Aspergers is like a bad dream, but you dont wake up

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any one else feel the same way?

I did, for a while, until I learnt to accept it.

No.

I have lots of good bits, in my dream

What sort of bad dream are we talking about here? A scary one? A boring one? An embarrassing one? Please, enlighten me.

I don't think so. If anything, I suspect being autistic had made me unaware or uncaring of a lot of things that, had I perceived or cared about them, may have caused me to see my life as horrible.

I'm not saying I'm oblivious to everything around me, but I don't find my existence nightmarish and I don't particularly value a lot of things people seem to find fairly important.

If anything the fact that I am in pain all the time is far more frustrating than autism's ever been, and I didn't really acknowledge that much either, not until recently.

Last edited by Verdandi on 02 Jun 2011, 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think I know what you mean. You wish you could just wake up and not have all these burdens, like difficulty socializing or the inability to tolerate loud noises or crowded spaces. But to be honest I can't say I've felt that way myself, not specifically anyway, though it would be nice to suddenly be able to function better.

If you could "wake up" and be NT, your life would still be difficult. What, you think NTs have perfect lives? Think again. You'd just trade this set of problems for another one. life isn't supposed to be easy. And you know what else? You wouldn't be yourself. You'd be gone and somebody else would be living in your body.

So yeah, stop angsting and start living your life.

Awake isn't perfect, but it's not a nightmare.

Being NT isn't perfect, but in a lot of ways, it's less painful than having autism.

And not everyone has the same impairments, and not to the same degree. I've heard people on here say the same thing. Walk a mile in their shoes, then say it's not like a waking nightmare. I've had parts of my life where I felt like it was a bad dream, and didn't know when I would wake up, and the struggle was directly related to my spectrum traits.

I don't feel that way. I feel that it's a pleasant dream that I don't want to wake up from.

Agreed. Life has its pains no matter who you are, but the average NT definitely has it less painful than most autistics, since the average NT has this one advantage most autistics don't: The ability to integrate into society and reap its rewards.

Yes. But remember this isn't unique to autism. Every other minority that doesn't quite fit goes through the exact same thing. Racial minorities, GLBT people, immigrants, even religious and cultural minorities. Disabled people in general have exactly this experience. That's one of the reasons why I think it's important to get into the larger disability-rights movement instead of just sticking with other autistic. Sure, there are issues that apply only or mostly to autism, but the biggest issues we are all facing has nothing to do with our impairments and everything to do with the degree to which we're allowed to make a place for ourselves in our society.

There are more disabilities and more ways to be marginalized than being autistic - and Callista said this in more detail.

And I agree with Callista about the larger disability rights movement.

Hm... hmmm.... no.

The black high school athlete has the same difficulties as the autistic kid who flinches at fluorescent lights? The beautiful hispanic girl who has a close knit group of friends and sometimes suffers racial stereotypes can relate to the aspergers girl who nobody wants to sit by? The gay dancer who can make everybody laugh and has excellent motor skills is on the same playing field as the awkward autistic guy who can't even manage to brush his own teeth? The Atheist who is otherwise clever and snarky loses a few friends when he admits to being Atheist, and he's really as bad off as the autistic fellow who struggles like Hell to hold a conversation for a minute? You can't quantify others' experiences, but being a biracial man in Arizona, I'll tell you what, my spectrum traits have caused me a LOT more frustration than my skin color. By a LONG SHOT.



I agree.

Asperger's is a difficult hand you've been dealt, but it doesn't mean you'll lose the game.

And I've met a lot of people whose non-ASD minority status has caused them a lot more frustration than my ASD has ever caused me. You ever talked to a black girl trying to make her way as a pre-med student and having everybody assume she must be into basketball and boys because of her skin color? I know a gay dude who got bullied so badly he got PTSD and ended up ridiculously shy for no good reason despite his naturally outgoing personality. Oh, and you know who loses friends around here for their religious beliefs? It's not the atheists. Around here, the engineering department makes fun of the Christians because we're "irrational" and believe in fairy tales. I've had to endure quite a few stupid Flying Spaghetti Monster comments.

It's always going to be worse for some minorities than others. But remember, disability rights is a lot newer than racial or sexual-orientation minority movements. We've been working on the "black people have rights" thing for a hundred and fifty years and more. GLBT people have been fighting for about half a century. Disabled people are the serious newcomers--and people with mental and neurological disabilities are even more newcomers, because the first disabled people to stand up for themselves had physical disabilities.

So if you want to compare your status to someone in a different minority, don't compare yourself to a black person now; compare yourself to a black person in, say, 1930s America; or to a gay person in 1960s America, or to a wheelchair user in the 1980s. Or to a 500-pound person today. Yeah, that's right. Fat people are just barely starting their own civil rights movement. Just like autistics.

Bottom line: There's nothing about autism in particular or disability in general that makes life worse. It's that the world isn't arranged in such a way that we can find our own places in it. Are there bad things about being disabled? Yes. But there are bad things about LIFE. I'm really pretty tired of people going, "If only I weren't autistic, everything would be perfect..." No. No, it wouldn't.