Adults with Aspergers Seem 'Normal' to Me

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Personally, I talk about my difficulties in hope that others can understand themselves better. I don't hide what I'm going through so that others can learn more about themselves, about autism, and about what people do go through. I am open and take the harsh words that are directed at me, and hide when I can't, in hopes of making the world a better place.

If I were to hide what I went through I couldn't have people tell me that my words have allowed them to give the help a nonverbal little kid needed. If I were to not be open about what I need for help, then others will be less willing to give that help to both me and others. If I didn't share what I have to share, including what challenges I have, I'd not be able to do what I'm being asked to do.

Me talking about my difficulties is partially for myself, because it lets me understand myself better. It's partially for others, because it lets them understand themselves better.
It's partially for myself, because it allows me to find more ways to improve myself. It's partially for others, because it makes it easier for them to understand ableism and privilege in general.
It's partially for myself, because ASDs are a special interest. It's partially for others because sharing my life and my knowledge lets people treat their children in ways better benefiting their children.
It's partially for myself, because communicating with others about this makes me feel less alone. It's partially for others, because I can make them feel less alone too.

I understand

I'm just being too judgmental

well if you think having these kinds of difficulties are something people here enjoy having then yes that is kind of a bad judgement.

I've bolded a few things here- When I was talking about the book, I was showing you a good place to look to read about the actual difference between being lazy and executive dysfunction. As oppose to feeling it to the extent of others, I was giving you the difference.

Again with the "I can do it, so shouldn't you? If you just push yourself...." I can bend my fingers back more than most people with little to no effort without pain or fear of breaking any bones, maybe you would be able to bend your fingers back further like me if you just pushed yourself a little. See how flawed that way of thinking is? giving that advice to someone you don't know under the wrong circumstances can be EXTREMELY dangerous. You don't think we push ourselves? I wouldn't be as far as I am today if I didn't, but that doesn't mean it will fix everything. You said you have issues with executive dysfunction, so you know despite pushing yourself there's still problems.

I'd already said I don't expect you to understand it, I expect you to be less ignorant about it. There's a difference. I see that you're not letting yourself even fathom the thought that it's more than just "pushing yourself a little." I accept that you're not going to budge, but you need to accept the fact that your comments might be (and are) very hurtful to some of us on the boards, telling us to push ourselves a little harder or that we're just lazy, or that you can do it so it must be easy.


You're going to come up with some other way to make it about just not being pushed enough or not wanting to enough or some other asinine excuse because it's something you can do. When someone else brings up the difficulties I have and accuses me of something that's so far from the truth, and then has the audacity to say I seem to enjoy enumerating (there's only one n, since we're nitpicking) difficulties rather than trying to work out ways of dealing with them is ridiculous and more ignorant than ANY of your prior posts. Don't be so accusing of things and then try to say we're the ones doing such things. I push myself to my limits several times a day (and only bring up my deficits when they come into question like this entire post, or when I'm working on trying to help them not be so big.) When I push myself too far there are consequences that are both mental and physical. It's probably a similar outcome you if you push yourself too far as well, the difference is I can see that, and you don't seem to be able to.

Last edited by twich on 26 Apr 2012, 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, those are good reasons

I'm a lot older (46) and more cynical unfortunately - life has given me an unpleasant side

Yes I have limits - too much stress and frustration and I lose my temper spectacularly - it's like a nulcear attack when I lose it!

In life though people aren't consistently nice though

I find it very hard to be nice all the time

I get the urge to be facetious and provoking on forums

then I feel guilty and tone it down

then someone will say something provoking (whether intentionally or not) and I'll get
facetious again

This is my main problem - trying to stop myself from acting on impulse and saying what I first think - not editing my thoughts

So does everyone else here, your stress happens in different areas than mine, so should I say that since this doesn't stress me out, it shouldn't stress you out? Should I tell you that since it does, you should just push yourself a little harder because I can? No, I see that you have your areas and I have mine, I don't understand why you might get stressed over something I don't get bothered by, but I'm not going to belittle you for that, I'm not going to tell you it's because you like to enumerate your deficits, and I'm certainly not going to tell you it's because you're just being lazy or not pushing your limits enough.

Well it is good that you are aware of it.

You are mixing different areas of the brain.
Very simplified said: Executive (dys-) function takes place in the prefrontal brain areas (which are evolutionary "new") whereas survival-mechanisms get controlled by the amygdala, which belongs to the limbic system and is evolutionary an "old" part of the brain.
Comparing executive dysfunction and direct life-threatening situations makes no sense.

