What People Don't Know About Asperger's

Post Reply New Topic

I'm self diagnosed myself so I don't tell too many people I think I have it, but I did mention it to two of my co-workers who both replied with the standard - "No you don't, you can read something on the internet and convince yourself you have anything," type comment. So I just stopped talking about it with them.

One of them recently got a new boyfriend whose son is suspected of having Asperger's. The father won't get the boy tested because he doesn't want him to be labelled. So today she was talking about the boy and some of the issues he has and I said, Oh his Asperger's.

She responded, "I don't know what he has, he just got his report card and he's on the honor roll." Clearly she doesn't understand that he can be intelligent and have Asperger's.

I'm starting to feel a certain simmering boiling rage about this (not at her or any one person), but at the idea that people keep thinking it means stupid. It also makes me very very angry that low functioning people are considered to be almost "ret*d," even though I understand why people think it because I thought it myself before I came here and met so many smart low functioning people. I'm not mad at the people who think it, but at the seemingly near futility of trying to ever making anyone understand.

I'm working on some ideas to help with education right now, but this is going to be a long battle.

It's really funny because I don't even see mental retardation the same way I used to. I think the word neurodiversity is an amazing concept, but it has to be brought to life so it's not just a politically correct term that has no meaning for anyone but us with the diverse neurons.

Not sure I have a question, maybe this is just a rant!

I fear this may make me sound as perverse as the people you describe but I, like so many, have run up against this attitude to Asperger's and autism and my conclusion is that the stupid ones are the ones that can't deal with it.
its a gross generalization but it helps me to feel better when I hear them pronouncig about something they know nothig about.

Let's face it. The general public still believes that autism = ret*d. Of course, the Connecticut school shooting and the media blaming Aspergers for the cause didn't help ether.

If you think about it. People on the spectrum are technically social ret*ds and NT's do judge others by there social performance. So it my be a tough sell.

I hope I'm not hijacking your thread. What I feel people don't know about Asperger's and autism is that we are people too. And they may even be able to relate to us. It doesn't mean they're bad, and they can't catch aspergers if they're nice or feel similar feelings or similar experiences.

I think people don't know that so they have trouble believing it's true when it happens. So they get scared of the differences. I think they are even more scared of the similarities.

And as long as are autism prevents us from showing it or expressing it. NT's will never think that we are people.

How does autism prevent us from showing or expressing that we're people?....Also I think there are plenty of NTs who realize people with neurological conditions, mental disorders and mental illnesses are still people. At least I'd like to think there are a fair amount of rational neurotypicals.

The big problem with Aspergers is its negative image amongst the NT population. A few weeks ago I watched a drama on German TV where the main murder suspect was a man with AS and the guy behaved like someone who had survived a bad stroke, he limped, he couldn't talk properly and he had the social skills of a baboon. I'm nothing like that and neither are 99.999% of the Wrong Planet membership but the NTs don't know this.

I have a suggestion but I'm not sure how well it will be received. Over the last couple of years we have seen a number of people admit that they have mental health problems, Stephen Fry springs to mind but I know that there are others. If two or three reasonably famous people could stand up and say 'I've been tested for Aspergers and I'm on the spectrum" then we might finally get better treatment.

In the two years since my diagnosis, I've come to accept that other people have wildly off-base assumptions of what autism is (or isn't), and that I am incapable of changing their views.

So I have two attitudes toward the situation. I accept that I will always be judged with skepticism for 'claiming' to have a condition that they feel is overdiagnosed, and bogus to begin with. But I do hope that in the future, the general public will become better educated on the subject, so that the next generation of autistics will be treated with more respect and decency than I was.

I've been coaching and counselling auties and aspies for about 20 years since being diagnosed and relatively successfully treated by a private consultant clinical trick cyclist and hqad come to the conclusion that we are about 25 to 30 times as likely to resort to extremely harmful thoughts, words and deeds when things go egg-shaped than ordinary people without any regard for the health, welfare and safety of ourselves and others, not even the ones we love the most - we can be seriously and dangerously unpredictable and volatile and will even kill ourselves out of spite if someone tells us to drop dead even though we don't give a tuppenny bunk up for their opinion - we just do it because we can - full stop - consequently I have focused all my coaching and counselling on auties and aspies that are close to that edge but never dared to tell them I had discovered this from experience - I've attempted suicide six times - I even killed myself over a thousand times in my youth when I discovered you cant get in through the Pearly Gates if your name isn't on The Grim Reaper's clipboard and they just send you back to your body - so in that knowledge I wiped my memory clean at 16 and at 38 because I'd had enough of being me and cocking everything up all the time - so - like I said I know what I know about this propensity for self destruction by having been there, done it, got the tee shirt innumerable times and coached and counselled innumerable auties and aspies that have it also

Now there is scientific evidence that my figure of 25 to 30 is right - see http://news.psu.edu/story/267913/2013/0 ... d-attempts and the US fed is even starting to take it seriously - see http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2014/01/ ... ces/19061/

Don't say it'll never happen to you!

