Aspies are normal too!

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Because strangers in the street can sense something on my unconfident face, and they all look at me - god knows why they have to look at somebody who is acting completely normal but just holds a nervous look, but hey, they do. And I don't want that - I want to walk out in public without having others staring at me. It's like eye-contact from strangers burns holes in my face, and it makes my self-esteem worse, especially all those bitchy glares from other young females around my age. f*****g hate it and I could punch.

If they are staring, it's them who are being rude and therefore are lowered in my opinion of them and therefore unlikely to be worth your time of day - and definatly not worth worrying your self-worth or self-esteem more - so I'd just ignore them...

But - If it bothers you that much, try a make-believe happy / confident day - and once you've done it once, it gets easier...
Imagine you just got the best news in the world, or think about fluffy pink bunnies or something else that just makes you smile and go out and smile at everyone! If you don't like eye contact, smile at the tip of their nose - to them it appears as you're looking them in the eye, but without the uncomfortable feeling to you! - it's a surreal experience. It makes them happy to see someone happy so they smile back.

And the bitchy girls will always glare... A lot of the time it's because they're jealous - because you're more interesting / prettier than them and they hate you for it - even if you can't see it. Again, who are they to be lowering your self-esteem! Obviously people who are not worth it! *hugs*

I like your reply, it was very helpful.

But I told one of my colleagues at my volunteer job that I keep getting people looking at me, and she said it's probably just my imagination, even if it looks like they really are.
But when I get on the bus, I feel the eyes of all the people on the bus looking at me as I walk up the aisle to a seat, but when I watch other people come on, I look at the people's heads who are already sitting down, and their heads don't move at all, as though it's obvious that they're not looking at the people coming on.

The reason why I'm so bothered about people looking at me is because I think that they're thinking I'm weird or stupid. But I really don't know why having an unconfident face would make people look, because I'm not intentionally doing anything weird or embarrassing, so as long as I'm not intentionally standing out, then why look? I look at people who are acting different, but somebody who is walking along looking normal, but with a nervous-looking expression, I don't take any notice of them because they don't look any different from others.

Anyway, one of my bus-drivers has a very worried face on him, but that doesn't give me the impression that he's ''weird'' or ''different''. His face does look so unconfident, as though he's about to cry - but he still chats away happily to passengers, so he must be OK. So, for all other people know, I could be the most popular person in the world, for all they know. Just because I hold an unconfident face when I'm on my own, doesn't mean I am unconfident.

Anyway, enough with my gabbling on here. I will think about what you said and hopefully it might help. Many thanks.

The other opinion could be if you feel you look like you're about to cry, some of it could be concern, but without the nerve to ask "are you ok" (or because asking a total stranger is crossing some of the social norms that NTs worry about)...

It sounds like the bus-driver might have similar anxiety problems - I couldn't imagine meeting and greeting as many people as he must do - but he probably does something similar and hides that and acts very confident as though there's nothing wrong - I think a lot of people put that kind of mask on to make it through the day.

Anyway - go for it - you might suprise yourself!
*hugs*

I'm a little confused here.
Control freaks, murderers and rapists aren't right though. Something in their brain can't be right to make them want to do such evil things. Especially if they enjoy it and think they can get away with it. And most of them know it is wrong, yet they still do it. They can't be right in the head. I'm not saying these things are rare - but having disabilities isn't rare either. We can't just go around thinking, ''if somebody has good social skills, they are normal''. Some NTs don't like to mix much and don't have that many friends, but it doesn't mean they're not NT. And some Aspies can enjoy company and being around people, but that doesn't mean they are normal. It's really complicated to explain the differences between NT and Autism, although there are. I have the same desires, knowledge, anxieties, dreams, likes, dislikes, emotions, ect, is a NT, but I pursue them differently at times. For example, all people get angry at times, but when I get angry I'll throw myself into a meltdown. All NTs get nervous about things, but I get nervous of trivial things (but then again, so do NTs). So I will say that I probably look at things in a different way, and then find myself getting nervous in a strange way to NTs, whereas NTs seem to share their anxieties and understand eachother - even though they get anxious about different things. See, it's very complicated to explain, because no one description doesn't fit every person. I'm similar to NTs, yet different. The differences are there but they're actually hard to explain, because the differences can go from slight to extreme, and all of us Aspies have different symptoms what affect us in different ways. For example, you might feel more bothered by lights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and people touching you - whereas none of those bother me, only sounds do. Or you might smack your head against the wall in a meltdown - whereas I just cry and swear in a meltdown.

