Did AS save my life?

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I had a very rough upbringing: physical/sexual abuse, being traded around to different family members, being left to take care of myself constantly, sometimes into the early morning hours (as a 10/11/12 year old), poverty, a mentally unstable mother and alcoholic father, etc etc.

My half sister experienced most of the same hardships, and she became a heroin addict, panhandler, had sex with men three times her age (when she was as young as 13), thief (stole from family and also from multiple stores), has been arrested numerous times, barely graduated high school, teen mother (has now abandoned my niece), etc etc.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude from college, was asked to speak at graduation (I politely declined), have held the same job for 9 years, have never been in any kind of trouble, with the law or otherwise, and have never done anything harder than smoking or drinking (neither of which I do anymore), etc.

People who get to know my background very well are always very shocked by how 'well' I turned out. I think that I can owe this to AS. Filmmaking and movies are my lifelong special interests, and whenever anything went wrong or bad in my life, I could just turn on my favorite movie and get lost in it. Since I liked being alone, I never minded that my mom was gone until 2 or 3AM. Since I'm a picky eater, it didn't bother me that our mom never once cooked a meal for us. Since I think more logically than emotionally, I never thought less of myself because of how my mom treated me (verbal and physical abuse), and never felt bad that 'my mommy didn't love me.'

I can tell my sister is still very messed up about our childhood, but I can't relate. Yes, our childhood was pretty awful, but for me, once the negative stimulus is removed, so are the negative feelings. No, I don't like my mom, but I don't harbor any ill-will or hold a grudge against her or anything.

Can anyone else relate to this? That you're less impacted in the long term by negative experiences, because your AS kind of shields you from it?

Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God. I have never thought of AS as contributing to resiliency as it seems to have for you. I think that you are right that a number of kinds of hardships impact us less than non-spectrum people. Yet, there are a number of people on WP that suffer greatly from post-traumatic stress syndrome. I don't know that scientists have yet figured out what makes one person resilient and another person not.
Who is taking care of your abandoned niece?
I think of my dad who has held grudges as long as 78 years. He would not have survived what you went through. My mother went through some horrendous things, and yet found a way to forgive her abusers and lived a grace-filled life. I would like to be as resilient as she was and not as brittle as my AS dad. I think my asperger's keeps me from a particular type of emotional neediness, which my husband greatly appreciates. Your traits may have helped you. But I think there is more to the story than your AS as you made different choices from your sister.

I agree that AS can help. For example, the simple fast that it's a pain to go buy cigarettes makes it more unlikely to smoke. And the fact that you do less things just to be into groups makes it more unlikely that you start some nasty drugs. And being alone is part of a normal thing of AS, even if of course, it does not mean that we don't look for social experiences.

Except for the sexual abuse, FC, your history is similar to mine. I turned out okay (BS/MSEE, no smoking, very little drinking, no drugs, no arrest record, et cetera).

I think AS may have played a major role in helping me survive and succeed.

fragileclover, like Fnord, your story is almost identical to mine. I have three siblings, all of whom dropped out of high school, became addicted to drugs, became involved in prostitution, had children that they subsequently abandoned or abused and none of the three can hold a steady job.

I, on the other hand, am the only one of my parents' kids that is Aspie and I graduated high school a year early in the top 3% of my class, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering and have worked as a government scientist/engineer for the past six years. I also purchased my very own home four months ago.

I have never been involved in an abusive relationship and do not struggle with substance abuse issues. The only time I drink heavily is during obligatory social gatherings like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc. and even then, my "heavy drinking" consists of 4 glasses of wine over the course of 5 or 6 hours. So, I am tipsy but not embarassingly so and I hate driving so I hire a cab to take me most places to which I cannot simply walk to jog.

I am certain that my ability to rationally understand as a small child that I had done nothing to provoke or deserve the abuse saved my life.

fragileclover, you're a mighty strong person to come through what you went through, and turn out so well.

I don't think it's necessarily because of your AS on its own, that you made it through. Part of it is also the strength of your own personality, and that's something you may take pride in. This goes to Fnord and ghostar as well; it's great that you've been able to turn your AS into a source of power for yourselves.

