Embracing your aspie identity = comfort?

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You can be proud of those things anyway. Pride doesn't depend on others accepting you, but you accepting yourself. Furthermore, you can hang out with Aspies without having to declare yourself disabled. Saying 'I am disabled' is not a pass which you need to obtain to hang out with Aspies.



Being disorganised can be part of Aspergers. It is for me. It's called 'executive dysfunction'. It doesn't mean you are doomed to fail though. Personally, I've found it helpful to research about Aspergers and how it affects the brain and try to find strategies to help myself.



Absolutely. And also it helps to realise that these failures are probably due to a mix of things, and that you can form strategies to help overcome them if you wish. If customers complain you are rude, you can learn some simple techniques to reduce your appearance of rudeness. You can learn (by your intellect, since you don't have the instinct) what sort of things NT people find rude and what sort of thing they like, and you can adapt. Having Aspergers doesn't mean you are inevitably rude and can't control it. However, you may decide that you don't want to make the effort needed to learn these techniques and concentrate on using them, so you may instead consider doing a job which doesn't involve working with customers. But, if getting a girlfriend and friends are high priorities of yours, then maybe learning a few social politeness techniques would help regarding this. Or you could decide you only want to hang out with other Aspies, and no NT people. Finding techniques also involves deciding whether it's worth it for you to use them. I have plenty of techniques, but I do not always use them all. Only when I consider it to be worth the effort.

I don't really think of my AS as a disability.

Although I have been formally diagnosed, I sought out the AS diagnosis because I wanted to correct a previous misdiagnosis, because I wanted to be able to be honest and open about who and what I am.

I don't really subscribe to the medical model of disability relating to AS, I subscribe more to the social model of disability (you could Google those terms for more information about disability politics and the different models). Basically though, disability is less about the individual person, but more about the way society treats individuals, a person isn't necessarily intrinsically disabled, it is society that dis-ables people, prevents them from working or having relationships, by failing to include people and make accommodations.

In terms of getting a 'good' job, the job at the moment I have is fairly good, it's okay, I earn about US$ 50,000 per annum (tax free because I'm an expat living in the Middle East), my employer provides me with free accommodation with free utilities (apart from phone/internet). The only problem is that in order to progress, it would usually at some point require a move into management, and I know I don't have the people skills to manage people. So it does hampe r my progress in that way, but there is another career path I could take that wouldn't necessarily involve managing a department (although it still requires working with other people).

I'll admit it's hard though, because I have had other jobs in the past where it would have been difficult to progress given my limitations. I think it's a matter though of assessing your strengths and trying to play those up and trying to make the most of opportunities that enable you work to your strengths.

But it's also not just about us, how we are, and we're not able to do this or that, it's also about wider society, and how they're currently not able to communicate with us or accommodate us on our terms. So in many ways, NTs are disabled in comparison to us, we have abilities that they don't. I know that in a lot of circumstances my logical thinking means that I'm able to anticipate needs much better than some of my NT colleagues, I join up the dots more quickly and easily and solve problems, sometimes before they've become a problem.

'disabled'. That's funny. You've got a good sense of humor.

Come to think of it, that is a pretty horrible word, when applied to people. I have things I'm not as good at as others, and I've no problem calling those things disabilities. A non-autistic example: without glasses, everything I see is blurry unless it's like 4 inches from my eyes. A disability, yeah, that fits. Am I disabled by it? No. And even though there are specific things that that makes me unable to do, it would be silly to call myself disabled. Same thing with AS traits. Disability doesn't necessary equate to disabled.

I can only say that since I've worked with people who are indeed disabled without arms or legs and so far I've never met a single person who considered themselves disabled in any way.