HOW Does Asperger's Actually Explain Anything?

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I agree.

Personally, I don't think the logical side of an explanation should be considered, as there is no motivation to claim a label is an explanation for logical reasons. My observation is in accordance with this, hence why I elaborated on my view of an explanation in the emotional/social sense (the sense in which it is most commonly used).

I'm not pursuing a diagnosis for explanation. I don't think I'm quite as high functioning as people in this thread, who managed to get that far. I'm getting it because I need help, and help specific to people with autism. I've been fine up to this point because I have not changed house and only 4 schools.Only been to 4 in my life. 1 parent and baby group (0-2.5), 1 preschool (2.5-4), 1 primary school (4-11), one secondary school and sixth form combined (11-16 and 16-18). Everyone around me is the same and there isn't change. Now all of a sudden I'm 18 soon. Turns out I have anxiety and my whole brain shuts down when I think of what happens next. I have not dealt with change before. At the moment I won't be able to sit A-levels. I am smart but I won't be going to university and at the moment I can't work. So I guess the diagnosis is an explanation for what help I will need and why this is happening. The person I saw who I'm not sure what they were said they can't understand why this hasn't been brought up sooner, why nobody has flagged it up.

It's more of a reasoning than an explanation. If you give an explanation people will ask "why?" and this gives a reason as to why. It helps them understand you're just different in how you are.

Personally I find it more freeing to attribute most of my problems to myself and my actions and choices than autism. I feel that I don't have to be perfect and I can fail sometimes all my own fault. Of course I take credit for my successes too, those were mostly based on my actions and choices instead of uncontrollable factors of my autistic brain or luck.

That is generally how I prefer to live too. Back when I used to blame everything on my situation rather than focus on improving that situation I was a lot less successful than I am now - which to be fair, hasn't been a huge leap as of yet, but I've improved my quality of life greatly. Work in progress!

Also, I discovered how ugly it looks to blame all your problems on something seemingly uncontrollable. Nobody would want to hire somebody like that, or be friends with somebody like that, and realizing that you're like that feels like s**t. This differs from the occasional rant/vent of course, as everybody burns out eventually, but actively giving up on improving is not a path I ever want to follow again.

I apologize that this has slightly drifted off course. Just to clarify, I don't think that the idea of a diagnosis being an explanation is a bad thing in itself (quite the opposite, actually). None of what I has said above really reflects my point of view of the original topic.

Blaming most things that go wrong on factors other than oneself seems like a self inflicted prison of constant justifications. Accepting responsibility feels so much better to me, I get over negatives faster and easier when I do this than the other. There's less fear and more peace.

A bit of offtopic:
Is there a specific reason for to you say "eggsplanation" instead of "explanation"? Because it bothers me. Every time I see it a bunch of egg related pictures pops up in my mind(visual thinker) and I cannot focus on the actual meaning. LOL

How do you take responsibility for bad things that you repeat over and over when you try not to and not feel shame?

I suppose you may as well be that way, since blaming autism rarely washes with most people.

Consciously I have an unusual attitude towards blame and credit. To me, all successes and failures are the result of interactions between me, other people and the rest of the universe. Compliments and reproaches don't really impinge on me much, though the latter can make me resentful. So much of it is spurious anyway, what with schmooze and judgementalism being so popular. I always refuse to take blame, if there's the slightest whiff of disrespect or guilt-tripping about it, though I'm always interested in looking at my part in an interpersonal problem and working something out with the plaintiff, as long as they approach me in an "I'm OK, you're OK" kind of way, and I'm not averse to apologising when it's respectfully brought to my attention that something I did has hurt somebody. It's not as if I were a particularly harmful person, or a particularly noble one, so I don't see the need for the emotional intensity of praise or rebuke, and I usually take the latter to be inappropriate aggression.

