Black And White Thinking on the part of NTs:

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Hi-

Something that has really gotten under my skin lately is the tendecy for NT's to judge us in very black and white tones.

Because they have ideas about Autism, they think that we mcu display those things. And I see it a lot in people I know with Asp and even on You Tube Videos, that people with Asp and HFA always have to say something like, "Yes, I have trouble with eye contact- It is hard for me to look at the camera..."

They feel the need to justify their dx and assure people they have it even if they can XYZ (look into a camera).

The worst example is when a nurse I knew said a Dr on her unit claimed a child did not have Asp after all bcause she showed empathy to another pt.

This makes me mad.

There are times I can look someone in the eye and almost seer them with a stare. Other times, I can't. There is some music I can listen to loudly, others drive me crazy if I am in the other room.

Sometimes I can stand to be touched, other times I can't. Yet, when anyone who knows I have ASP is around, I find myself feeling like I need to act in a way that is consistent with my DX even if I am having a good day!!

Does anyone else have these issues?

Sometimes I feel better, eat better and symptoms are down. Then people think it is fake. Then on a bad day they are like, "This toxic cleaner didn't bother you yesterday!! !"

I don't know why it waxes and wanes. When it is bad I am like in a prison. When it is good, it is a happy day! I have to fihgt to make sure an NT does not try to take it away.

I do have a lot of the same experiences. I actually grew up in a pretty good home atmosphere and social environment, so I think I've adapted well enough that my close friends can't understand what my problem, is other than "maybe being shy". I haven't been able to convince anyone that its not always mind over matter, except for my parents (who can't seem to shake the feeling that AS is responsible for EVERYTHING that makes me what I am).

I want to be a confident person, and occasionally I can get over myself and actually be witty and make people take interest in me. These times don't come naturally though, and not often.

Yes, I think NT's show a lot of traits that they classify as "dysfuntion and exclussive to AS" I actually know that I have a tendency towards black and white thinking in some ways because I am a systemizer and I am comforted by "order". I think what I onserve in some of my NT interactions is more of a desire not to add any information to their current beliefs. A preferance for staying on the surface of something where I prefer to take things apart to see how they fit together. I think they maybe the same "trait" with different neurological causes.

I also disagree with many of the traits of AS that are based on LFA extreams. The theory is that LFA are closed off from other people s they would feel no empathy because they are trapped in themselves. People prefer this over simplification and seem to apply the same thing to HFA/AS. I have a lot of empathy in certain situations and little in others...I am hyper/hypo sensitive to suffering. I am most effected by people/animals/insects/plants that I like or feel are like me or are vulnerable. That is explained by several autistic and AS adults. Autistics who build walls maybe doing so because they are to sensitive and find the pain of others TO painful. Much more about this needs to be investigated...but it is much simpler to just say we have no empathy

Function levels do change because there are so many internal(chemical,stress hormones) and external(daily experiences,changes and other sensory stressors) that may effect our day to day function. Just like a physical work out...sometimes you don't feel the full effect until the day after lifting weights when the body is rebuilding the tissue that has been broken down by lifting. Why is it so hard to believe that our brains may need the same recovery time after stressers?

Lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of humans is the root cause of these misunderstandings of how AS "works".

This is comment I wrote, about 50 posts ago, in General thread "Neurodiversity and autism-the other side of the story":
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt65832.html
(5-12-08)
Part of issue is that many people (not just ASD or NT, but all humans)-and am not saying I'm any better about this, either-see others as either "sick" or "well", "disabled" or "functioning well enough".

"Black & white" thinking, of the sort "we" are usually accused of operating from. Reality & the individuals populating the world are more complex & varied than these "healthy, robustly functioning" or "diseased, dysfunctional" polarities/extremes. People are made up of many "shades of grey" but it's harder to see things that way, the brain wants something easier to handle conceptually, so it puts people or things in simplistic, reductive categories of "ill & in need of help" or "not ill & needs no help". Yet just about every person has some flaws or weaknesses & some skills or strengths.

My opinion is that people ought not be divided into these groups, but that doesn't mean eradicating descriptors that matter. It's a continuum (spectrum), not only for those who have dx or "difference". There are "NT" people with problems that "ASD" people don't have, "ASD" people with skills that "NT" people lack, but also vice versa. Ideally, in the la-la-la imaginary world that I wish for, people would relate as individuals rather than as representatives of the group they've been placed in. It's hard to explain how I'd like to "split the difference", have things both ways-so that both the positives & negatives of any person would be safe to reveal. There would be thresholds for this or that "condition" or style of processing (as we have criteria today), but these classifications wouldn't be considered the "be all and end all" of who the person is, nor would those with whichever label/acronym be assumed to be same as others who also have that label. All "NT" people aren't the same (nor have they a monopoly on "being well") and all "ASD" people aren't interchangeable (the same as each other), nor are we thoroughly "dysfunctional".

Presence of strengths doesn't cancel out or negate presence of deficits, presence of deficits doesn't void/contradict presence of strengths in any person, no matter what her/his neurological story/situation. Life & society just often hasn't the time & effort to spare, nor the inclination, to look at things in finer detail & notice that (to some degree, on some level) no one's wholly free of infirmity & no one's devoid of physiological assets. We each have different packages of these combined factors, in bewildering array of manifestation/expression, which we call personality. Alas, it's too much mental work for many folks with their rules, laws, codes, institutions, etc. to treat each person as unique blend of sickness & wellness, so people get tossed into one or the other overly broad category ("crazy" or "sane"-no "in between").

I have problems/afflictions/difficulties. I have gifts/abilities/talents. Neither fact cancels out the other. Same can be said of most everyone human. Am not not trying to argue away the dx, yet I am saying that understanding shouldn't/needn't end there-just that an official (or suspected) dx doesn't tell anyone what life is like for any specific person, notr does "NT" status reflect much in particular about any individual. I'm in favor of distinctions that are useful (for both the people outside the concerned person as well as for the person him/her self), but am against divisiveness that pits people against each other from stance of artificial constructs, while conflating the dissimilar (as if all "NT" people are same and all "ASD" people are same, and each group is so very different from every single member of each other's group). Our (all humans) notions of other people are rough approximations, not the final word.

I found the best solution is just not to tell anyone. I'm just a little odd to people. Actually, most of my friends learned not to look at me while speaking because I wont return the look.

The problem with people knowing and having their own ideas about whats wrong with you, and how it feels; will never go away. It can get better. But people will never know unless they experience it. This is true for many things.

Try to paint a picture in your head of something I saw with only a few words:

A sunny day, a tree, a sidewalk.

How close would the pictures of two people be? Two being my picture that I described it from, and yours?

Now add some more descriptive words and you may start to notice the pictures maybe have something in common.


I dont like to draw, so I choose not to draw a picture in the first place.

Sometimes the symptoms I have vary from minute to minute, much less day to day. I could pass for a nerdish NT on a good day, and on bad days someone who didn't know me might assume I barely function at all. Most days are in between, but as I am undiagnosed, I have never had problems with others attributing things to Asperger's - until my wife taught pottery to a woman with an Aspie son, I thought my connection to autistic people was in my head.