn reality.

You still know it's silly and not going to happen, you just have an impulse to do it.

[metal angel]

yeah i'm quite familiar with it, it seems to run in my family, well either OCD or the obsessive side of Asperger's syndrome, there's a fair bit of overlap in the definitions.

couldn't really fit your first story into what i know about OCD though?

[Miniar]

I have OCD tendencies and a predisposition to go real deep into OCD. I'm aware of it and thus better equipped to control it.
Currently, the only OCD behaviours I allow myself is:
Everything in a wallet/pen-case/bag/whatever, has to face the same way. All my drawing pens have to have their caps towards the end where the zipper is opened from in their pen bag. All my money has to be organized by size, and face the same way, in my wallet.
All my M&M's, smarties, and other mixed candies, have to be organized by colour before they can be eaten.
All my objects on the table have to be laying paralell to one another and to the angles of the table, and have to have as much symmetry as physically possible.
Not a single object out of place at my workplace.
(I will even take things and put them where they belong in the supermarket, but I'm trying to cut back on that... as it's... REALLY time consuming... and not really my business)

[GamerJames]

Personally, I have OCD.
Sometimes I feel I am crazy because of it ^^ believing things are happening or have happened even though they are illogical, and the reasons for them to happen due to me not following some stupid sudden compulsion that came with the thought of them happening.

It's very random, related to things that I am anxious about (like my body, my life, friends, and many more deep things)..
But slowly I am noticing how they are not real and not really happening even if they felt or perceived as if they did.

So I might be convinced that something happened one day and wake up another day finding it's back to normal.
Makes me feel stupid and crazy which is why I usually keep it to myself only because I know it is all in my mind.

For it's relation to GID, I doubt it. Perfectionism? highly related.

This sounds exactly like my "flavor" of OCD. I think maybe it doesn't match up to what some know of OCD just because there's as many variations of OCD as there are people who have it.

As for my compulsions, there are some things that I just *have* to do the way I have to do them, or else "the world will stop spinning and everyone WILL die"... Which I know doesn't make sense, and logically I'm able to say "duh, that's not going to happen" but emotionally, it just feels like it WILL happen (although there are different ridiculous "consequences" for different kinds of compulsions I have). That feeling of panic if I don't do things the "right" way (and sometimes if others around me don't do things the "right" way, which yes I know is unreasonable and I'm working on it), is heart-stoppingly, brain-fryingly, overwhelming.

But like Miniar said, there are some things I let myself obsess over, and some things I have to buckle down and say "no, it's going to be okay, you don't HAVE to do it that way, it Will. Be. Okay...". I'm way better than I was a few years ago back when it was pretty debilitating... Like when if I left my closet door open when I went to bed I was *convinced* that a murderer would pop out in the middle of the night and stab me repeatedly with a knife (so I would've fought to close that closet pretty fiercely if challenged, as it "felt" like I was fighting for my life). Or if someone used my pen at work and put it back upside down, I'd basically break into tears as soon as they left the room, because it felt like I could NOT work with it upside down and even after I fixed it, I was still so frazzled from the whole "ordeal"... Yes, I know. I was a flippin' basketcase. lol. Therapy has done a *world* of good for the past 3.5 years!.

I don't know if there's some sort of biological correlation with OCD and GID, but for me personally, I think that there's been an emotional correlation. As in, the more repressed I've been about various things in my life (including GID) the worse my OCD has been, and each time I've ripped off a bandaid and gotten to a new layer of myself (coming out about growing up with abuse, coming out as "gay" and leaving my marriage, coming out as trans, etc.), my OCD and anxiety have improved exponentially. And nowadays, I feel pretty much like a "normal" person, who's just a little picky about a few things, but can mostly deal with it if not everything goes as planned.

Anyhow, I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but that's my two cents.

[Jamie-o]

I'm dyspraxic (similar to Aspie with issues revolving around the ability to organize) and have some OCD tendencies.  Nothing like being pathologically disorganized and OCD at the same time.      When I was younger my room would be a mess, clothes all over the floor, etc.  But my CD collection was organized not only alphabetically by artist, but also chronologically by release date, and I'd get really annoyed if anyone put a CD back in the wrong place.  (Going digital has alleviated this issue.)  I also have to fight the impulse to re-stack the totes and cases at work if someone stacks them "wrong" (Not by size, or filling the pallet across the short side first, instead of filling up the long side first.)  Sometimes I lose that battle and just have to re-stack the pallet, earning me strange looks from my co-workers.

Most of my obsessions tend to revolve around hobbies, though.  I'll get interested in something and everything else in my life goes to the wayside.  Every free moment is spent in the pursuit of that hobby (usually collecting something), and I end up spending all my free cash (and then some) completing the collection.  Then, after a couple months, I lose interest. 

So... Anyone want to buy a stamp collection?  Or a bunch of gaming miniatures? Or some vintage razors? Or ... 

[Miniar]

A related compulsion to OCD that I feel a pull towards is a "hoarding" sort of impulse. I've dealt with it a fair bit, but I got pretty bad for a while. I would keep all boxes that "everything" came in.
The day I found myself thinking about how I could rinse out the milk cartons and keep them.. If I rinse 'em good they won't stink up the place.. I realized it had to stop.

