How many of you are hearing the stereotypes?

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Hi,
As most of you know, there was a school shooting by someone on the spectrum. As you know, the US is stereotypes galore here. One of the major stereotypes I hear about people on the spectrum as individuals who get mad for no reason due and have lack of empathy. That would be schizophrenia and bi polar. I heard that today and got upset with someone who claimed they did lots of research. I had to remind them that they really were not an expert and it shut them down.

So, how many of you got into the same tiff?

Here. Grandma heard it from some lady in her church circle. How we're Satan's own children. She started watching the news and called me up to ask if I knew anyone who might be one of these dangerous people. I had to remind her that I am one of these dangerous people, explain again that the media tends to blow things out of proportion and that the particular lady in her circle thinks EVERYTHING is the spawn of the Devil, last week we were having a good laugh over the "Who's Who In Hell" leaflet she was passing around.

Then I had to explain again that her granddaughter is one of these people, her son-in-law was one of these people, her husband may well have been one of these people, and her great-grandson may very well turn out to be one of these people.

Then I had to get her settled down when she started worrying about our safety with all this stuff flying around the media. "No, Grandma, none of the neighbors know. No, Grandma, the police aren't coming to drag me away. No, Grandma, I don't think more medications are the answer."

"No, Grandma, I'm not going to get suicidal about it again." "Yes, Grandma, I'll go to my therapist's office if I get too upset." "No, we're probably not coming down today. I know you'd be afraid for me to be out with the kids. I'm afraid to be out alone today too. Look-- I would have had to stay home anyway. There are toys everywhere and every dish I own is in the sink." "Grandma, it'll be OK. Look, it's OK, you don't need to cry. Yes-- thank you, Grandma, of course I'd like you to pray for me. Grandma-- I'm not like that. It'll be OK. It'll blow over."

I really need to go down and see her and give her a hug right now. I was supposed to be down there today anyway. But basically I have heard enough crap flying around that I am afraid to leave the house.

So-- Begs the question. How do you feel about standing up to the labels now?? Every time you raise your voice, people are going to throw this up. "Oh, she's going psycho. Just like Adam Lanza. Get her more drugs." I hate it, but you are much safer if you are quiet and docile and keep a low profile.

The reason we are treated like that is because we are target group and these groups are the biggest ones to be stereotyped. People on the spectrum have been treated like this for generations. As for anyone who is speaking up, it will always be known as a whistle blower.

Anyway, someone blurted out that comment about people with Autism just because they do Autism research and read and think they know better. So I pushed back by telling her and another person that they don't live in our heads. They replied, "Oh we were not referring to everyone on the spectrum, and then made the research comment.

I said, "Yeah but it does not make you an expert," and they shut down.

Hmm, I am not so sure that is accurate.

My mom has both disorders combined in schizo and Bi Polar. She has those very symptoms that are mistakened with ASDs.


I see your point Sweetleaf that I am not correct on every thing but I saw my mom's behavior makes me wonder. However, I know from some experiences with the outbursts.

Getting mad for no reason and lack of empathy are not symptoms of schizophrenia or bi-polar, not saying she wasn't like that but she was one individual. I cannot very well go around generalizing people with those mental illnesses that way when its not even a symptom of those disorders according to everything I've read and taking psychology in college. If generalizations about people with mental disorders other than autism or aspergers are ok then why shouldn't generalizations about aspergers and autism be ok?

I see your point there too and you are right. The reason I said about other disorders is because even though ASD research has come a long way, I realize that people are still seeming to have a mindset about us that is not true. I decided to give society a good taste of their own meds about other disorders for a reason. I should not even be doing that.

I am mainly giving these arrogant researchers a taste of their own medicine about their methodology and how is it used. A lot psychological research is all about correlational variables having no value. The other thing is that the researchers are choosing participants of one type of Autistic trait rather than looking at a clustered group. So I am going around calling all Autistic researchers dumb and arrogant.

Reading the "expert assessments" being peddled for truth in the media about this poor kid convinces me that the professionals know even less about Aspies than they did in the early 60's when I was an Aspie kid with Tourettes.

