
Post-traumatic stress disorder may mimic autism in some children - anotherevan
https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-may-mimic-autism-children/
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crawfordcomeaux
I was molested & bullied as a kid, starting between 3-5 years old. It
traumatized me. I started withdrawing emotionally into video games and
television at age 8 or sooner. I was diagnosed with ADD after 8th grade. I
added porn and learning about tech at age 12 to my avoidance habits. I entered
into recovery for information, gaming, porn, masturbation, sex, love, and
sugar addictions at age 32.

I was accused for years of being autistic in some way. Nope...I simply
disconnected emotionally at an early age and didn't learn to actually feel my
feelings until 20+ years after I was biologically supposed to. Anxiety was my
norm and I didn't know it because I didn't know what anxiety was.

The fact that I could go so long without basic lessons on what emotions are,
how we feel them physically in the body, and what to do with them is a damning
commentary on our society.

The fact that my trauma went unrecognized as such, even by me, til 32 is a
damning commentary on psychology.

I've been feeling my feelings for 2.5 years and it started as a direct result
of me saying aloud to myself while alone "That traumatized me." The next
moment was a flood of emotions, including excitement over whatever this flood
of emotions was or could lead to and how weird it was that simply saying words
out loud could lead to it.

I now think everyone could benefit from making a list of things they think
didn't traumatize them that other people have been historically traumatized by
before, consider how their personal story lines up with standard stories of
denial, and then consider the idea that they were traumatized in ways they
don't yet realize while saying "That traumatized me."

~~~
susanhi
Thank you for sharing this. I commend your courage. I had similar experiences
to what you described. In my mid-30s, I sought out the best attachment
therapist that I could find. My search was world-wide since I was willing to
move to get treatment and me and my husband can work from anywhere.

I found a group in near Boston called the Attachment Institute of New England.
Though they predominantly work with children, they agreed to treat me. It
completely changed my life and allowed me to overcome and heal from my past.
That was 5 years ago and since then, I’ve had children. I know I would not be
the parent I am without their help. I only wish I could somehow replicate what
they did for me to help more people as I know most people don’t have the
luxury of finances and time to do what I was able to do.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
My first child is almost 8 weeks old & I'm incredibly grateful for the work
myself and my partner have done on ourselves leading up to this point.

Would you be willing to connect outside of this thread to talk about your
treatment? I'm writing a book centered on a framework for self programming I'm
designing and would love to inform it with the experiences of others. I'm
convinced we can mathematically define the human system in a
computational/programmatic way and use computer science to figure out language
constructs resulting in scripts to follow for achieving what we want our
minds/bodies/brains to do (or configuring them however we want). I've been
"programming" myself in this way for 2 years and have experienced a lot of
rapid change, as a result. I'm hoping the book will help people do the same
things you & I have accomplished, but in ways they can adapt to their daily
lives so they don't have to take a break from life.

The book will only be sold if there's a structure in place such that one
purchase funds several free copies or freely helping others in some financial
way. I don't want to profit from its sale.

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MithrilTuxedo
My girlfriend is a child and family therapist, a public school teacher in a
special needs class before that. They didn't mention this in grad school, but
she started figuring out kids had attachment disorders related to PTSD instead
of their original autism diagnoses while she was still interning. It didn't
sound like it was that big a revelation. It sounded like it's a pretty common
misdiagnosis.

~~~
stonecraftwolf
Wondering if this was true for girls as well as boys. Boys tend to be
diagnosed at higher rates, though the prevalence is — now — understood to be
the same. For years girls and women went undiagnosed with both conditions. It
was only after Van der Kolk characterized PTSD in male veterans that he
noticed his female patients — who had never been to war, but were subject to
many other kinds of abuse - exhibited similar symptoms.

We’re still learning about how different kinds of trauma effect the
neuroendocrine system, and gender bias makes it harder to study. I’m very much
hoping those biases can be corrected in future medical research (and indeed, I
know many younger researchers are acutely aware of the problem and are working
to rectify it).

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DoreenMichele
"Autism" winds up being a catch-all category for all kinds of social
challenges. The label is frequently a means to largely write someone off
because real help would be too much work.

One thing you frequently see in severe cases is faceblindness. Faceblindness
is itself seriously socially impairing. All other things being equal, a
faceblind person will have greater social challenges than a non-faceblind
person.

