what does aspergers mean to you?

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how has is affected your life?
has it limited you in any way?
describe aspergers and what it means to you

Struggle, mostly. It always feels like I'm trying harder to accomplish less.

I'm still trying to figure out what it means to me.
It's somewhat of an explanation as to why somethings have been a struggle for me.
I didn't know about aspergers until I was 35. Most of my life I have had a very hard time with social situations, and have gone thorough a lot of emotional pain in that area, not really knowing why I didn't fit in. AS has explained a bit to me about why that was the case.

I still really don't know what to do with my diagnosis.
I have this label that provides some information about myself, that's all.
It's not like it's going to get any easier for me.
Many days, for myself at least, I find it to be a useless label.
I'm not interested in going to any kind of counseling, or seeing a therapist. And medications are completely out of the question.
I really don't know what to do with this "aspergers" business.
Maybe I should just forget about it and move on.

For me, a part of myself, around for longer than me. Something that makes my perspective, abilities, and lots of other stuff different to what it would be like otherwise, therefore making me completely different (psychologically) from a hypothetical NT version of me. Neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, but something that seems to accompany some advantages and disadvantages. I've been up since 3AM, and awake since 1:30AM

These are some BIG questions. But in a nutshell (and please tell me if I have a misconception).

AS has explained to me what I have been going through my whole life. Why I have always felt "different". Why I was ostracized for so long in my life by people. Why I felt so numb as a kid and still do occasionally. It has enlightened my children to why we have had a different (not dysfunctional) life than the "normal" family. It has helped me feel like I belong to a community here at WP for the first time in my life. Finding out I have AS has finally helped me to accept who I am and enjoy who I am because I don't find it a handicap but different in some really awesome ways.

Limited? It has actually freed me. To be the person I really am. To understand why I am. To understand why I do things the way I do and to be able to explain it to those who want to understand me.

To describe aspergers should be left up to the physicians as it is such a complicated issue. But my aspergers, in my short time after finding it, means that there is a reason for my self-perceived inadequacies. It is the reason I am drawn to people who are "different". Why I seek out others like myself. It explains my social failings, my relationship insecurities, my failings while I tried my best to bring up my children. It explains why other women find me "odd". It explains why I can think the way I do and have so many brilliant ideas, yet verbalize it horribly. It also explains why I find so many NT's so boring and ignorant.

Naomi....what does it mean to you?

it means i am not alone. i always new i was different, and thought by statistical inevitability there must be someone else who thought like i did, somewhere, but that i would never find them. The name of my kind is not so important, but THAT i have a kind, is very comforting. It feels an emptiness i never thought would be filled.

I find ironic, some here, who have always known what they were, express resentment to their struggles, and others of us are just grateful to know finally that there is a REASON for our difficulties and differences.

Of coarse im sure that isn't the whole store, as severity of affliction must play a part, and inherently that i must be in the shallow end of the spectrum for it to have even been a possibility that i wasn't diagnosed. (though i actually did have an informal diagnosis as a child, which my mother only recently mentioned to me)

I never knew any different, until I was told I had the condition.

I immediately accepted it, and just try to challenge my social difficulties.

My upbringing in normal (NT) surroundings, must have something to do with shaping my personality, and therefore overriding my idiosyncratic tendencies, social difficulties, and other AS traits.

I would never rid of it, and see it as a 're-wiring' of my brain.

Mostly, it's been an incredible relief. No longer do I worry about why I'm not more like others or obsess about the reasons behind some of my sensory issues. I just accept it for what it is and realize I'm playing on a field that's just a little bit different. It's like someone took the handcuffs off my psyche and now it gets to go where it really wants to be.

It means that I have a unique personality and a unique way of looking at the world.

The way that AS has affected me is that I've learned from a very early age not to hurt others, because I've been hurt by so many people in so many ways.

Asperger's is a different way of being. It's also a different way of looking at the world. It's not a horrible illness or disease that needs to be cured. I see my AS as something to be celebrated and not as something to be frowned upon, or erased.

All I can say is that it makes me, me. Theres no point wondering what it would be like if we were born without it, because to do so would mean thinking about being a stranger that I don't know and never will meet. So to me, it effects my life more than religion.

It allows me to experience life differently to other people, and I believe that this different perspective can be used as an advantage.

Just something that has victimized me and I have to endure throughout my only life I will ever get. What a f*****g waste.

Ouch.

I feel stupid around people .

when I was younger I just floated along with all my peers in my agegroup, school etc
only as you get older you begin to realise you are different
either by your own observations or continue failures at basic things like members of the other sex etc, ignorance is bliss but you being to think you are really hopeless

it meant that I at least had a reason for my situation and fumbling in life
it's still hopeless though

It is a name to describe my unusual mind. It is probably "written" in my genes. It will not get better as time goes on, but I am much more accepting of it than I was a few years ago, back when it did not have a name. It brings me many problems in dealing with people, but it makes me who I am, with all my (many and very noticeable) flaws and (not so many, but fairly remarkable) strengths.