Oh, not being able to eat. I can usually tell when I'm hungry, but I still have trouble translating that into "making something to eat." I live in a household with other people, and often something gets made for dinner so I don't miss that meal. I also often eat leftovers which makes things much simpler. I usually stock up on food I can easily prepare so I don't get stuck/frozen trying to decide what to eat.

But even with these measures in place it can take me hours to get from "I should eat" to actually getting something to eat. This is an improvement over a year and a half ago where I often didn't think about eating until something forced the issue (someone else makes dinner, I can't get to sleep because of hunger + headache). This isn't something I want to do. I like eating on a regular schedule. It's something I have a lot of difficulty working around. Operating a computer is simpler in comparison.

Right now I have alarms on my computer that notify me when certain meal times are, and that does help.

I find following recipes overwhelming and confusing. I find it very difficult to prepare food from the way recipes are written because they often don't describe discrete steps, and the directions are often imprecise in execution, if not in terms of timing or ingredient measurements. This is not something I particularly enjoy or like, nor is it something I want to cling to. It just is. I have some strategies to get through some recipes, but it doesn't work every time.

I would prefer not to live with other people and I would prefer not to be dependent upon others to meet any of my needs. But my attempts to achieve that state have not been met with success, and I have tried for close to two decades. I have too many difficulties with too many "activities of daily living."

I come here to talk about my difficulties for reasons similar to Tuttle's:

Thomas Szasz has some interesting critiques of the psychiatric profession - many of them valid, even now. I doubt he ever intended anyone to use his writing to attack or criticize people who are diagnosed. He never denied that such issues were real, he questioned why they were labeled as they were, and why people with those labels were treated so badly.

some people do improve enough so that they no longer qualify for a diagnosis in adulthood.

but coming across "normal" doesn't mean that a person is not severely impaired on the job, in school or in interpersonal relationships. how a person comes across in a casual environment doesn't really mean anything at all. i mean, a person could have severe paranoid schizophrenia and yet still come across "normal" in a conversation or a video on youtube.

Hello, I am a new member of the forum, but I have suspected that I have some form of ASD, most likely AS essentially my entire life.

I guess I disagree that AS, at least in its milder forms, is really a 'disability' in the sense that its something that's 'wrong'. Instead, I just see AS people as being sort of a 'type B' person, who has a different cognitive arrangement than a 'type A', or NT person. Both types can do everything the other can, a 'type a' person can do logical reasoning, and a 'type B' person can be socially engaged. The difference is how efficiently they can allocate their mental resources for each task.

A NT person can efficiently task their minds to keep track of the myriad social ques that an AS person must focus on and consciously process. Obviously, this makes social interaction more difficult for the AS person. But is it a disability? Look at it the other way. An AS person is capable of tasking their minds to analyze a complex problem, and are quite efficient at it. I, for example, can solve legal problems in my sleep- give me the facts before bed, and I'll have insight in the morning. Does this mean that the NT person, who cannot do that, is 'disabled' somehow?

In the end it's all normative. Not being able to efficiently engage in social interaction is a disability, while being unable to quickly analyze problems is not. For that matter, being unable to run a marathon isn't a disability, and all otherwise medically healthy people, with proper training and prep, can run one. Being 'disabled' in the sense that certain things are more difficult shouldn't be placed on the same level as disability which makes certain things impossible. If you are quadriplegic, it is impossible to walk. If you have such severe mental or emotional disturbance that you cannot communicate with another person, that is disability.

But to say that because, even though you 'appear normal', you are actually suffering from an invisible disability inside, is going too far and is self victimization. Saying things like that ignores the fact that what a person expresses on the outside is not what she feels on the inside. This isn't an autistic or aspie or NT thing, it's a human thing. When you see a person smiling and at ease, you may not realize that he's in knots because a family member is sick, or he's having problems with his family, or that he's suffering from depression, or that he's a recovering alcoholic, because everyone is wearing a mask. To try and claim that your particular inner turmoil is somehow special, simply because it's the result of a particualar condition, is illogical.

Thus, I feel that as someone who is a high functioning aspie, I should comport myself as much as possible to our society's norms. I've learned how to make small talk, how to do eye contact, a slew of phrases that I find useful in certain situations. Am I limited? Sure, I can't keep it up indefinitely, and after about 5-6 hours I'm ready to just sit quietly and think to myself again. Do I always enjoy every part of every social occasion? No, but that's a common experience among NTs as well.

Which brings me to a last point, namely, I participate in society, despite the difficulty, because deep down I want to. I want to have friends, and social interaction. I like it, just in small doses. If someone on the spectrum has no desire for social interaction, that's fine too. Like I said above, I could train and run marathons if I wanted to. I do not, so I won't. It doesn't mean I can't.


tl;dr

To answer the OP, everyone, ASD or NT, only 'seems' normal. Everyone is hiding something, an AS person is hiding the fact that she is taxing her mind to the fullest during social interaction. Myself, as one with mild AS, find that the extra effort I put into being social is rewarding; others may not. I disagree that a 'normal looking' aspie is in fact 'disabled'.

