To say it or not to say it.

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If you say it, that you belong to the “spectrum”, you meet disappointing reactions. After all in a way they are right. If you say it, it’s some sort of asking for help. And it is. And no one may give help. You say it to people whom you have considered “friends”, whatever that may mean. Not much in my case. Someone drops you after a first perfunctory response. Some other says you are normal (again, whatever that means). An intellectualy refined person, who used to hug me every time I met her, says that I have a “post-modern” sensibility. I am still wondering what she meant. There is only one thing to do: to further perfect and make more viable your bubble

I'm sorry Paolo.

I know what you mean and what you are going through.

I think the most alienating reaction, is when someone says that they can recommend supplements or vitamins, or offer to direct me to a "Cure." To assume I am something to be "fixed," is invalidating.

So far the friends I have told have not altered much in the relationships. I am lucky in that I have always been a bit off, so an explination is simply that, and that most of my friends are slightly off plumd as well. It probably halps that I am past 50 years, and my friends are not young either. sometimes we all learn to take friendship wherever it comes from.

Good luck to you. Our lives are not easy.

I haven't told anyone, probably more because at this point there's not really anyone to tell. I managed to screw up all of my half-friendships or whatever they were in the past year - before I found out. I'm sure at some point in the future I might tell someone, probably offhandedly (because at this point that's the way I think of it), not so much as a cry for help or sympathy but they so can go "oh, so that's why." On the other hand, maybe I won't tell anyone. I really can't imagine anyone caring that much, or understanding the gravity.

We must accustom ourselves to be invisible to others. I was thinking of “The Invisible Man” a semiautobiograpic novel by Ralph Ellison, which I enjoyed greatly. “The single individual must hide himself underground and try to save his desires, his thoughts, his soul, in invisibility”. This is what Saul Bellow said in a review of Ellison’s book.

i TA for an intro bio course and they have to pick a topic for a controversial biological topic having to do with cellular or genetic biology to write their term paper on...

one of my students is doing autsim and finding a "cure" for it.

they turn in their first drafts of sorts this week... i'm a lil afraid to grade this thing lol

(not saying that the papers aren't firghtening in general to grade.... )

but i am cursious to hear the person's thoughts (eventhough by the phrasing of their question, I can kinda tell their pre-formed thoughts on the "issue")

Your bonds with people have always been clouded by necessity and approximation. If you step back to analyse yourself and others, those bonds crumble and there is no way to put them together again. The necessity is no more there in that form; there are stronger necessities but those bonds cannot bear them: they crack. There is some groping for some time for the old habits, and after that the inevitable silence.

I prefer to be open about things. I see nothing shameful in saying I am bipolar and have SAD, and I wouldn't see anything shameful in admitting I have an ASD, were I diagnosed with one. If someone else does - it's their problem.

Frankly, if a person can't handle the fact that one has issues (of whatever sort, not just ASD), and thinks that anybody with such issues is a second-rate human being, I think it isn't worth having this person as a friend. So nothing too upsetting if they go. Somebody who is a real friend wouldn't have minded in the first place.

I don't think I've had any problems with my friends because of this. I'm usually very frank with them (that, or I'm completely silent), and tell them about anything I feel, so it makes no difference whether they even know I have some sort of diagnosis or not (though they do know). Even without this, they'd have a good idea about what I'm like, how I see the world and what sort of difficulties I have. I don't see the point of friendship - real friendship - if you don't share all these things.

Other people may be put off or not right from the start. Pretty much everybody agrees that I'm "strange" and stand out, again without my ever telling them anything, so some may begin to avoid me after having seen me a couple of times. But I don't mind. Those who can become friends later on always stay.