"Jeffery just does what he does to get attention", the report cards would always say.
Attention? ATTENTION?? That's the LAST thing on Earth I wanted.
I used to dream of being invisible so kids wouldn't see the circus freak I believed I was.

And now we "don't feel pain and lack empathy"?
I felt enough pain to last twenty lifetimes, and my main failing was, I was too busy trying to figure out how to "process" all the pain and empathy rushing through me like a broken water main.

I was lucky to have had a breakthrough as a teen. I don't know if it's okay to discuss the details of it in this forum, but
I assure anyone interested that my emotions and empathy were as real to me then as they are for anybody on the NT side.

I just didn't understand how they played a role in my interactions with others. I spent most of my childhood wondering why I couldn't stop being "wrong" about everything.

Interesting to find a forum called "Wrong Planet" because with every ridiculous media report on these tragic shootings, it feels more and more like we really ARE aliens.

It's sickening to realize that despite all the research, little has changed in fifty some odd years.

Other research that I had heard was that people with autism blame other things for their problems like inanimate objects. I heard someone else brag about reading lots of findings about that.

It pisses me off every time someone talks about ASD in relation to an act of violence. It was the same thing with the shooting in Aurora. No one seems to understand what Aspergers really is. I would really hate for the media to sensationalize this to the point that people will be afraid to go near someone who says they have Aspergers, for fear the person will be violent towards them. Just because someone has difficulty expressing or identifying their emotions doesn't mean they don't feel...there was so much more going on in Adam Lanza's head than ASD. For sure.

--Well, unfortunately things seem to be going in that general direction, and with great gusto.
I am disgusted on so many levels by this.
What's next, drilling holes in people's heads, electro-shock, lobotomies?

How nice to know that AS is now being equated with sociopathy.
I need to go "scream into a towel" for a while, this is absolutely sickening.

Yes it is depressing and hard to know what will neutralize the negativity on an individual basis. I am seriously confused by the media response especially the soap opera airing of the parents divorce information so assumptions can drive page views. The autism community is showing inconsistency in that ideals are listed but never actualized. False positives can contribute to lifelong consequences of being "regarded as." False negatives may also endanger lives.

However psychopathy is inversely related to internalizing symptoms in both sexes. Psychopathy enables and includes less than normal sensitivity to punishment and includes the ability to control emotions enough under extreme stress to plan violence successfully.. Folks on the spectrum are not monolithic and other mental disturbances can coincide. The NYT had a great blog post too, and the link given that explained about the VA Tech and the Columbine perpetrators leads me to suspect that those perpetrators show behavior virtually opposite to that of someone on the spectrum. Autism involves a focus inward, not an instrumental externalizing type of antisocial behavior. I am rather ill tonight but i do have a lot of papers that are recent about the fear processing and cognition in psychopaths. I have observed some very extreme political types online and they seem to be impervious to punishment and have no sense of others pain, in fact they like to see others pain. Quacks that sell snake oil, political extremists, science denialists, doesn't matter, there are always those that try to achieve things by any means necessary and that is NOT a trait of those on the spectrum, or else all of us would have successful yet corrupt business at all costs and never be caught..Sorry, but i had to say something, the news is impossible to ignore.

The general trend in the comments of these so-called "experts" and their sycophants seems to keep coming back to handy catch phrases like "he lacked the ability to feel pain or empathy".

HELLO!! Paging Doctor Freud, that's a SOCIOPATH!

But who cares, right? Autism, sociopathy, it's all the same thing, right?
And then there's the other little "gem" which implies that autism is a MENTAL ILLNESS.

Whoa...whoa Nellie. Autism is a mental illness? I always heard it was a neurological aberration.
But who cares, mental illness, neurological conditions, they're all the same, right?

Right???

And meanwhile all these fear mongers are running around with their hair on fire, twitching and poking at anything that falls into their lap, throwing it against the wall in the hope it will stick, and they get their ratings, and the rhetorical spew continues spread like wildfire.

