How do i accept that im different

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I hate being different, when I see old videos of me showing my traits i feel crushed, I want to cry, I just want to be normal

Maybe learning to accept it will help, please offer some advice

Don't watch old videos of yourself, I guess?

You can't change who you are and what's already happened. Reading your older posts I see that you are, or at least were, content with your life.

If the traits are what's bothering you, it's easy to learn how to hide them. Just record yourself a few hours every day, and compare the videos to what you deem "normal". Once you have an idea of the differences, practice hiding or eliminating them.

I can pass as normal, s**t, I even have what many would call a social life, unfortunately the chronic unemployment means i cannot afford to enjoy said social life

Im afraid i didnt find your post very helpful :/


there must be SOMEONE around here that has some experience in this and can offer some life changing wisdom

It's really very simple.. you just have to accept that you're different.

In the very very wise words of a close friends of mine: "..some people are just different." - and I can accept being different, what I couldn't accept was my horrendously bad clinical depression complete with passively suicidal thoughts. That's what motivated me to figure out how to treat my symptoms and think/feel better, but the being different part? Nah. I sort of embrace it.

You have to think about all of the positives of your being different in order to truly accept it. For me, I think differently.. I can solve problems differently. I can calculate things, come up with solutions others can't easily do etc. Once you realize that you actually do have unique talents and perspectives on things that others don't, it's easier to accept being different - because without being different you wouldn't have any of these unique abilities that can actually serve you well in life & work, as well as in socializing with likeminded people.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

You rang?

You cannot change who you are.
You need to be around people who accept you for who you are.

You also need to have the official diagnosis on record and with your employer.

What country do you live in?
Most developed countries have people with disabilities as a protected class under the law.

I'm can fully relate to what you are going through!! !
It's crushing, defeating, and makes you want to give up.
I may have to bite the big one and go through a government program to get employed.

You obviously need a friend/mentor to talk openly too and to guide you.
Because from what you've posted, I'm close enough to you to help you.

When you get this message PM me, with your Skype or KIK name so we can talk.
If you don't get back to me by tomorrow, I'll hit you up.

I'm coping with many of the same things as you.

With that I want you to remember this old saying:
"Nothing worth having has ever been easy!"
It means you have to fight hard to get anything worth having!

What works for me is this: I'm going to be different no matter what I do. I can be different and happy (or at least calm about it), or I can be different and miserable.

Stop the re-runs. Constantly thinking about your differences will only exaggerate them. Have you ever asked anyone how they see you? I did this and I was surprised at the answer. People don't see you how you see yourself. You know all your imperfections to the minutest detail because you've thought about them to death and you interpret them in a negative way. Regular people only see a very small percentage of your imperfections and they interpret those in different ways to how we would.
You don't like the video but honestly, if your thoughts were a movie would you pay to see it? You're the director aren't you? Why are you turning out such rubbish?
Don't worry, I've turned out some major B grade crap over the years too. We need to start giving ourselves a better script.

Everyone is different. There is no single person that is exactly the same as someone else. There are just some some common traits that make the "norm" but the norm is nothing but average value on a huge scale.
I wouldn't want to be an average, would you?

Truly, I've gotten to the point where there is no "normal." Everybody's weird! Everybody's got at least a little neurosis floating around.

I don't happen to like hanging out with people who consider themselves "normal."

Like you said: at least you got somewhat of a social life. That's better than I was when I was about your age.

I'm sorry you haven't got a job. In most cases, you would feel better if you had a job. I know it's not easy to get a job these days. I think you mentioned that you go to college, or that you graduate from college.

Everyone is different in some way. There is no true normal, there is just a majority viewpoint that is culturally, politically and historically determined, and that "normal" changes with each generation. You are inwardly labelling yourself "abnormal", but you are normal for you, and autism does not define the whole of you. If it did, we would all be the same here - which is manifestly not true! Everyone has challenges, some so major that overcoming them - like being deaf and blind, yet making a huge contribution to the world (Helen Keller) - provides inspiration for everyone else. The core of your dilemma is this: accept or reject yourself as you are. If you reject it, then you bear the terrible burden of self-defeating self perception and it will curse your life; if you accept it, you will see that like everything else in life it is a mixture of positives and negatives. Find your strengths, and play to your strengths, as much as you can. If you let others define you through the lens of autism in a way that ignores your individuality, you will suffer.