Is that a trolly?

I've attempted suicide and have been suicidal many times....and its never had anything to do with 'spite' I'd think with all this experience you'd be aware most attempts at suicide/self harm are not out of spite. So what do you mean 'we' will kill ourselves out of spite...maybe you've thought of killing yourself out of spite? just not sure its a spectrum thing. Also not sure about the 'with no regard for others'....I actually feel very guilty if I get too overwhelmed or something and end up hurting someones feelings or something by snapping at them...let alone if I did something more harmful than that. Perhaps I am confused about some of what you mean with that post...I agree with some, but am confused about the killing ourselves out of spite and having no regard for our own health or other peoples health if something goes wrong...though in my perspective one can be aware and feel bad about how something is effecting other people and still have difficulties controlling it. Like I know if I killed myself it would hurt people, but that certainly doesn't get rid of the suicidal feelings and potential to act on them.

I think there's a whole lot that the medical and counseling community don't know about neurodiversity and neurobiology, and whatever percentage of the population who is neurodiverse is paying the price. I think they're trying, but they're still doing a lot of telling rather than asking. In many cases, they have opinions based upon observation but don't have much hard science or even credible, research-based argumentation to support the position(s) they've taken.

I also think they're too willing to assign someone the role of token representative and from that point forward, that individual's experience is the "definition" of all things AS, or poverty, or cancer, or sexual assualt, or deaf, or black, or whatever "experience" they're trying to understand at the moment.

I have a cousin who's Autistic and who's been assessed as being mentally ret*d. My mom's a retired special ed teacher and I asked: Mom, if they can't get [Cousin] to look at them and talk to them, how do they *know* she's ret*d and not just Autistic?

They don't.

She responds well to me. I ask her what she wants to do, giving a choice between two things: do you want to go left or right, do you want to go first or follow me, etc. I also let her know what's coming up: "in X minutes, I'm going to [go talk to Auntie]. Do you want to stay here, or come too?" After we set the table, "Let's fix the knives so the rough side points toward the edge of the plate, and the handle is from your knuckle to the end of your thumb in from the edge of the table."

I'm pretty damned sure I'm Aspie, and am going to request an assessment. If diagnosed, I'm not sure I'll disclose to HR and request ADA protection at work; it will most likely hinge on what it will do for or against me in so far as my eligibility for Medicare and SSDI are concerned, if ever there should come a time when I couldn't work because of it.

Now, I have a coworker who is probably ADHD and another who is probably Aspie. They're just as smart, just as funny and just as caring as any NT presumes to be. You just have to ignore their uber-annoying quirks and know them. They notice more stuff and do more with that info than 10 other people working together, it just so happens that they also organize things differently in their heads.

So what if they have a much harder time "tuning out" the ambient stimulation in the everyday environment than most people do?! Who here has been in an American elementary school classroom lately? I have no idea how those little kids know what to pay attention to, there's so much crap on the walls. It's a wonder anybody can learn in there. Or how about a normal office--with all the blipping, whirring, bleeping, flashing "devices"? omg. The first thing I do at a new workstation is turn off all but ONE KIND of alert for email, voicemail, calendar appts, etc. From my perspective, it is very much a matter of "what is wrong with you people???" and not what is wrong with me! I don't need 140 different alerts to get me to check my email--I got it the first time!

I do a lot better with this thing as a "personality type" a la Meyers-Briggs or True Colors, than I would if I came out as an Aspie. If it's "personality type", then I'm still normal but "just different". If I came out as an Aspie, then there'd always be something "wrong" with me and I wouldn't be "normal, but weird" any more.

For me, a diagnosis would just be so I could better understand myself and my interactions with the world. Kind of like my own personal "Orphan Annie" decoder ring.

If it empowers me to say something like, "You know, the fragrance of the air fresheners in the bathroom is more than "really overwhelming" to me. It actually exacerbates a medical condition that I have. Can we go with something else next time?" then that's good a good thing, isn't it? (Esp. considering my "cubby" is next to the bathroom!)

Based on the internet comments the general public if they know about it all tend to think of it in 3 broad stereotypes.


1. Low intelligence and functioning/ret*d

2. Socially awkward nerd/geek

3. An over hyped or outright fake phenomenon. People making it up as an excuse or to get disability benefits. Based on the DSM 5 a majority of the mental health professionals in the U.S. think this way.

I think people fail to understand that Asperger means having a much harder time socializing and connecting with people, but being intelligent and showing it is not a real problem at all.

troll.

I don't understand why people are calling adrian a troll. I have seen him on AFF which is now defunct and he has been a member here for four years.