Again: how to explain autism as an experience?

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I have seen and continue to see books and articles attempting to explain autism. All these books and articles do not contribute other than a symptomatic description: the triad of impairments, lack of eye contact, rejection of physical contact. The autistic is an individual under siege in social life. But why? I haven’t seen any description from the inside of the experience. They lack TOM (theory of mind): but how do you feel, which is the quality of your life if you lack TOM? It’ hell, but how would you describe autistic hell? For what I know only in literature you find some rich and meaningful descriptions. Descriptions by writers who were autistic: Kafka, Patricia Highsmith, Robert Walser. They have coined the term magical realism for this literature, because nothing apparently extraordinary happens in this fiction (which is not fiction). Only the overall atmosphere is weird. Well I think we should start from here, not from external symptoms, the triad etc.

Only way i found is by showing them "Mozart and the Whale" with Josh Hartnet. A lot of what happens to someone with AS is portrayed in there. On how they react, calm down, view things, etc. I can show them how I sometimes act and why.

Another good book is " Look me in the eye. My life with Asperger" by John Robinson

AS is a tricky, psycologists continuously try and define us in a normal sense. That is both correct in explaining what happens but also wrong when you need to understand what drives an Austistic person. Like on how to handle loss. I can handle it either by not panicking and sever mourning or I can.

I'm not sure it can be explained in words. I sometimes say it's like being an ant but without antennae. No one seems to understand my explanations.

I'm not sure this will be of much use (this post), but I like to document by thoughts publicly anyway. I have never really been able to convey what it's like and how it's different in words. I've managed to provide a few examples and such or point to various references, but nobody to whom I've provided this material seems to get it. I keep missing something.

It happens for the relationships, too. The females always think I am cold, uncaring, broken, or just don't love them, but I can never seem to articulate, despite great language skills, how I feel and how I'm different, not to mention how I feel for them. I had been talking to someone recently for TEN years of my life, and she left me for how I was different and because I could not get her to understand what was really going on in my head.

So here I am alone again with my chinese food.

To me, it's like having one's antennae cut-off, which equates to being unable to communicate with the colony (lack of empathy and social communication), and not being able to handle the world outside of the mother's womb (sensory and change).

I wish i had chinese food. I had to cook.

Communication problems, but not when I found my way here.

So who has the problem?

One of me, lots of them, problem.

One of them, me, fear.

One of me doing business on the internet, great!

Looking them in the eye is like pushing a button, with no telling what happens next.

Being social is an excuse for them to try something, it might work, and when it does not, they say I am strange.

When people touch me, the hand on shoulder stuff, I do the same back, look them in the eye, and they get away as fast as they can.

I just got tired of dealing with them. Now I deal with them.

So they are still whining, what is wrong with people who will not let us play social games?

To me they all seem the same, I do not even bother to remember faces, they are that unimportant.

I live in my world, books, machines, science, it works fine.

Their world is why I should buy insurance, at least a funeral plan, fall to my knees and accept their view of God as my personal savior, and allow them to touch me and call me by a shortened form of my first name. I should also be overly concerned with the fate of some football team.

They ask me questions, very personal from a stranger, but when I ask where do they live, they will not tell, they are running the game, and know the end.

When they cannot control me, I am larger, smarter, and have dealt with many, they act offended, I do not respond, they should become offended looking in a mirror.Then they try to be threatening, which I do better.

So I lack Empathy, if I had it I would take up Mercy Killing. They are somewhere between road kill, I notice it enough to avoid stepping in it, and the Night of the Living Dead, coming at me saying, "Brains, Brains."

Now autism on Wrong Planet is fun, with great people, my kind of thinking, and as soon as summer is over, it will be even better.

Autism to me is like living three times faster, and the rest quit the race long ago. I am good enough to become great, and the world resents me, for it shows that they quit.

I may know nothing about football, but I have lived as much as a hundred. The greatest gift in the Universe, and they want to go watch TV.

The main differance between me and them is I can think. It is not socially acceptable, but I do it anyway.

Now who is up for falling on our knees before the TV and praying to God that our team wins?

Yes, but do you really have enough insurance?

That DOES explain some of the bad stuff, IF you understand current theories about ants. Other ants might even attack you, like bullies! Maybe they just can't figure out what you mean.

paolo, the problem with the question (and how to communicate experience) is probably easiest understood if I ask you "what does it feel like to not be autistic?"

If you can explain how it feels to not be autistic, I can attempt to describe how that differs from how it feels to be me.

When I was sixteen (I believe) I formulated this situation: I was condemned to death but I couldn't tell this thing to anybody (kind of Marshall Rommel's condition after the 7.25,1944 plot, of course I was of some less consequence than Rommel, Rommel was obliged to kill himself to save his family).
There was another idea obsessing me at that age. I called it the "metaphysical sickness", though, at that time, I didnt' know much about metaphysics and I wonder where and how I picked up that word. I asked myself: "why me?". I felt alone in the universe and wondered why me alone in this bubble? . I apologize for the emphasis.

After the last post I may add: for brief moments I have felt what life should be not being autistic. It's the shift from being at home and being lost in the desert. They were brief moments and in these days I could sleep well.
Anyhow Kafka gave a very good description in the "Metamorphosis". I am angry that no Baron Cohen, or Uta Frith or Lorna Wing approached Kafka in this matter.

Inventor: while I largely agree with your post, it seemed like one of your 'good' ones, would you stop characterising NTs as christian and AS as not christian. I and lots of other Aspies believe in god and it's not something NTs forced on me.

Nice to see you Inventor

I've attempted on my site, to decribe what Autism is like a bit, and would love to hear comments.

The Asperger's page on my site: http://home.comcast.net/~somebunni/Aspergers.htm

Inventor, your post is brilliant. Autism for me is a bit of a different experience, though, so I'll try and explain that.

People on drugs sometimes describe sensory overload, where sounds and sights are far more vivid. My AS is like that. If I am in a store and I hear the wheels of a cart squeak I shriek and clamp my hands over my ears. Otherwise it hurts too badly.

I'm more interested in other people than many Aspies. I would like to socialize, I just suck at it amazingly. So in that area, AS is like the people around me are speaking in French, and I generally understand what they're saying, but I lack the French to respond to them in any acceptable way.

I feel like I'm tuned into the slightly wrong station on a radio. 99.3 rather than 99.5, for example. I can still hear the same music, but it is just slightly off somehow.

That's just one of many comparisions I could use.