It annoys me when people say that everybody is NT except people with Autism. That's not quite true, because AS and Autism are just 2 of lots and lots of other NL conditions. What about mentally ret*d people, who are physically normal but their brain does not let them reach any milestones in life? I knew a 19 year old lad who was like that when I used to volunteer at a Young Adults With Special Needs club. This lad was a good-looking young person, with no birth deformities anywhere - but he was in a wheelchair and all he could do was babble and flap his arms about, and he couldn't say a proper word, and he was in nappies, and needed 24-hour care. He wasn't Autistic though, I can't explain why, but he wasn't. He loved being around people, and he made good eye contact, and smiled all the time, and even laughed the more people spoke to him. He even wanted to give me a cuddle. No sounds or lights or anything like that would bother him, and his parents told me that he never got upset, ever. But he isn't NT though.

Is Alzheimer's a NL condition? Is Dyspraxia a NL condition (I've got Dyspraxia, aswell as mild AS). Is Down's Syndrome a NL condition?

Actually, evil is normal, in many circumstances. Most violent people don't have a neurological condition or a mental illness. And as those experiences referenced show, most people can kill when told to by certain kinds of authority figures, and virtually everyone given power over others in a complete way will abuse it. Everyone has the potential for these things and only by recognizing this potential can we fight against it and do our best not to give in to those circumstances.

They are neurologically normal. There is no disease or disability present to explain those results.

NORMAL IS NOT GOOD. It's also not bad. NORMAL DOES NOT EVEN MEAN ABLE-BODIED. Really.

Normal means AVERAGE. Average means no better or worse than everyone else. You want to try to defy such situations? Most people think they wouldn't. Most people are surprised at what happens if they're actually in such a situation.

Something in their brain isn't right, it's true. But that not right thing? It's wrong in precisely the same way in almost everyone. Making it NORMAL.

I don't like the thought of me being considered more abnormal, strange and weird than a murderer.

Murderers and rapists and paedophiles are more wrong than me, because they get arrested for what they do - I don't get arrested for having AS.

And say if I was walking along the street then suddenly stabbed someone (not that I ever would), everyone in the street would stop and look at me in shock, and some would probably think, ''what is the matter with her?!'' and others would think, ''get me away from her - she's mental!'' and somebody would phone the police and freak out. If it was normal, acceptable behaviour, nobody would look at me in shock and freak out, would they?

When I was a kid my mum used to say, ''come home before it gets dark because there's a lot of weirdos lurking about and I will worry if you're not home.'' I should have said, ''I'm more weird than them, Mum. Their behaviour is more acceptable and normal than what my behaviour is, which is being a bit shy around people.''

So after this entire thread you still can't tell the difference between abnormal/strange/weird and unacceptable? Just because lots of people call violent people all those things as well as mental doesn't make it true. And equating violent with mental also contributes to the stigma mental patients face (real mental patients are no more violent than anyone else and may even be less violent than usual, but are more likely to be victims of violence).

I don’t think I will ever get it. I wish I hadn't started this thread because I don't really know what I'm talking about. Perhaps I've been diagnosed with the wrong thing. Perhaps I don't have AS. Perhaps I have a disability what hasn't been labelled yet, like what Autism was before 1994. Because I feel so different to Aspies.

Let's not even talk about it with people.

Here, let's talk about it with strings of punctuation marks. Suppose there are ten strings, and they are:

...
...
...
...
...
...
../
.//
///
=.=

Most strings are ... and of those that aren't, most include /

=.= is atypical. Is =.= bad? Is ... good? Is ... better than =.=?

Or look at it this way. If we have these sentences:

the big fat catate the wet rat.
the big fat catate the wet rat.
the big fat catate the wet rat.
The big fat cat ate the wet rat.

The last one is atypical; the other sentences aren't like it. But as you know, the last one is grammatically correct.

You know a cartesian graph with X and Y axes? Imagine the X axis is "weird/normal" and the Y axis is "bad/good." You can be bad and normal, good and normal, bad and abnormal and good and abnormal.

It's a matter of principle what is annoying me:
If I went out tomorrow and raped a 3 year old (urrgh, yuk!! !) I would be normal.
But if I went to a social party and was shy, that isn't being normal.

How come most people hate paedophiles, rapists and murderers then? My cousins boyfriend is a paedophile and a control-freak and a conman, and everyone wants his head smashed in, and their reason is because ''he is a devious, discusting, perverted freak who nobody likes''. He has no friends - but he is no Aspie.