You should limit your speaking to yourself when making such broad, generalizing claims. You may not consider yourself disabled, but others may consider themselves disabled.

When I read posts like this I wonder just how ignorant people are of what "disability" is intended to mean.

The World Health Organization describes it as:

http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/



Notice it doesn't define these limitations as absolute or extreme. This means that anyone experiencing impairments can be considered disabled. It does not mean that one is victimizing themselves, and it often means that people understand their own limitations, often better than those around them who might characterize them as self-victimizing.

When someone describes the effort that goes into presenting a "normal" front as disabling, this doesn't mean they're ignoring everyone else who puts up a front to cover up various things. But it doesn't mean that every front must relate to a disability, or that saying one is disabling minimizes the others. You're adding more commentary to what people are saying, despite the fact that no one actually said those things. If you need to do that, then perhaps you don't have much of an argument at all.

I agree with everything you say. Sorry if I'm a bit strident, I'm in the midst of law school finals, and have been answering legal hypos all day and night. I also wasn't trying to put words in anyones mouth, just trying to set up a rhetorical framework. Hopefully this post will be better.

I guess what I meant by the self-victimization thing was that I resent that in order to have the fact my mind works differently, I essentially have to medicalize my personality. For example:

in college, a person with AS qualifies for 'special accommodations' for testing and class. Provided, that they have a medical diagnosis of AS. This is where I become troubled. From my perspective, there's nothing wrong with me; the school has arbitrarily tailored its curriculum to a more NT learning pattern. Because my purpose is to learn and I would have no problem accomplishing that but for the NT-oriented curriculum, I do not like that I must be medically diagnosed with a condition. I appreciate that the school is trying to accommodate my difference, but I don't like being forced to claim that I am disabled. Being disabled carries social stigma, no matter how much people protest. It is a negative word. And the fact that it is pronounced by a doctor is even worse- for millennia doctors and disease went hand in hand, the association between AS and illness is inescapable.

My objection, I guess, is that in order to gain any kind of understanding for society, it must be because we are 'disabled' and therefore worthy of pity. I would rather be recognized as a fully functional human being who functions in a particular way. I want the motivation to accommodate me to be 'we need him', not 'we ought to help him'. I hope I've made the difference clear. It's not simply a question of semantics, either. I don't want to need a doctors note in order for people to help me, I want to be recognized as a valuable person in my own right, and be allowed to give my talents in the manner that's most effective

As for the WHO definition of disability, I know that it is a broad term. The reason it is designed so broadly is, as I alluded to above, being 'disabled' allows a person to qualify for all sorts of social services in many countries. Understand, all social services share a pedigree of charitable services. That is, their social role has traditionally been filled by (usually religious) charities. They typically served the homeless, the maimed, and, to an extant, the insane. Again, the motivation to help was borne out of pity, or a sense of religious obligation. Carry this forward to the present, and you see that the justification for services, or accommodations, or the like, is need-based. The only reason we help a person is because of his lowly status, be it destitute, or mentally ill, or disabled. Whatever the program, there must be some valuation of the person before aid is given. So, in order for society to justify special treatment at all, a person must have some sort of defect.

This is part of the underlying current behind the broader medicalization of society. We (society) want to help those who need special accommodation, but we have centuries of social norms that require recipients of special treatment to have some sort of defect in order to to deserve it. Thus, we begin to classify more and more things as disabilities. The problem is that the stigma associated with disease cannot be decoupled from the involvement of the medical profession.

So, I am not ignorant of what disability is 'supposed' to mean. I also agree that a person could describe the effects of AS as disabling, but that would be merely descriptive. I object to the term as a label. I would rather people think about AS/NT people the same way we think about short and tall, or left and right handed.

tl;dr
Sorry that I put words in people's mouths, I didn't intend to offend, and am sorry that I did.
My thing about self-victimization was concern that 'disabled' and it's medical context carried stigma, and that I resented my difference being recognized as a disease. Finally, definitions of 'disability' only further the troublesome medicalization of social problems; a less stigmatizing way is to think of AS/NT more like physiological differences.

Thank you for clarifying. I think I understand what you mean about medicalization (or what I usually say: pathologize) of such things. I think you're talking about the social model of disability, which acknowledges that a lot of limitations due to disability are due to the way society is structured.

http://www.livingwithcerebralpalsy.com/ ... bility.php

Anyway, I wasn't offended. I disagreed with what I read, and I appreciate your clarification.