So if my Aspie traits are implicated in a situation that bother somebody, I wouldn't normally pass the buck onto my traits, because in my mind there's no buck to pass. The situation is what it is. If they genuinely wanted to know why it happened, I'd probably offer an explanation in terms of autism. If they were trying to appeal to me to change, I might well explain that the traits are somewhat fixed and that an indirect method was the only thing for it. Of course if I didn't expect to be believed, I wouldn't waste my breath.

Ironically I do have some emotional baggage (or possibly just humanity) that interferes with my conscious idea of these things. I'm haunted by questions about myself such as "am I good enough?" and I have so much guilt that I'm probably doomed to spend the rest of my life trying to mitigate the harm I wrongly feel I might otherwise do to others, instead of forgiving myself and focussing on how much happiness I could spread. And somewhere in there I also have a bit of egomania that tries to tell me I'm better than most people. It's like a madness that never takes me over but nags me, a crazy idea that I must be a hero or a villain. Absolute rubbish of course, but it's there. It's weird being a person.

It's ok to feel shame, but you can still try to make a small improvement in that area, even a small one can reduce bad feelings about yourself, esp if you make progress and compare now vs some previous time. But if the point of not taking responsibility is to avoid a certain feeling, then that is worse than feeling the feeling.

Next time I feel shame to the point of suicide tell me again it's ok to feel shame. I might commit murder then instead.

How hard everything has become for me has only gotten worse over time, not better. I cannot imagine my state of being one moment to another, I only have the knowledge that I fed myself 'I felt happy then' or 'I felt shame then', not 'I can imagine that point in time and experience that emotion'. I have no basis upon which for there to be improvement.

I'm sorry I asked, I do not think our situations are similar.

I'm not sure how to address the opening post, except from the position of what happens when you don't have the awareness of the condition to explain anything.

For me, its a self acceptance piece, the missing understanding of why I could not approach a challenge like those around me could makes sense now. I have tried my best but failed in situations because my approach was flawed, I have hard fought achievements too, and I am proud of them, many inventive 'work arounds' were required.

The reason that I struggled in certain situations makes sense now. E.g. 'no I am not typical, the educational methods used on me were not suitable, if xyz teaching method was used instead, I would not have struggled to the extent I did, my educational experience would not have been as negative from the first day in the system'. The environment I was in and created for myself was not suited to my needs, because I did not know that these needs were real, and that I could not use will power to change them. If I had this information from the start my energies would have been spent in progressive ways.

Its akin to starting an action research project with an inherent flaw in the aim, some vital information is missing from the beginning, the project veers off in an unproductive direction, and while its not a total misuse of time and energy, there are flaws in every section of the project.
The project has to start from the beginning with the adjusted aim, this time, it moves in a productive direction, new higher level questions arise during the course of the research, and are included into the recommendations for the next action research project. And repeat etc.

Adamantium - Thank you for posting this. I was struggling with writing a suitable response to starkid’s excellent question.

Also, as someone who thinks in patterns, I found it incredibly fascinating that:
a) Almost all of my behavior seems to follow a pattern that is consistent with Asperger’s.
b) This seemingly disjoint constellation of symptoms is shared by others. It is comforting that I am not the only one.

You don't need to imagine that point in time and have some emotion, you just need to know that you made some improvement, even small, in your situation from one time to another.

I'm sure that my situation is not like yours, but that doesn't mean I don't understand hardships and bad situations, since I have been in those before during different periods of my life.

You bringing up suicide and even murder at my answer to your question indicates that your current thinking is really messed up, and I don't know if you can get appropriate therapy for it, but I think you need it.

I do a lot of things that NTs can't. I can clear a yard filled with dandelions, for instance, by just pulling them out until they are all gone. In electronics, I can accurately peak circuits with a digital readout--lots of NTs can't do that either.

Armed with that knowledge and a years of practice, nowadays I can usually answer "HOW WOULD YOU DO THAT?" and continue on with a somewhat normal conversation. Or not--but now I have more of a choice in the matter.