A equals A equals A equals A ad nauseum.

Where's Lewis Black when you REALLY need him. I need a good laugh because I want to cry.
Oh OOPS! I forgot, I can't cry because I "can't feel pain or empathy"! !

End Rant

It makes me so angry that the media implies that those on the autistic spectrum can't feel empathy. I've never even met those children who were killed, I live three thousand miles away and I still feel like crying every time I read something more on the event.

I work as an assistant to children's ministries at my church. I work with children that are all elementary school age. I remember looked at them on Sunday and just thinking, "Thank God you're all safe." I can't even begin to imagine the pain that those families are going through right now.

What really gets me is this. Lanza may have been on the spectrum, but my bet is that he was disturbed in other ways. There are always outward signs of this, if his mother didn't know, she had to at least suspect. And yet she kept multiple assalt weapons in her house? Within easy reach of this guy? Why did she have them? The media said that they were legally owned, but who needs that many guns in their house? Especially in a town that's been described over and over again as very small and quiant.

Well, getting back on topic, I'm not too worried about being singled out for having Aspergers like Lanza anymore than my brother's worried about being singled out for being a twenty-year-old white male like Lanza.

Whats the difference between a person with aspergers and a zebra?
One has black and white stripes and the other strips everything into black and white

--- I happen to believe we cannot fix our violence problem or our gun problem UNLESS we fix our mental health problems.
Right off the bat it is apparent that most people don't know a thing about mental health, or even what qualifies as mental illness.

For instance people, even so called "experts" are pointing to Adam Lanza's autism as mental illness when it's actually a neurological aberration.

That would be like saying someone with dyslexia is nuts.

I do not know and have never met a single Aspie with ANY violent tendencies toward others, and the current myth that Aspies do not feel pain or empathy disturbs me a great deal. The so called "experts" who came up with that little gem are actually describing SOCIOPATHS.

Aspies aren't sociopathic and they do experience pain, and empathy, perhaps on an even higher or more intense level than a "neurotypical" person.
They sometimes have difficulty processing these emotions but as a general rule AS is not associated with violent tendencies toward others.

AS is also NOT a MENTAL ILLNESS.
Allow me to repeat that; persons with AS are NOT MENTALLY ILL.
AS and autism are NOT MENTAL ILLNESSES, they are NEUROLOGICAL conditions.

A neurological condition does not equate to insanity in any way, it's a question of square pegs trying to fit in round holes and nothing more.

Little or nothing was known about AS and autism when I was an Aspie kid growing up in the early 1960's.

It PAINS ME to realize that society still doesn't know any more about autism than they did back then. Listening to people refer to autistics as "insane" or "mentally ill" brings back all the frustration and depression I experienced as a kid who continually dealt with the ignorance and bullying common at that time.

I never realized we would continue to spread hidebound ignorance on this level today, in the 21st century.

Where do we go from here? Do we let these experts recommend drilling holes in people's heads to "let out the bad humors" the way they did in medieval times?
Are we going back to lobotomies and electro-shock therapy?

Should I put on a goddam helmet so folks don't worry about me banging my head in the rubber room I sleep in at night because, Lord knows we wouldn't want the world to be invaded by a parade of insane Aspies wielding guns, knives and dirty bombs just like common terrorists.

My wife also has a neurological condition, should we lock her up too?
The words "mental illness" have a very specific definition, so maybe people need to look it up before opening their pieholes.

This poor kid who shot up a school didn't do it because he was on the autism spectrum, he probably did it because he was stressed out by the abundance of
E.O.W. hysteria, doomsday prepping and hyper-survivalist propaganda being force fed to him along with a steady diet of FEAR, FEAR and MORE FEAR.

For a kid with an enhanced sensitivity to emotions he cannot process, this might have equaled a GRAND MAL CASE OF P.T.S.D.
When your parent preaches 24/7 about a coming war and the need to be constantly armed and ready for an impending attack, you can expect even a normal neurotypical child to snap.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is not why Adam Lanza shot up that school.
Stress from a daily dose of fear is probably the major factor.