Joe90 , I want to bring to your attention the fact that you are having an extremely intense reaction to your diagnosis, you do not accept it ,and yet you are quite unable to let the idea of having AS go. Instead you are spending your time on this site arguing vehemently that you are "normal". You have very intense and quite rigid views about what it means to be "normal" and are unwilling to consider the feedback and perspectives of other people on this site. I think this is a bit ironic because this kind of rigid thinking can be an indication of AS.I know this might offend you ....... but I do not intend this to be mean-spirited, I just want to point this out to you, since you are still unsure if your diagnosis is correct

I was diagnosed with AS when I was 13. I was very upset by this diagnosis and believed that I was misdiagnosed. I spent many years obsessed with the idea of not being "abnormal" , at least not to the extent of being "autistic". Around the time that I was diagnosed I was very interested in physical anthropology and primatology. I read that the qualities that make us truly human and distinguish us from other primates are our language and our ability to empathize with other people. The fact that AS means impairment in these very qualities was very upsetting to me. I also was not a "textbook apsie" i.e. although I met most of the criteria, I exhibited symptoms in an unusual way. I have recently become obsessed with reading all that I can about AS and have accepted my own difference from other people. I think it is ironic that I spent many years of my life quite preoccupied with AS either negatively (in the past) or positively as an interest (recently and currently), since preoccupations are a feature of AS. Of course there were years in between where I was interested in other things that had nothing do with AS.....

I tend to be very "all or nothing" in the way I think about and view certain things (although not everything). other things that had nothing do with AS.....Anyways...the way you think reminds me of the way I thought about my diagnosis after I initially received it.

I do not know what the prevalence of pedophilia is, but the reason your family doesn't like him is because of his morals. He has no friends because no one wants to be known as his friend.

Look, have you ever met someone who really didn't like fat people? Like, really, really hated them? Trust me, get to weigh enough and you will. Practically everyone hates fat people. And yet being fat is normal. About two out of three people are fat.

Suppose someone had naturally blue hair. That would be abnormal-- that would be very abnormal-- but not bad. Undeniably, having naturally blue hair (as opposed to dyed) is less common than pedophilia. But people don't look at people and think "how unlikely is this person's particular collection of traits?" and come up with some atypicality score and decide to only like people who are normal. There is a bias toward disliking people who are abnormal in certain ways (due to a phenomenon known as the Uncanny Valley), but people don't specifically decide to dislike people who are abnormal. People also like people who are like them, but would immediately perceive hair color as superficial and conclude that the person was more like them "inside." They might then decide not to become or remain the blue-haired person's friend, but that would probably be for reasons unrelated to hair. But the blue-haired person would be MORE ABNORMAL than you, but liked more, because you are abnormal in specifically the ways most people use to determine whether or not they're dealing with a human.

You're female, and anyway, people acting on (as opposed to just having) pedophilic urges is probably less common. And even if it were the most common thing in the world, doing it wouldn't make you normal; you're an Aspie.

And anyway, you're failing to make the distinction I made in the linked experiments-- rape and murder and other bad things are normal in certain circumstances, but not others. Happening out of the blue on an average day in a peaceful neighborhood in a developed country would be very, very abnormal, NOT because they're inherently bad things (they are, but that's irrelevant) but because there's a time and a place for them and that's not it. (And they're equally bad in those times and places where they're normal.)

OK, let's forget this paedophile talk - here's a question what I've been wanting to ask for ages:-

My 17 year old cousin is NT, but is very, very clever. Does that make him normal?

Child abuse is not okay. The way pedophiles are found out as pedophiles is by committing it. Otherwise, no one knows. So anyone you know is a pedophile is bad, but that doesn't make pedophiles in general bad. All the pedophiles you know are pedophiles are child molesters, but there are pedophiles who aren't child molesters and you just don't know who they are.

Someone who is in a wheelchair and needs 24/7 care is indeed atypical. Are you trying to lump him in with pedophiles? I make no value judgment here. He's atypical because most people aren't in wheelchairs and don't need 24/7 care. If most people did, he'd be normal.

Similarly, if most people were pedophiles, it would be normal. It wouldn't make child abuse okay, but it would probably make it more common. It might make it normal, which still wouldn't make it okay. It is exactly as wrong here (where it's frowned on) as it is off in Afghanistan (where it happens all the time and is normal).