why do people say i suffer from asperger's syndrome

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You mean, a lot of your challenges, not our challenges.

I don't have to accommodate any special needs that "NTs" inflict upon me. They're the ones who accommodate me most of the time.

Speak for yourself, not for others.

I'm impaired when on my own, so I guess I suffer from it in a way.

Sensory processing disorder is stressing and painful, it doesn't matter to my brain if people are nearby when it's overloaded by the body. And the bad thing is, I can't escape, I'm constantly bothered. Changes of routines are mad, I wish the planet and everything including me on it wouldn't change all the time, all people except me could all vanish and everything would still change.

They say ADHD is good to manage if you can do the right career even such as cool sports. I have an ADHD that prevents me from doing that because I can't even concentrate on sports. There's no way out of it, it impairs me whatever I do.

There's so much giving me a tough time or stopping me for now from doing what I want that is because my brain's a certain way that doesn't agree with what I want to do.

As for normal people, it's a little weird.

In a current issue, normal people are the most helpful to me, trying to help me by adjusting to me the same way I have adjusted to them in other and the same aspects. I can't believe just telling you have autism is leading to such amazing reactions from others. I've always been bullied for autism by using my autism against me in school and back then people didn't know about autism which was why they bullied me. Everyone I told about my autism so far was utmost helpful, trying to accept my autism or help me. It's kind of funny, just telling someone you're not just a crazy freak of nature but a normal autistic person can totally change how you are treated.

But then, obviously I'm not telling people who won't even respect other normal people whom I meet at work. I don't expect them to understand me when they can't accept anybody who's different from themselves.

I just don't like the association suffer = everything about it is bad and you suffer all the time. Doesn't every person consist of more than one dimension? I know I at least do, so I is always more than just 'suffering' or 'happy' because there are many things to be thought and felt at the same time.

I remember a lengthy argument with a former support worker about 2 1/2 years ago, a few months after being diagnosed. She wanted to write in my care plant hat I suffer from an ASD. I corrected her and told her towrite that I had an ASD instead of saying "suffer". She engaged in a lengthy debate about why I must suffer, that ASD is why I'm so often overloaded, why I need support I wouldn't otherwise need, that ASD caused my meltdowns, ... I wrote a lengthy E-mail for her, with lots of comparisons with my other disability (blindness), explaining that needing support isn't bad in itself, that one bad feature (overload, compare my blindness-related light sensitivity) doesn't mean the whole thing is bad, etc. She eventually just corrected the care plan to be done with it.

Yes. I really enjoy becoming fascinated with things. I enjoy my obsessions. I enjoy my areas of genius. They are, evidently, AS things.

And now that my anxiety and depression are under control with meds, my areas of total idiocy (also supposedly AS things) are less distressing to me. So it's cool.

Yes, but can't "normal" people also become fascinated with things to great depths and enjoy them the same? The answer is yes they can, and I bet the "normal" people who're fascinated with a specific field go on to excel at it far more on average than the person with AS (I'm betting the majority of mathematicians don't have AS for example).

Now, these "normal" people won't have the negatives (otherwise they would have the disorder then).

I don't know if they can. As far as I can tell they don't. They do not become fascinated with things and persevere to the degree that I do, and they do not take the same degree of pleasure in it -- I am entranced for hours, they consider it 'work' and want to get it done and go do whatever it is they do. This in spite of the fact that they love the field and excel at it. I seem to excel more easily, but I can't be sure if they really find it more difficult or are just more apt to complain.

Certainly many of my AS traits do make me suffer, and without meds this suffering was nigh intolerable, but with that under control I feel like it's really quite a pleasing advantage.

If this messes with your ontology you've certainly got the option to deem me 'not autistic enough to count' and I'll try not to make remarks about the True Scotsman.

How you can be sure they don't enjoy it as much as you enjoy your interests? It's impossible to determine without asking them (even then, it's impossible to tell how each person experiences emotions)--you can say that since it's not all they think about and do one will come to the conclusion that you'd enjoy it more if that's all you thought about and did, but as far as enjoyment goes, obsession doesn't equate to the level of pleasure.

One way to look at it is objectively, and like Cohen pointed out on some show I was watching, only 1 person with AS was in an international mathematics competition (I think there was around 50 participants). He came second (close to second anyway; it wasn't first), second to a person who doesn't have AS (mathematics is his obsession).

I agree with you. NTs are the ones telling us that we have to wear our hair a certain way, or like a certain type of music to be their friends. They're also the ones who think that everybody should do things the ways of mainstream society. That's what I call NTs special needs.

