Being seen through the "autistic lens"

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When I was a kid both me and my sister liked playing on spinning chairs. When I spun on spinning chairs most people viewed it as an "autistic behavior" and always got annoyed at me. When my sister spun on chairs they just viewed it as playing. They never bothered my sister about it.

It has to do with your sister knowing when it's appropriate to do it and when not to. Because you can't read the body language. You're not getting the social cues that tell you when to and not.

I don't think so. Even she agrees that it was unfair and biased. Nothing to do with social cues.

Not all Aspies cannot read body language, and it's a bit unfair to just jump to the conclusion about timing and everything.


But yes, I feel like that now. It's like if I express my feelings to people, they think I am just being honest because Asperger's makes me a really honest person. But if I don't express my feelings to people, they think I can't express my feelings because Asperger's makes me unable to tell anybody what I'm feeling. So I can't win, whatever I do is apparently to do with Asperger's. What they don't know is that I am not a 100 percent honest person (I can easily use white lies and bigger lies if I have to), and also I can express my feelings when I know it's appropriate.

I use the word ''they'' as a shorter term for ''people who know I have Asperger's and who I feel look through the Asperger's lens, in case people here start thinking I mean every NT I've ever met.

I can see what DevilKisses means. Disclosing that I'm an Aspie and how it can affect me has led to people either accusing me of using it as an excuse/verbal shield to absolve me of responsibility for my "poor" or "unfitting" etcetera behaviour, and have used it against me, or seem to have done so. Or they make off-hand comments about certain behaviours/ticks/obsessions, that they may or may not realise are hurtful.

It CAN lead to you being viewed differently. Some people have prejudices towards mental or neurological issues, that can be inspired or influenced by many things, and these often come out when you open up to them about your Asperger Syndrome. However, others have also been really understanding, and took me for who I was, for example I have one friend (who we'll call L) who has been just wonderful, she has helped me deconstruct a lot of things, and lets me rant to her when I need to, offering comfort when I need it most. L is becoming, very quickly, a close friend of mine, and it makes me wish I could be this open with everyone and receive the same supportive response, but "once burned, twice shy" does apply to me. I have been made to feel ashamed for that part of my personality before, and recently, and it does make you more guarded.

That being said, to me it just depends on who you tell and how you judge their character, in my experience, which is difficult for us Aspie's to do, but it's a skill we need, because not everyone "gets it" and we need to be able to recognise who to, and who not to tell. Whilst honesty is my policy, and I am apparently renowned in my local area for being "blunt", I think reserving a form of selectiveness with honesty when it comes to being an Aspie is an exercise in wisdom.

^ (in the above I use "their" to refer to NT's/non-Aspies)

It seems to me like you were treated unfairly DK, I'm sorry to hear that people treated you that way. At the end of the day, even if you're an Aspie kid, you're still a kid, and spinning on chairs is still fun. It was almost a little persecutory or stigmatising of them to say that to you.

If I need to clarify on any of that please ask me to, I'm not the best at expressing my opinions/experiences on Aspergers in words!

Maybe I'm delusional, but it's usually pretty easy for me to judge character. I also suspect I'm not really an Aspie to begin with. Spinning on chairs isn't the only time I was seen through the autistic lens. It was just the best example I could think of.

Another example is my inability to play ball sports. A lot of people thought I couldn't play sports because of my "autism." They thought I had poor motor skills. I'm not sure if I actually do have motor skill problems, but I know that I had no problem with gymnastics. I think the real reason I had problems with ball sports was vision problems and anxiety.

Dyspraxia with motor skills is something that often ties in with Asperger's, but it can be conquered with work, so that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not AS, it just means you've already dealt a blow to the dyspraxia.

There's also the idea of self-image and the reality there as well, you may not appear how you feel you do, even if what you feel is what's right and what you're trying to put out into the world, others may not recognise that.

As for judging character, I'd say I'm quite good at it, but be careful, I used to think I had it all completely down; but then I was betrayed, by about 3 people, one after the other, and it caused me a lot of undue stress that caused me to melt down and become very angry/upset.

AS is not really a "prescribed" thing, as much as it can seem that, it's actually quite a loose definition in a lot of ways. So you could still be AS without actually fitting what may seem to be a very "strict" set of guidelines, because it's a wide spectrum.

I wasn't really talking about my motor skills. I was just giving another example. I understand that autism is a spectrum. I just don't believe it should be used as an excuse or catch all phrase.

Since there is a lot of grey area I believe that people should be able to use the autism label if it's useful. The autism label hasn't been that useful for me. It was sort of useful for my parents. I misbehaved a lot as a child, so autism was the perfect label to make people more sympathetic. It also gave my parents some funding. We were low income when I was diagnosed.

The autism label has been useless for me because of the way I'm seen. I'm seen as some special and magical being who needs a lot of help. I am not a special and magical being. I'm a human being. Like I said before everyone assumes that everything about me is related to autism. This has not been helpful.

This is why I got bored of school and fell way behind. I used to be ahead of everyone. No one gave me work that was at my level. At first this just made me bored, but that boredom turned into depression. They probably thought my depression and lack of motivation was just autism. They never even thought about the work being too easy for me. Even though I constantly told them. My "disability" spoke louder than my words to them.

This problem continued I high school. I told people that I get very mentally tired and lack motivation. The first thing they thought of was autism! They said that it's normal for autistic people to feel tired when dealing with change.

That may be true, by that was totally irrelevant to my situation. I told them that, but they didn't listen to me! Same exact problem I had when I was eight years old! If I was never diagnosed they probably would have listened to what I actually told them in very plain English.

I agree with you on self image. I always act way differently than I actually am inside. It's not really my fault. It's like there's a lens in front of me distorting how I look to other people. I also seem to attract a lot of patronizing people. Probably because of the way I behave.

Whatever you think, I'm sure is more accurate than what I could say, to be honest . You know yourself better than anyone, that's what I think anyway.

I honestly can't advise you too much further; I'm not qualified too, and I'm not well-versed enough either. Maybe seek the advice of a Dr or Psychologist? I'm sorry I'm not of more help!

People I barely knew online started treating me different when I said I think I might be autistic. So I can only imagine how much worse it would be if everyone saw me through that lens.

There was a time that I felt apprehensive about going to the mall with my mum, because she saw me through the autism lense due to the fact that I was a tomboy with a Beatle haircut at the age of 14. She apologized to me a month after bitched that people were looking at us when we were in public. That was the first time that I didn't feel like a member of my family. I do give her credit for apologizing.

Some people see the wheelchair - others see the person in the wheelchair......