Autism can be a pain - Let's talk about the upside to it!

Post Reply New Topic

Sometimes we always lament on the downsides of having autism and it can get us down! So let's focus on the positive side of it - what skills have you realised no one else has, but you do because you're on the spectrum?


Personally, it's my ability to write English essays with great ease, to the extent where it seems effortless and I am still able achieve full marks without even reading the book we are doing the essay on. I guess it is compensation for my inability to effectively communicate through verbal means, instead my communication with the world is restricted to written word.

Because of my autism I am able to successfully express my thoughts and feelings through writing!

What about you guys?

I second that! I also see things from a different perspective which gives me an advantage in different areas.

My systematic reductionist approach to things allows me to solve almost any "problem" that comes up aside from social ones.
Instead of having to get specialized training, I most often train myself.

I think we're much more of individuals than normal people generally and don't make so much of an effort to fit in to the norm of the conventional personality type of happy fun loving extrovert who loves sports and partying etc.

Being essentially 'other' means that Aspiens are able to see a whole range of things from an often radically different and objective viewpoint, and have an innate understanding of people and ideas that NTs find strange and incomprehensible.

The secret is in being able to find a way of using this ability in life.

I suppose my sensory hyper sensitivity has an upside when I hear every little bird singing, and not just every car and truck passing.

I agree.
Too bad that current society is designed to keep us effectively neutralized.

One great thing about my ASD is my ability to notice small details, especially small changes in patterns that others often overlook. (why is that guy suddenly wearing a blue hat? His hat is always green.) This has lead to greater knowledge of certain situations, and to an easier/faster resolution to problems in a few instances.

Also, I read everything. Absolutely everything. I read all the fine print, all the asterisks, on billboards, signs, television ads, the outsides of boxes, everything. So when other people might be fooled by a misleading commercial or advertisement, I know the catch to it because I read the fine print.

I notice details too, jimmyboy I also notice patterns in things. My greatest strength in math is pattern recognition. It also seems to give me extra leverage in music and poetry. I'm notorious for getting too focused on trivial things, but I see it as a nice tool. It's helped in my compulsively researching synonyms and word rhymes, and fitting together sentences in a musical structure.
I can also do photo-realistic paintings and drawings, and take photographs of the details in everyday objects in such a way that people don't recognize what the pattern in the photo belongs to.

At my work is sometimes notice certain details related to problems before others notice it allowing me to do something about it if I know what to do about it.

It seems to me from the diverse perspectives of autistic people here and out in the world that we're more easily able to be free-thinkers. I suppose if you think about it, much if not most of people's opinions are based on social morays and norms, social conditioning and "group mind" hierarchical thinking models, as well as apparently being extremely self-referential. Autistic people's minds are more likely to be free from these restraints, allowing us more freedom of thought. Not to say NT people can't be free-thinking individuals because of course they can, but the propensity for subversive or alternate thinking in ASD folk seems comparatively high.

I agree. I think we are far less likely to host the more common schemas in our subconscious.
- less contaminated by shared misconceptions.

I catch on to patterns or deviations of patterns. I also have an unusual ability for details. Finding the catch or flaw in some sort of marketing scheme or business document is something I do frequently but NT people around me totally miss. I find flaws in research papers all the time where someone else might have missed.

I have become good at catching people lying because I remember so much detail. I might remember something they said in passing ten years ago that shows what they said now to be a lie or a dishonest statement. There have been many situations where I told others someone was being dishonest, they ignore me, the thing comes to pass and I tell them I told them so. It isn't that I get people, it is that I notice the details or problems with the pattern.

I am an autodidact, I have taught myself many complex things that usually require extensive training.

Of course the irony is that teaching yourself something doesn't fit the rigid process of applying for most jobs. They want a resume that fits a very tight set of options. All education must come from an approved institution or it doesn't exist.

No, it just mean there is diversity of perspectives, which not necessary imply that we who are on the autism spectrum are more able to be free-thinkers.



I wonder how much this is the case. Our difficulties with social interaction might provide us with a partial defence against these things, but reading trough the posts in PPR should make one doubt the statement that we are completely free from these so-labelled restraints.



Lets keep it to politics. Based on your statement one could formulate the hypothesis that we ASD people are less likely to support centre politics, and more likely to be more to either the right or left of the political centre (to use the two-dimensional model).

Now I could not find relevant studies trough a quick search with google scholar. And testing this hypothesis by reading the posts in PPR and the politics sections of other Autistic forums has as a problem that the results might be distorted by the tendency of those more fanatic about certain subjects to be more likely to post about it, then the more moderate/apathetic ones.