What do you mean when you say AS is part of who you are?

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Well, because IT IS part o who i am.
The way i see things, the way i listen and interpret things, the way i relate to others, the way i fix my problems, the way i think.
I can't think of any single part of my life that isn't at some level influenced by AS.

I was diagnosed (with Asperger’s) as an adult, at age 50.

I wouldn’t say that AS is part of who I am. Rather, I would say that I am who I am and who I have always been.

AS is simply a label which means that the struggles I have – in being who I am and how I think and how I process information and respond to stimuli and how I relate to others -- are not as unique as I thought. That others in this wacky world share these struggles. If others didn’t share these struggles, a label wouldn’t exist.

I guess it's comforting, to know I am not alone. But that does not define me. It just explains things.

Please note, my thoughts on this matter likely change, depending upon the day (and my mood). Also, there definitely are some positives to this state of being. But in this social world, the negatives probably outweigh the positives.

A label is a word used to describe something. You can call an apple a pear, but its still an apple.

It colours my pea-flavoured way of looking at the world. It also colours the way that I am towards people, being kind and gentle to them and living to the golden rule. It also colours my musical tastes because I had a lot of time to explore different genres of music during my high school years while my peers were partying and getting drunk. It also makes my interests more lively as if they're part of my personality.

I'm a married man. I've had quite a few relationships.

Before there was such thing as an "Asperger's" diagnosis, I've had more than one woman state that "something is missing" in me. My wife believes the same thing--that there's "something missing" in me. She stays with me, though (even though I, at times, think about divorce).

There are many diagnosed autistics who are married on this site. Many have kids, too.

I am, in some ways, pretty blatantly "Aspie."

I think many women go beyond "labels." They see the person underneath.

I don't think an autism diagnosis will preclude you, New-Yorker, from a satisfying, long-term relationship

Thanks, Androbot

Autism is part of me in the sense that its how my brain is wired, it impacts every aspect of my being, how I interpret the sensory information I take in, how I process info in my head, how I relate to others etc. However, if I could remove the autism in me I would. Sure it would mean adjusting to a different way of seeing things, processing things etc, however if it meant less sensory overload, less mental shutdowns preventing my normal functioning, less interpersonal issues, if it meant I could have a conversation with someone in a busy environment without having to watch their mouth to understand what they are saying, if it meant faces make sense to me, and I could read body language and social cues, and understand relationships on more than just an intellectual level, if it meant I could better handle deviations from routine or what I was expecting, etc, then yeah I'd ditch the ASD. So much energy goes into working around the ASD, working with the ASD, figuring out how to play my strengths to compensate for my weaknesses. I dont see how the benefits of ASD outweigh the disadvantages. So, I guess, in summary, its part of who I am in the sense that its how I'm wired, its the only way of being that I've ever known, however for me, that doesn't mean I wouldn't change that if I could.

I had an example of the way I process things just now. In my Sunday newspaper, there are puzzles, and one of them is a grid of nine letters which are scattered randomly, to solve the puzzle you have to figure out the nine letter word that they make. I looked at the grid and the letters spontaneously formed the word in a millisecond: hypocrisy. My subconscious mind instantly perceived the underlying sense in the pattern and reconfigured it into the word.

I've never known an NT who could do this; their brains just don't generally have that bias to subliminal recognition that works are high speed, in my experience. So AS is very much a part of who I am, because sensation and perception are very much part of how we function as human beings and individuals. I wouldn't change this for any sum of money.

The same functionality enabled me to solve maths problems at school with a speed that astonished the maths master, and he genuinely wanted to know how I could do it, which I could not explain as I did not know then why I had those abilities.

I wake up in the morning and even before I am fully conscious I am aware of patterns - the sound of the wind, which direction is it is coming from, which birds are singing, where they are... so for me ASD is very much a way of being, perceiving, living - even though I have been scoffed at here before for saying that for me, it is the way I live my life... not by conscious choice but because of innate wiring and neurology which affects sensation and perceptual ability.

The downside is that when/if I am very exhausted or ill or hyperstressed, I can't turn this huge input off, and those days are difficult, the overload can be so intense that I just want to retreat completely into a dark soundless place and sleep, I need peace at all costs. The older I get, the more acute these hypersensory abilities become, the pattern detection is good, the overload can be very challenging.

Learning and following the rules of society is not only possible for people with Asperger's it's also of paramount importance to gain anything from society at all.

The caveat here is that even though we learn and obey we are still rejected and still underachieving. Only the truly remarkable of us has taken that completely out of the equation to become super-autistics (Temple Grandin).

This goes beyond autism, however. This goes to basic personality, is autism really personality? I don't think so. I believe our beliefs about ourselves shape our personality in addition to environmental factors. There is a biological "make-up" if you will that does dictate our basic personality-- there was a good National Geographic magazine dedicated to personality. In summary, there are factors of a personality-- extro/introvert, etc. that are actually genetic. One can be an outgoing person with autism and one could be an introverted Aspie, etc. there are no rules only "tendencies".

Much of today's psychotherapy is aimed at enhancing strengths of personality and understanding how and why we do things/have habits and how to change those to become what we want to see in ourselves. It takes a tremendous amount of self-focus, understanding and WILLINGNESS to explore this that the vast majority of the population don't undertake this task, unless they have a "disorder" or something that interferes with their daily functioning.

To take a look at who you are and what makes you tick is just not on the typical person's radar of what to do. More like what the Kardashians did on the latest show --- endless distractions from the heart of the matter.

TLDR: I believe I am who I am because of the choices I've made given the circumstances I have been through. Having a form of autism gives me certain strengths and limits to which I have to be aware of however I also have the free will and choice to form myself however I choose for better or worse. I don't feel like an "Aspie" because I've only known myself and only have interacted with suspected fellow Aspies rather than real diagnosed ones (with one exception).