You have to construct your own lens, in a way that is true to yourself. It is possible to find positive meaning in who you are, autist or not. First you may need to undergo a grieving process and it may be helpful to see a grief counsellor who specialises in reactions to loss. You have lost something that was meaningful in the past - a conception of yourself that was different from what your self-perception is now. You are focused on the losses, and that is understandable. However in time the losses are balanced with gains, and the first gain is the truth of your neurodifference. That is a very important gain, though I do understand that for now you are finding it very hard to see that.

I have lived a whole lifetime of difference from the normative majority. I was an "orphan"; I was born with immune deficiency; I was gifted intellectually (though some members here may dispute that!); I have Aspergers Syndrome; I grew up with strangers separated from my younger siblings and all blood relations until I was 23, apart from a brief encounter with my grandmother when I was 8; I was a mother at 18 when that was not considered normative at all; I was very severely victimised as a child and young person; my foster mother tried to kill me (truly) and rewarded her son for very cruel bullying of me; I ran away to another country when I was 17, with no money at all after paying for my passage by ship, and landed in a country I had never been to with the grand sum of five cents, ptsd, and no idea of how normal people or families behaved; the love of my life broke his neck and died a quadriplegic, leaving me to bring up our children with very slender resources.

Despite all that, I am here decades later to tell you this - and went on to have a successful academic career, to be an effective community leader of a large political organisation, to have wonderful children who did very well, and to be reunited with most of my family (many of whom did not know of my existence, or had been told that I had died in infancy). Because of my immune deficiency, I have been near to death's door on a number of occasions with pneumonia, to which I have no innate resistance, cancer, heart problems and other serious illness.

How did I survive? I constructed meaning in and from those experiences. I always felt that there was something in life I was somehow meant to do - something bigger than my own small existence (there was, and I did it successfully). I felt blessed to have autistic gifts of memory, analysis, music, focus on detail, a natural intellectualism. I was lucky to attract wise mentors who guided me when I most needed to build hope, meaning and purpose from the tough years of my youth, and after my husband's paralysis. I had to construct a self-value that did not rely on the usual conventions, and use my unusual talents in my own way to make a contribution.

I am guessing that I am much older than you, so please don't think that I am saying "go and achieve all this next week". You have to believe in your self, in your worth, in your right to exist as you are. You have to put that foundation stone in place, and then you can build on it.

I hope in some way you find some meaning in this that helps you see the possibilities ahead for you. Good luck. It can be a fascinating journey.

Change your expectations of yourself. Embrace the eccentricities. There is a place for you as you are. I know I look like a batty old woman, so be it. The world needs more character.

When I start feeling bad about myself the way I am, I think about those who have much worse difficulties. How that could have been me. Then it doesn't seem so bad and I can be more thankful for who I am. And remember that most people aren't satisfied with themselves and feel like a failure in some way. Even highly successful people feel that way.

Are any of your friends artists or art photographers?

I am an art photographer. One of the things I enjoy doing is taking the people I love in my life, and showing them how I see them. Perhaps one of your artist friends would be happy to have you as a willing and patient subject, to let them practice their craft, and in turn show you how other people see you rather than how you see yourself?

My ONE normal friend recently committed suicide. All my other friends range between odd and downright strange. But this one friend who was the very picture of normal. Just retired with a huge pension from a long a successful career, married to a beautiful woman from Europe. Had a house in Santa Fe and a second home in Northern Italy - at least a million dollars in assets. On September 28, of this past year he left his home in Santa Fe and went out into the desert and killed himself. Now I don't have even one normal friend any more. Maybe being normal is not what it is crack up to be.