You too, can overcome AS!

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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!

I wouldn't assume that an AS diagnosis would limit you in public speaking. Temple Grandin would probably contest that...

I do very well as a business trainer (been promoted twice now in 3 months). I spend all day giving presentations, 1 on 1 training, conferfence calls, and I give a 30 minute lecture to around 200 people every month.

I find it easy, and it doesn't faze me a bit. In fact, I love it because it gets me in front of people to talk about the stuff that interests me. I find it easier than "normal" conversation because the topic is predefined. I know exactly what I'm supposed to say, and I just have to go say it. I don't rehearse, I just write some bullet points down on a card and go do it.

I have known that I have Autism for about a year and I think it is good that I found out after finishing school. If I new that I had AS at school it would have restricted me the expectations of teachers and my parents would have been different and my expectation on my self. School for me was bad and very hard. But one thing that I have learnt is that people with AS have to manage there condition and can do nearly anything that an NT can do when the condition is managed. I amaze my self sametimes in what i can do and amaze even the NT's around me that don't know I have AS. For me the effects of AS vary Day By Day one day I am reader to take on the world the next falling apart. I think school can help with AS it brings structure which is helpful. Being out of school and not being able to work I have a very hard time with limited structure and with the build up of stress from my school days and life and alot of this buildup is because of AS and limited help and understanding of it in area. I had to teach myself what it was to be an Aspie.

One Thing I have To Say Is Be Aware What Your Body Is Telling You And Stop If It Needs A Rest. I Have Found That If I Push To Hard
My AS gets A lot worse. Sprinting is for a short distance not for a long distance. I think this is less realivent with you being in school but as you leave school it I think will because more important

this is so totally stupid; it doesnt matter if you KNOW IT, you have had it all along anyway. i spoke in front of 200+ people last week, and i used to do that when i didnt know too.
the title of this topic is just soo disturbing, it sounds like its fresh out of a magazine article about converting gay/aspie people to conventional christianity or something...

Of course!

I just wanted to say that there are some people on here who not only flinch at the idea of a "cure" (without even knowing whata 'cure" would entail) but also at the idea that some kind of progress might be made away from the debilitating aspects of AS. I'm glad of your post, Alburt, and yes, I think that although ALL aspes cannot do these things, it's good to know that SOME can, and important to be reminded.

I find Public Speaking far easier and much less stressful then talking and interacting in a social group.

I have given a number of talks about Asperger’s, up to 200-300 people at one talk in 2002. I did not find it at all daunting, in fact public speaking is easier for me than trying to interact with a group of people in a social situation.

In Public Speaking there is only one way interaction and the situation is under my control, people enter my world.

I’m sure many people with AS are good a public speaking because they are taking control of a situation and it then becomes a monologue (which Aspies are famous for). I think this is what you have discovered.

That said, Public speaking is a great way of improving confidence. The next step is to take the confidence you have gained to a more challenging social situation where you need to devlope reciprocity, listening skills, asking questions, interest in others and understand emotions etc. Now that is the big challenge.

I agree with Emettmen - you are only disabled if you let them think you are. Therefore it's not AS you're overcoming, it's the negative and misguided messages you've gotten about AS.

People who are informed that AS is a bad thing will see this as an evaluation of their self-worth. It's just human nature. Most Aspies know intuitively that AS lies at the very core of who they are, and thy can deduce, perhaps unconcsciously, that if AS is a defect, then they must be defective. I disagree. I believe this negative perception of AS is a misguided understanding of what AS is and a failure to distinguish AS from other mitigating factors that pose specific challenges for us.

So naturally I also disagree with Serissa. I do not believe that AS alone is essentially or necessarily debilitating. I actually don't think that at the time of our birth we are doomed to be dysfunctional. I believe that for many, if not all, of us, we have had to be conditioned into dysfunction by other factors that conflict with our AS nature (and/or in other cases, by complications of comorbid conditions). So when we dealing with was what is percieved as the negative side of AS, we are more or less contending with the effects of other factors upon us as Aspies. This means, of course, we have our own challenges to face, but that doesn't mean that we are overcoming our AS when we overcome these problems.

In truth, while your accomplishments are good and you should be proud, I do not think these are limited to Aspies. Many NTs are intimidated by public speaking, teamwork or leadership roles and lack the acquired skills to do them. And I stress acquired skills - that means that, yes, we Aspies can acquired them too. They're not exclusive property to some lucky group of the population who were born with them inherently. So, yes, you've overcome something - your lack of these skills - and yes, not everyone has done that. So yes, you ought to be proud of yourself. But, no I would not consider this overcoming AS.

However, I feel you do justify my position in one way: I strongly feel that that not only AS is not a defect or debility, that AS gives us an unqie ability to tackle and resolve problems independantly. In other words, because we're Aspies, we have a slight edge when it comes to figuring ourselves out and resolving our own problems. We ought to be the envy of the whole human racec for that alone! Yet we often grow up with so many negative messages we learn to not recognize our own strengths and likewise fail to exercise thm. We are conditioned to base all our sense of worth on things like whether or not we can make eye-contact or small talk, how many friends we have, whether we like to socialize the way other people do, etc. That's unfair in so many ways. We're being critiqued with a NT scorecard that doesn't give points for the things we Aspies have to contribute and do well, like fairness, independant thinking, problem solving, appreciating the rules, seeing things from differing perspectives, thinking outside the box, objectivity, attention to detail and our own brand of Aspie passion and single-mindedness.

Aspies can might great speakers, team members and leaders. We have plenty to offer in these roles. We shouldn't let the fact that there are some things other people may be better at than us distract us for the truth that we have our own strengths and contributions. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses - we are misguided if we think they have more of the strengths and we have more of the weaknesses. It's simply not true. Also we shouldn't likewise assume that challenges we face that anyone else has to face, like a lack of maturity, experience or acquired skills, is part of our AS. Then we're being unreasonable and unfair to ourselves.

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!

public speaking and theatre are easy for me--everything is scripted. and i did all of this without knowing i was an aspie. thing is, i still knew i was somehow different from everyone else.

i'm glad you have a sense of accomplishment, but having a label doesn't change who you are inside. having a label helped me in that i understood why i am the way i am, but it didn't change me--i'm still the same person.
april

Just because you've managed to speak in front of hundreds of people does not make you better or superior than any other autistic.

Oh, and keep your "If I can do this, you can do it too!" rhetoric to yourself; you don't know jack s**t about what the entire demograph has to go through every day of their lives.