A definition of AS I got from someone with AS

Thats the beauty of a label. Your particular eccentricity, your neurological, unavoidable eccentricity can be understood and accepted by the average joe, whereas if patients were treated purely on an individual basis, the average idiot would assume you were just making shit up because you wouldn't have a genuine 'excuse' for your problems.

 

a lot os people still doubt I have it because I've built REALLY good coping mechanisms.

They never saw me sitting on the floor in wal mart because they moved the towels, rocking back and forth, in blind panic, not because I was there for towels, not because I couldn't find them, but because the continuity of the universe had shifted. and I was deeply and profoundly uncomfortable with that.

 

Do you avoid looking people in the eye when you talk and ramble about scientific things? That is usually the give away to me.

 

haha, so few people actually know about it here that it doesn't help.

 

I didn't know about it when it was first explained to me by an aspie. I found it so fascinating that I looked it up and learned as much as I could about it, most of which I have forgotten but I forget the jist.

How much does it actually matter that people understand you?

I am an intellectual who is forced to work at supermarkets due to ill-health, I know its not the same level of suffering and I have a solid understanding of basic human emotions, but I too feel quite alienated from the majority of people I deal with.

 

I get to avoid stupid people, it's worse suffering man. I avoid customer service positions like PLAGUE at least in an office situation I can memorize some reactions some people have.

 

Dude...I freak out about stuff like that, too. I'm sure it's probably not nearly as bad for me as it is for you, but I have incredible anxiety issues and I've learned to deal with them in public, but inside I'm often flipping the hell out. I have to have a routine, otherwise I feel like my life is spinning out of control, and little things like stores rearranging just throws me off and freaks me out, but I know it sounds silly to "normal people", so I usually just don't even bother expressing my feelings about it. But I've always suspected I might be obsessive compulsive, and blame it on that. It sucks not being normal, because those who are don't even come close to understanding how shit affects you differently than it does other people.

 

Yes, I understand now. I am vexed by general stupidity, you are vexed by having a completely different way of viewing things. Its not the same.

So once you register somebody's emotional response to a particular situation, does that make it easier to recognize what they may be feeling in the future?

 

to an extent, but there is always a limit

I fake my way through 90% of facial expressions with just a raised eyebrow.

 

Interesting topic...

I'm tempted to sound off but doing so can only illuminate how little I understand about it. It strikes me that a benefit, if there is one, is that at least in your case, you're strongly resistant to "group think". There are many times I wish that my thought patterns weren't so susceptible to outside orchestration.

 

well, it's great once you're an adult and can pass.

but when you're a kid, and you have no idea why all the other kids work one way, and you work another.

ugh, it's painful. REALLY high suicide rate in the AS community. 80% divorce rate compared to NT's 50%

 

I wonder if a particular parental approach might mitigate that... I remember aching to fit in as a kid but until I was 14 there was no strong parental unit reinforcing the value of being myself... but that has to do with personality... "working" another way as a kid might inadvertently enlist the resistance of educators who don't understand what's going on.

 

sure

but, parents are tricky.

 

I was just talking to a good friend today - parenting goes through phases and techniques depending on the era.

It's amazing how enlightened I thought my parents were growing up...and how differently I'd raise a child today should I have one.

My generation of parenting basically believed in objective TRUTH. Most parents today still believe in the normative stuff because of Oprah. Their truth is everyone's truth, and I can see how much more deleterious such an approach might have been had I been an AS.

However, I will venture to say that a judgmental, absolutist parenting has a deleterious impact on everyone.

Parents from that line of thinking appear to think that open-mindedness and empathy is the same as not setting boundaries - not so.

 

Though my parents stuggle sometimes with open-mindedness and empathy due to their strict, christian upbringing, they have always strived to be incredibly tolerant and supportive of my sister's and my own sense of individuality. They also taught us to treat other people the same way. I feel incredibly lucky for that reason.

On the other hand, ironically, sometimes some sort of 'objective truth' may have helped me out when I was incapable of figuring things out for myself.

 

What's wrong with saying, "This is my truth. I respect and I am interested in yours." And further (boundaries!!): "This is how much I am willing to do for you as your father/mother and here's why...I feel such and such, etc."

The problem with the parenting I was brought up with is that everything started with a should, or ought to, or how things really are (as opposed to what those people over there thought they were) and whatever deviates from that is wrong and will get you no empathy whatsoever, pal.

It took me 30 years to recover.

 

But you realize what you are doing, and once you realize that, you can change/stop that, yes? You are aware that you are changed by such a small thing. But some AS people are not that self aware, are they?

I don't know.

 

But whats the point if you don't know what they mean? Reactions are so subtle. If you don't know the emotions behind them, is it really memorizing?

So are you really able to memorize a persons reactions?


Plus many people are really random and have many oddball reactions and expressions, or ones they use very rarely. Does this fact impact you on the level that the towels impacted you in wal mart? A once used facial expression by a generally predictable person may throw off that balance, no?

 

This thread is already too long to respond to everything, but I deal with Asperger's daily with my 10 year old.

Yes, many people never get diagnosed, and they learn to fake their way through even though it never makes sense to them. Early intervention is important.

Not every person with Asperger's is smart, either. There is a kid in my son's class who is repeating this year. As one Aspie wrote (I forget who, I've read a lot about it) "If you've met one person with Autism, then you've met one person with Autism" They are all different.

People who high-handedly don't believe in it, have never seen a level 5 meltdown come out of an otherwise normal situation.

 

the thing is, you have to guess at which emotion caused the expression, and, have you ever seen one of those cop shows where they put all those pins on a really big map? and they''ve got string between them? and pictures and things?

it's kinda like that, you're not SURE they're connected, but you've gotta hazard the association just as an ad hoc way of understanding the way the people around you tick, because if you don't know how they tick, then they can be unpredictable, which becomes dangerous, very quickly.

and, yeah, there are some people who don't fit their own pattern generally they're just hard to be around, from what I understand when I am around someone like that my posture becomes much more defensive. and, I do feel a bit like I am being attacked around people like that. and, I know I'm not, but trying to figure out what is going on does take much longer with them, because it's not as much an a=b c=d system, it becomes an

if a=c, and d=g at 6:30 am then f will = z and it shifts, it's still REASONABLY mechanical with MOST people but it takes SO much longer to figure out, and spending time around those people is so much more. unorthodox

that it's tricky

the only reason I feel the way I do about it simply being a much more complex system is that my sister is like that. so I've had exposure.

as to being self aware of my melt down

just because we know we're doing something outside of norm, doesn't mean we're ahead of the game


an agoraphobic may know it's ridiculous to be terrified of going outside, and still be terrified of going outside

I was having a VERY deep end of the spectrum day. some days I feel almost normal, some days I feel VERY autistic, and that was one of the latter days, and there was absolutely shit I could do about it, I knew it was weird, I felt embarrassed while I was doing it. it didn't change the fact that I did do it

they'd changed the continuity of the universe. they had changed my pattern. my continuity. it wasn't okay.