You're right - we can! Fortunately. Because interests bordering on obsession is one of the most fun and satisfying things for any person to experience, NTs and aspies alike. We're not all that different. My own specialized interest have included collecting rocks, astronomy, the space programme, skeletons, reading dictionaries, collecting dictionaries. My girlfriend enjoys trams, trains, old buses, transport in general. And we're both NTs. But I realize that most people when I socialise with them wouldn't be interested in listening to me takling in detail about my latest dictionaries, so we talk a little bit (a couple of minutes) about it and then we talk about something else.

I find it really annoying when someone says I "suffer" from AS. I don't suffer from Asperger's, I suffer from other people.

One of the contestants on "The X Factor" (British version of American Idol) has Aperger's and every newspaper article, etc mentioning him begins with "Asperger's sufferer..."

On the one hand, I guess we have to realize that the term "suffering from" not only means "feeling pain from something", but also is a technical term for having an illness or a disorder or a neurological condition if you like.

Thus people can say that a person suffers from diabetes, though he might not feel pain / disadvantage all the time.

On the other hand, I don't like the term "suffering from Asperger's" and never use it about myself, but rather say that I "have" it. It sounds less victim-like.
But I do have some difficulties that may make me "suffer" in one or another way, eg. sensory overload, executive dysfunction, problems with understanding certain people, the bullying in my childhood etc.
But my AS is not mere difficulties. Therefore I can't say that the condition as a whole is a suffering. I could as well say that I benefit from AS instead of suffering from it. But it's not all benefits either.
But it wouldn't really make sense to say that I "suffer from" more than average memory, being able to focus intensely, having perfect pitch (maybe), or my ability to read at 4½.

It all reminds me of Pippi Longstocking, who saw a sign in a shop window: "Do you suffer from freckles?" She enters the shop and answers: "No!"
Shoplady: "What do you mean?"
Pippi: "No, I don't suffer from freckles!"
Shoplady: "But dear child, your whole face is full of freckles!"
Pippi: "Yes, but I don't suffer from them. I like them!"
(Paraphrased out of the memory).

Pippi might have been an aspie too...

"Normal" people can excell at Mathematics or just about anything else and you see them with huge smiles talking to people and joking around with them. They can cope with change with relative ease, do not feel or appear awkward in certain situtations and leave a good impression on others, not a "she knows a lot about Math but there's something weird about her. I can't put my finger on it" impression.
Intelligence, in itself, is not a disorder.
Intelligence can be part of an overall "personality type", with someone using it as an adaptive mechanism to make it thru life, just like someone else might use being overly helpful and appearing to be particularly concerned. That's an example of another personality type.

I suffer from AS.

As I progress through life, life seems to have various expectations from me. I can't seem to live up to all of these expectations. Sometimes this has minimal impact on me, but other times it creates a situation that is greatly disadvantageous to me. There are stages in life where AS had minimal impact, such as when I was still living at home under the security of my parents. Then there are times in life where you are expected to be able to hold a job, pay bills and provide for yourself. This is when I suffer the most from AS and become my own worst enemy. I always feel like I take one step forward and two steps back. My real life knowledge outside of my special interests was minimal or non-existent. There are many things that one is expected to know that I didn't, such as cooking or car maintainence. The suffering seems to vary depending on the expections society has for me to be able to interact with it to create my existence within it.

Perhaps the negative connotations of the word suffer are hurtful, but I can vouch that it is accurate at times. I can pinpoint specific times in my life where had I not had AS my quality of life would have been much better. It took me a long time to accept this. I am not NT, this causes me difficulties and the difficulties have caused me pain.

Indeed. All qualiative experience is essentially private. I cannot know that they do not enjoy things as much as I do. And you cannot know that they suffer less and enjoy more than I do. Though you said as much, and if I remember correctly, even called it fact.

Asking them offers little in the way of confirmable accuracy. Nevertheless, I think, because of what people say, that most people are incapable of enjoying a range of things that I enjoy, and that they do not enjoy their favourite things as intensely as I often do.

Overall, they still might be better off, since I'm anxious and I'm often frustrated by the unpleasant results of my poor ability to communicate, and I certainly do suffer from quite a number of things. Then again, NTs seem to suffer quite terribly from social pressures that I am oblivious to, and they get bored and lonely and suffer from that, too.



That doesn't seem relevant. In my little areas of genius, I perform spectacularly well while I think I am just messing around having fun, and might easily come in third in some contest, outdone by somebody who worked very hard at it and was responding, not to a drive for 'fun' but to a (self-imposed or otherwise) pressure to succeed that I don't feel. Happens all the time, really. I'd suppose, from how the others describe their experience, that I am having more fun. But really, it's not possible to know.

I've been seeing those two letters now, and I don't know what they mean. What is an NT? Does it mean Normal Turd person?

Close, but no cigar. Neurotypical, someone who doesn't have an ASD.

But still, I may start calling 'em Normal Turds now