You too, can overcome AS!

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Danlo, I suggest that you see someone professional in regards your imaginary perspective of me because this post of yours is absolutely hilarious to read. I love it.

What the hell are you going on about? Acting as if you know me so well despite the fact that you are using your own personal inferences to justify your hostility towards me?

But you can't help it, can you? You use these personal arguments to discredit and put off a person's viewpoints, thinking that your efforts would allow your opponent to "see the light" in some way. Please. You don't even understand why I even made that small rant in the first place (even though I admit that I could be a bit more appropriate ).

What I was against was not his personal accomplishments (fair play), but his remark in saying that "you can overcome AS!" as if it was some sort of behavioural disorder to correct when it isn't. Autism has nothing to do with a set of specific behaviours which needs correcting.

Lmao. It's nothing compared to your humorous attempts to disregard what I have said regarding your issues with superiority. Just look at your attempts to validate your view of your own superiority over myself. I have freely admitted my fault, my inability to allow a personal remark pass without retort. You cannot even acknowledge your own faults. Indeed, you latch upon an acknowledgement of fault to further validate your ideas of self-superiority. Allowing you to achieve this minor 'victory', is like giving you more rope to hang yourself: you proved my point.

Additionally, you are utterly wrong regarding the intent of his remark. It wasn't treating Aspergers like a behavioural disorder, but a social and anxiety disorder. Which, by and large, is a major component of the trouble AS people face. And face it, though you dislike to think of it, treating it as a behavioural problem achieves results. This is the whole basis behind ABA; and it does often work.

Since i know about my AS i realized that all those little things poeple do while in public ARE important for your image and how other sees you. In the past i had spotted certains of thier bizar behaviour (like not respecting the rules, avoid certain subject in public, acting differently with different poeple, not always telling the truth etc...). Since my diag. i decided to act like them, for a while, just to see.

Guess what ? It works !

There is one thing i discovered though, it is really demanding. After a 30 min session of simulating NT's behaviour while i'm with them, i'm completly exhausted. I have to take a break.... moreover, after a night of socialising that way, i'm completly dead for a couple of days....

I think that my comprehension of the phenomena gave me the tools to "do a good job" at simulating NT. I didn't "overcome" my own personality, i just started to "advertise" an NT personality. I stop having that speech: "Why are they like that? Why are they doing XYZ ?" and i just started to do it myself.

Here's my recepy: Talk aloud, give eye contact, control my body to have an open attitude, smile, exagerate facial expressions, tell jokes (a lot), never start something with "well for me it's different......" or "No! i don't do it like that....", in doubt say nothing (silence is far better than saying stupidities), don't ever go in personnal subject and avoid "adult" conversations, you never know if they want to talk about a "tabou" subject or just trying to have you talk about it so when someone brings up this kind of subject with you just try to "get out of there" (humour helps a lot for that, at the risk of beeing seen as "the never serious guy/girl", this is better than going head first in that subject (it must be ok because a NT brought it) and not realizing that everybody is in fact disaprooving.....)

Try it, it works ! It's difficult though.

My biggest surprise is that they starts to support me, like they are all supporting one other. If the conversation slips on a bad subject and they give me the eye contact saying "what you think ?", after a 1/2 second of silence someone else takes the lead and kind of "protects" me by shifting the subject. Yes, they rescue me if i'm in trouble, before they would just look at me sinking to the bottom while trying to "repair" and getting more in trouble and they would adds a little things (words or just glances) so they all have a good laugh (you know what i mean ).

I saw that kind of rescue happen very often in groups, but it was never done to me before..... This makes me realized that everybody (AS and NT) will slips on bad terrain from time to time. What happens next is left to how the group react: if your "in" they will help you, if not well..... you know!

All that to say one thing: you will never get rid of AS but you can use the knowledge to start to "advertise" a new image, the image they want to see, keep your differences for you!

I found out recently that I had AS, and this was towards the beginning of my high school senior year. But when I looked back, I did so many things that I could've not done had I known I had AS.

First, I joined my school's forensics/speech and debate team. I know a lot of you people with AS have trouble speaking in front of people, but when you try and try again, it will work for you. Honestly. I have never won a tournament, nor have I ever gotten a huge award, but when you do something like I did--wow, you can see the results.

Second, I did journalism. Journalism requires talking and working with other people, something I didn't know existed as a problem for those with AS. I became an editor of a page too.

And finally, as a last thing--I became a leader at my school on my speech team. I know for many of you with AS, this is hard too--but like I said--if you give it a shot, it will work. I'm chair of an event as well as art commissioner. I have to deal with a lot of people--people who don't even know I have AS!

This June, as I look back on my accomplishments, there are so many things out there I haven't done. However, there are a ton of things I have done. You too, if you can believe, can overcome AS!