calling all contented people with an ASD

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Are you happy with yourself just the way you are? Are you contented with your life, even though it may have some rough spots? Would you refuse a cure if one existed? Do self-acceptance and self-love play a big role in your existence? If so, would you please post your comments and insights here? I (and, I suspect, many others) could learn a lot from the positive experiences of others on the spectrum. I have already learned a ton of great stuff on WP, and I plan to pay it forward one day when (not if) I become strong enough to do so. Thanks!

lol Well I am who I am wouldn't want to be some one else.

gifts autism has given me

my service dog-I have my best friend with me 24/7

My obsessions- I can be perfectly content if I can indulge in my obsessions for hours with out anyone bothering me.

I don't need socail interaction to be happy but it is nice from time to time.

I can used my obsessions to become an expert in my field

all my quarks have helped me find a great guy who loves me and accepts me for who I am and doesn't judge me when I meltdown and listens to me obsess

I am not boged down with many socail worries

I will think of more later

I'm quite content with the way that I am. I enjoy my obsessions, I'm happy with my job, and I'm living on my own. I'm happy the way that I am, and I hope that there is never a cure for autism. I'm slightly handicapped. I'm not broken, and I don't need to be fixed.

I struggle with life but i love who I am.
I have worked hard on self-acceptance and I also have a deep spiritual dimension to my life, which sustains me when i get really despairing.
I would never ever want to change who I am or what I am.
When I was younger, I often wanted things to be VERY different for me, and it was far more confusing back then, but i never really wanted to alter the essence of who I was. I wanted to learn and improve on certain aspects of myself, but I never wanted to change who or what i was.

I live in a lovely house with my son and his dad who is my friend. We co-parent. we are separated and have separate living sections. it works well. He is a good person and a BRILLIANT father.
We live in a country town in northern nsw in Australia. It is a stunning region with a lot of natural beauty. Lots of creeks, bushwalking, national parks and wildlife. (perfect for an AS woman who loves solitude and nature. It makes me smile.)
I write, I study, I paint (although the latter disappeared last year as my main special interest. It will come back when it is ready.) I spend most of my time on my own and I have a few select friends from 12 step programs. One of these women is another AS woman and she is wonderful.

I have a few animals. My dog Peg and a new kitten called Smudge. There is a green tree snake that lives in our garden and we have one free range guinea pig (the other died the same time as my old cat died at the end of last year.)

I also speak at AS conferences in my country because I am hyper-verbal and able to do so with ease. I enjoy this and it helps me to connect to the AS community in Australia.

I manage my sensory issues really well now. I see an ASD clinician every so often - who dx'ed me. I have been able to develop a life that works for me very specifically, over the past year with his input.
I run a blog I enjoy.

And i have secret plans with regard to my new all encompassing special interest and I am completely ECSTATIC and energised by this fusion with my passions.

I love nature and am surrounded by it.
I have a pool and a deck and I do exercise (walking and laps several times a week) and I also do light weights - dumb-bells - which act as a real grounding energy in the same way weighted vests and blankets do. THey are great for me.

I eat well and I stay away from wheat and dairy as it makes me sick.

I struggle with staying calm around too much "people energy" and I get stressed and overwhelmed easily.
I do not work full-time as I cannot cope with people.

It is a brilliant life - well suited to me and my traits. But it took years of homelessness and incredible struggle up until the age of 40 or so, before I was able to develop a life for myself like this.

It has been worth it.

I've got no problem with myself or my own imperfections, I came to accept those many years ago. Now that they have a name, I feel even less inclined to beat myself up about any of it.

The rest of the world and the people running it, however...thats waaaaaaayyy messed up. We don't need a cure for autism, they need a cure for stupidity.

lol I agree here this song is .....ok I am not much for the genre but I love the message

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdXOIlFY5Ts[/youtube]

Being an aspie rocks... it has it's difficult moments, and I didn't really like my teens and twenties, but I'm on a roll now, and I wouldn't change being me for the world.

Egad, I can't say how much I agree. In reading through this short thread, I was going to post something to that effect about the rest of the world. I grew up extremely asocial, maybe even antisocial, and was disgusted by the "superficial animals" around me. Though my attitude about people in general has become much more understanding and beneficent over time, I have never ever wanted to be like everyone else. If anything, I've wished more people were like me in some ways.

I wouldn't at all mind some kind of "cure" that would at least allow me to drive safely and easily (that's not an activity my brain handles at ALL well), but not if it came with the cost of changing my entire personality and way of thinking, perceiving, and processing.