If you can identify the myriad specific things going on with a socially
impaired person and address each of them, that's usually more effective than
calling their social impairment "autism".

~~~
LifeQuestioner
There are many other parts of Autism that are prominent, for example sensory
atypicalities. I've never met a person with autism without them.

~~~
nicoburns
There's a book called The Reason I Jump written by a non-verbal autistic boy
(dictated by pointing at a printed keyboard), where he describes being able to
understand most things (except at times where he is overloaded by sensory
stimuli), but is often unable to control his response as he wishes.

This has lead me to believe that sensory-motor differences may be the primary
difference between autistic and neurotypical people.

~~~
LifeQuestioner
Yes. I wrote my thesis on creating a piece of autism technology to teach
people what it was like to have Autism. And through my work I came to the same
conclusion.

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LifeQuestioner
I think most people here have absolutely no idea of the diagnostic criteria
and how diagnosis works, so are not really fit to comment.

~~~
throwawaymath
It's refreshing to see a comment like this. My default stance on most topics,
even those which I am nominally educated in, is to have no opinion. My rule of
thumb is to consciously abstain from having an opinion about a thing unless I
know I can authoritatively speak at some length about the subject.

To repurpose a comment in another thread about nuclear fusion: online
discussions about autism generally consist of the Wikipedia-educated debating
the Youtube-educated. Likewise for topics like ADHD and sociopathy. It would
be nice if more people defaulted to, "I'm not really fit to comment" rather
than, "I have strong opinions after reading a few pages and talking with
friends about this."

~~~
LifeQuestioner
That's nice of you to say.

It might be that I know enough to know that I know nothing.

I've worked in academia and Neuroscience, have studied Autism for my masters
and created technology to teach people about Autism. Have volunteered in an
adhd charity, worked around clinicians and neuropsychologists and had
countless discussions on the topic of diagnosis.

All I can conclude, is even these guys can't establish the correct way to
diagnose and it changes often.

I have no chance. PTSD and Autism are both extremely complex.

And, the new DSM-V is very controversial.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Child abuse at the hands of parents creates (C)PTSD. But there is a huge
incentive to, well, not tell parents they've done a bad job. And parents can
be trusted too much and conceal things, or sabotage the process (if the
psychiatrist gets suspicious, they stop being seen).

~~~
goblin89
Could the psychiatrist silently report suspected abuse to relevant third
parties, while continuing to provide the service to the family?

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pishpash
More provocatively, is there really autism or is it all PTSD and various early
attachment disorders?

~~~
tomhoward
I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic over
the past few years.

~~~
privong
> I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic
> over the past few years.

Can you elaborate on this? Some more information and/or references would be
helpful.

~~~
tomhoward
It's all rather nebulous and controversial, so it's hard to point to specific
sources that would easily convince someone new to the topic. It would take a
lot of effort and personal investment, which I've been motivated to make due
to my own life challenges.

A couple of noteworthy authors/speakers on the topic are Dr. Gabor Maté and
Dr. Bruce Lipton.

Dr. Maté is a mainstream physician who was born into a Jewish family in
Hungary just as the Nazis were occupying. Through his career he has closely
studied the role of early life trauma in long-term behavioural and
physiological illness. Here's an article he wrote about autism [1]. He's
written a bunch of books about links between trauma and long-term health
outcomes [2].

Dr. Lipton was a pioneering stem cell biologist in the 70s and 80s, who became
particularly interested in the role of experience/belief/trauma on behavioural
and physiological outcomes. In his book, The Biology of Belief [3], he covers
the statistical link between early life trauma and autism, and proposes a
biological basis for it.

Lipton is a controversial figure who is easily ridiculed by mainstream
medicine devotees as he gets handwavy about quantum physics and has become
involved with the new age spirituality movement. But, having applied his ideas
very successfully in my own life over the past few years, I can attest that
what he's right about is more important than what he might be wrong about.

[1] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-
child-...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-child-of-
social-disconnection/article773077/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-
Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2](https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-
Consc...](https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-
Consciousness/dp/140195247X)

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rjplatte
Yay, let's continue diagnosing everything as autism!

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pfarnsworth
How frustrating that it took so long to get a proper diagnosis and treatment
for the child in the article, even though he had multiple diagnoses saying it
was PTSD. This is pretty clear that psychology is largely haphazard, which is
my own experience with it. It's definitely not as scientific as one would
hope, and with such poor funding for mental health issues it only exacerbates
the issue.