[myles]

While I don't have OCD i can only eat all colored candies (especially Skittles) once they are sorted into colors. One of my sons has OCD and we are working with it. His big one is shoe tying , they have to be tied a certain way and only that way. Which was making us run late getting to school, so we buy a lot of Velcro shoes now, problem solved. He also has a hard time not touching certain things in a store (likes the feel of certain things) or where he has to read every label out loud, drove his younger brother crazy one day at IKEA there are a lot of labels there. I have found if I let him push the shopping cart, he needs his hands to push it (so he can't touch things) and he needs to focus on where he is going so can't read all the labels.  While it is definitely not the answer to everything it is the small steps that help me get through the summer (as a stay out home parent/camp counselor to my kids) a little easier.
Myles

[Calistine]

I have aspergers and I think it links to gender identity. It makes it harder for me to understand and gave me a male brain supposedly-

[Jamie-o]

A related compulsion to OCD that I feel a pull towards is a "hoarding" sort of impulse. I've dealt with it a fair bit, but I got pretty bad for a while. I would keep all boxes that "everything" came in.

I used to do this as well!  I still get a twinge when I throw away a box, but I force myself to because I just don't have any place to store them. 

I also used to have a compulsion, when it came to games, to put everything back in the box exactly the way it was when it was new.  This included putting the cards back in the order they came in whenever I used a deck of cards.

[metal angel]

oh dear... this sounds so familiar.

myles, that sounds like my family, my mother has her few obsessions and compusions but nothing like OCD, but me and my brother seem to have full lblown OCD at times, we probably get some of it from or dad. It seems very much to be quantitative (sliding scale) and herritable (genetically, or maybe by upbringing), but have kind of a threashold of when it causes a problem.

Jamie-O, i was about to say that what you had sounded more like the organising things of asperger's syndrome than pure OCD. Less of the fear, and the sort of things you organise seem to fit that more. So dispraxia makes sense a lot.

Miniar... reading that made me look at that 5' high pile of boxes over there... and think of that cupboard full of boxes. Haven't got as far as the milk cartons yet, they hang arround for a while, but only cos i can't be botherred taking them out.

and who was it who said their hose was a mess except for the well organised CDs, that's definately me... you can't see the floor for the junk mail, but my CDs are aranged by artist, the release date.. and a few other things i love are well aranged like that too.



Post Merge: August 29, 2009, 11:03:28 PM

I don't know if there's some sort of biological correlation with OCD and GID, but for me personally, I think that there's been an emotional correlation. As in, the more repressed I've been about various things in my life (including GID) the worse my OCD has been, and each time I've ripped off a bandaid and gotten to a new layer of myself (coming out about growing up with abuse, coming out as "gay" and leaving my marriage, coming out as trans, etc.), my OCD and anxiety have improved exponentially. And nowadays, I feel pretty much like a "normal" person, who's just a little picky about a few things, but can mostly deal with it if not everything goes as planned.

I'm begining to think there is some link here between asperger's, OCD, and GID. Don't know if it's a similar underlying cause, unusual brain wiring, very male brain, or whatever. Or just the stress caused by one exacerbates the other.

Yeah, stress definately makes OCD way worse. A lot of my obsessions are about dirt and germs, i find when i am stressed suddenly everything seems dirty.

I also find that, for me, GID seems to only really come around when i'm stressed. Does anyone else get that? when all is going well i am happily a masculine - or just eccentric- mind in a female body... but when i get streessed i am more likely to start thinking my body is wrong. I'm still trying to compare notes here to see if what is going on with me resembled GID or is just something else.

[Miniar]

I also used to have a compulsion, when it came to games, to put everything back in the box exactly the way it was when it was new.  This included putting the cards back in the order they came in whenever I used a deck of cards.

I still do this... to a degree.
I can't remember how Munchkin came organized, so it hurts my brain, but I split the foot tall pile of cards into five, exactly equally high stacks, and organize them so all the stacks of the same card type are facing the same way in the box...

I also go through all the stacks and make sure the cards are all turning the same way.. which takes about an hour.

And right now, I look around the livingroom and see the mess around me and can't grok why I can't keep certain areas neat while others are compulsively so.
you should see my art-corner.... dear gods... the insane mess!
_

Stress doesn't aggravate my GID per say. It's like, when I'm stressed out because of "stuff" then that "stuff" takes my attention away from the GID for a while. I just don't have enough energy to fret about my daughter, my residency, me utter lack of money, and be in a lot of physical pain, and needing to catch up on school stuff.. AND also being upset that my chest isn't the right shape, my penis is missing, and I'm on the rag. It's just a couple things too many. Something's got to be put aside or I just won't be able to get up in the morning, and that adds another pile of things onto the already mountainous pile of things to deal with.

Compulsive behavior slips out of control under those circumstances though.
I find myself folding the laundry four or five times...

[junpei]

I have AS and honestly, I don't believe it has anything to do with my gender identity. I know there is a theory for Autism/Aspergers out there called the "Extreme Male Brain" theory. This basically is based upon the idea that males are better at systemizing and females are better at empathizing; therefore, people with Autism/Aspergers must have a male brain. Personally, I don't agree with this approach, as it is based off of stereotypical gender behaviour.