In contrast, while I had my share of bad experiences in my childhood, I didn't see half the hardship you did- and yet I am now still a very insecure young man, with no education to speak of and a very slim resume. In my case, my autism made it so I was unable to block out the fights between my parents, and the OCD habits of my father. It caused a constant stress on my mind, and my personality wasn't strong enough to face it down.

I can relate to this.

I won't go into too much detail about my family, because honestly it bores me but my father is schizophrenic and was only around for brief periods (until I cut him out 2 years ago), and my mother is...some kind of unspecified crazy with a drug addiction. I was also passed around a lot and was in the system from 16-18. I was very lucky to receive a lot of support from local advocacy agencies after that.

I'm not nearly as highly achieved as you are, I'm actually underachieved, but I could have turned out much worse.

I carried around a slacker mentality for far too long which kept me from doing things that I'm taking care of now, but I've been asked how I've turned out as well as I have by therapists, I have no answer for that. I never even would have sought therapy but it was part of being in the system, and also part of some of the residential programs I was in afterward. I always felt well adjusted, even though I knew I was weird. I never believed that I was damaged like some people do, and for the life f me I can't figure out why they truly believe they are worthless. I've known people with awful upbringings, some even with not so awful upbringings who believe they don't deserve anything good in life and purposely set themselves up to fail, whether they admit it's done purposefully or not.

What you say about not feeling the negative things after the stimulus is removed, though, is exactly like me. I just don't. Cant describe it any other way, after ANY kind of stimulus is removed for me, in general, it's like it never existed. This also contributes to some of my attention regulation problems but it works in my favor in many ways.

So yes, I do think this is AS related, although since I have no AS diagnosis every therapist who was trying to figure me out has said that I developed these skills as a defense mechanism, and a way to keep myself from getting hurt. This is probably true to some extent, I think anyone would do this, but I know that I don't feel nearly as damaged as many people who have done the same thing do, so is many people seem to think they owe something to the past, I guess is what I'm saying and that is tiresome and frankly, juvenile, to me.

Long story short, your upbringing could have also played a role in your developing a sort of "bubble" but I think you are probably wired much like an autistic in some way, considering how many people (especially women with this kind of experience) turn out awful and hate themselves for life.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me.

My father was very controlling and emotionally abusive (almost never physically). Oddly enough I get on with him reasonably well these days, which puzzles most of my family.

This does make a lot of sense to me, too. I've been thinking about this,. Thanks for starting this topic, fragileclover, it raises many interesting questions.
I am not sure whether what you describe is random or not, siblings in families often turn out very differently. Then again, my own story, though thankfully not that I bleak as yours, wuld support your theory. I was often neglected during my childhood, battered more often than not, bulllied at school, excluded from most social activities etc. Which resulted in me learning to take care of myself very early and concentrating much more on my schoolwork than on my social contacts. Therefore I escaped almost any trap that disturbed adolescence holds and these skills which I acquired early in life now do pay off. While my pampered and adored cousins actually caused a lot of trouble - though it was only when their parents could not legally control them any more.
Maybe it was my ASD that saved me after all.

I don't think it's AS that saved you; I had to deal with poverty, bad alcoholic father, etc etc. My sister is NT and I am HFA/AS, but we both turned out good; she has her Masters and I am graduating with my BA in March, then going for my masters. I know plenty of NT's from a similar or much worse background, who also turned out well.

I had a rough upbringing and i think it helped me yeah. I always loved books, i was around a lot of things that children shouldn't see at the ages i saw and yet i still managed to stay almost completely innocent in a fashion because i barely noticed what was going on around me and i wasn't even trying to blank it out, i just wasn't interested enough to take it in. In a sense i had a rough upbringing but i FEEL sheltered. Most people i meet could never imagine my background from the way i am, it probably toughened me up by aspie standards but im still far below average on roughness.

My background is a bit different but I have been thinking that if I do indeed have AS, it may have saved me from my ADHD. Otherwise I think I would have self-destructed a long time ago.

Without going into any details I can relate at least somewhat. Some of my siblings have also made less than stellar life decisions. You should definitely be proud of yourself fragileclover! I like the idea that some of us can pretty much go through anything then just be like "Meh, could be worse!" then get up and dust ourselves off