Like Millie, I have an absolutely wonderful friend/lifemate---my husband is utterly delighted by how my mind and perceptions work. As I've read to him info about AS and some posts on this forum, he's said that he's always been drawn to and fascinated by people who think this way; that if he can get past their personal walls, they have the most marvelous things inside, the most intriguing views and thoughts on all sorts of matters. He's such a good listener but not pressuring or intrusive, and he gets all happy when I obsess in a positive way over something because I'm obviously happy . After 8 1/2 years of marriage so far, he still wants to get things to feed my interests/obsessions like a hopeful boyfriend would normally want to get chocolates for his Valentine, lol.

I am happy with who I am, or at least the Asperger's.

Living with autism is difficult, but it is part of who I am. I wouldn't trade it for any other life. I think my generation has a responsibility to make it easier for autistic people to live their lives. So many things have come together to make this possible now as it has never been before. Deinstitutionalization; new technology; the move towards home care; the advance of psychology out of the dark ages of Freud and deviant homosexuals; the advent of the Internet for communication for socially isolated people; the momentum gathered by the disability rights movement; the increasing recognition of autism as a diagnosis; the increasing opportunities for disabled people to get into the workplace and into the education system... We're the first to have the opportunity to really change things, and we can't pass it up.

I suppose with age comes acceptance?
My difficulties are hard and I do sometimes complain about them (that's the PMDD talking).
At my age I want to be as social as my friends are and not feel tired the next day. I want to not get sick or tired of doing activity after an hour. That's more of an ADD thing though.
I hope that I having a job will make me feel better about myself. My interview is going to be very soon.

Aside from all the difficulties being autistic has made me into the artist I am today. I was obsessed with drawing as a child. I won awards and peoples praises. I stopped in my late teens but have recently just picked it up again, and you know what? I'm still at the level I was when I stopped doing it. I have not lost a single skill. I remember everything I ever learnt in art class as though I was born knowing it. Of course I wasn't. I went from scribbles to cartoons to sketches to paintings. I love to sketch and I can draw anything I see in my mind exactly how it looks, much better than I can draw if I'm trying to draw step-by-step from a book.
Then there is my photography. I am known by some very important people in the art and entertainment industry in my town, some big shot band managers and a few bands themselves. I hope to make a career out of my band photography, though it is hard with the competition and the editors ignoring my applications to certain events. But I'm pretty good and I've got a portfolio to prove it. I was disappointed that I missed out on the summer festivals this year so I'm preparing myself for them next year.
Then there is my story writing which is hard for me to keep up, but one day I hope to have written a whole book. My current project is about kids that go into special education with varying forms of ADHD/AS/HFA/Dyslexia or a few of those conditions, and they become friends. One girl is basically me with a different name.
And I love to read and learn about knew things, so a lack of a social life and a job give me more time to focus on those things.

I suppose I do like my life with autism. But if I were NT would I not be an artist/photographer/writer? I guess I'll never know, but there are NT's that are these things.

I yam what I yam, I say with Popeye.

There are days - there have been lots of days, and weeks, months, a few years - probably most of one particular decade - when I would GLADLY have lived in an alternative universe where I fit in instead of having to grind uphill on a bike with with no gears.

But - I think - I would never have traded. The native population of this planet thinks I miss out because I cannot see infrared or hear the dog whistle - but I have too much that they cannot even imagine.

Nobody - not even the natives - REALLY fits in here, we all are dying of terminal life. Let them stick to a two dimensional sworld. It may burn my tongue, but the curry I have is tastier than cream of wheat.

Yes


Yes, although I continue to strive for improvement


Definitely: BUT I have an IQ of 131 (149 on the Mensa scale) and I'm not that interested in being more social and LESS analytical


Definitely

I have come to believe that in my case, I have been given a wonderful gift and to quote Isabel Sorensen from Mozart and the Whale;

'I just make it work for me' (and I love how it works...for me)

Last edited by Blindspot149 on 08 Feb 2010, 2:03 am, edited 3 times in total.

yes. likely yes.

If there was a cure in the form of a pill I'd be more worried about side effects than what it was originally designed to do.

I am perfectly content with my life. Indeed, I do have some problems, but EVERYONE has problems, whether they're NT, AS, Schizoid, Bipolar, ADHD, whatever. I just deal with my problems and move on.
Once I stoped trying to be NT, alot of the problems I did have instantly melted away. I stopped being depressed and anxious and I started to love life.
When I started to love myself for who I am, I also found someone else who loves me for who I am. Double plus!
I love my special interests, which enables me to amass enourmous amounts of knowledge and use it to my advantage.
I am logical, rational, and reasonable. I don't let my emotions get the best of me. Which makes me well-suited to function in panic-situations.
Stimming is fun.

I don't mind the wierd looks I get in public sometimes. I figure those people are just jealous that they must remain confined in the chains of social convention, whereas I am free and happy to do my own Autistic thing.