I don't want to be on the horrible autism spectrum any more

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Maybe I should use this "autism makes people murderous" nonsense to my advantage.

"Hey mom, I'm short on money right now, can I have 50 dollars?"
"No, that's too much money."
"Really mom? You'd risk your own daughter becoming murderous over a few extra dollars?"
"Here, have 100 dollars."

I'm kidding, I'd never say that to my mother.

I sometimes feel ashamed of being a human too, because of the damage mankind does to the planet just for money, but being a human isn't as isolating as being an autistic human. So it just makes me feel even more insecure about being on the spectrum when I hear about another shooter with autism.

Most people in their right mind hate murderers because they take the lives of other people, and it is normal for sane humans to feel compassionate empathy and sympathy for the murdered people and their families. Murderers may physically be human but mentally they're monsters. Most humans aren't monsters. If all humans only didn't murder because of the fear of the consequences then nobody would care about people who are murdered and nobody would hate murderers.

I don't think I should be on WP any more, the subject on autism and murderers keep getting brought up and I find it triggering. I don't know how NT people can just bluntly accuse an autistic of being the next mass shooter. How do they think that would make the autistic person feel? I thought NTs had empathy and filters? It would be inappropriate, or even a federal offense, to accuse a Muslim of being involved in the next terrorist attack. In fact I'll probably get a warning for being racist saying that, but it's equally as offensive and inappropriate to accuse autistics of murder too. And if it's equally as offensive as racism then the topic of autistic mass shooters shouldn't be discussed on WP.

What’s this have to do with you being on WP?

Nobody has accused you of being a murderer. You know you’re not a murderer.

Most murderers are NT’s…..or at least nonautistic.

I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m seeking to encourage you to have perspective.

Your feelings are valid—but so is truth.

Why are you so attached to a label that does nothing but bring you dissonance?

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I am wondering something similar.
If it would help, Joe90, I believe you could seek a second opinion on your autism/aspergers diagnosis.
Sometimes different practitioners will form a different view on whether someone is on the spectrum, so it need not be a weight holding you down if the label upsets you, it may be possible to get a second opinion.

Do I remember right that you have ADHD? Because there may be a case to be made that a combination of ADHD and mood disorder could have been mistaken for ASD.
I'm not saying that's what happened, of course I don't know your situation, just wondering if it might be worth discussing that with a psychologist or psychiatrist, if being on the spectrum is upsetting you.

I understand your insecurity with having autism. It sucks real bad whenever an evil person commits such horrible things. It especially sucks when occasionally, the evil person has a condition similar to ours. It makes us worry thinking if people might see any of us as capable of doing such things.
However we all know and your relations know that you would never consider doing such a thing. Nobody you know is reading something like Adam Lanza and thinking "Oh dear, what if Joe90 is like that?". I mean, whenever we read or hear about people without conditions committing crimes, we don't think someone we know will become like that.
I hope you will feel better soon. You're such a prominent member of WP.

Humans tend to seek justification in things so that they can make sense of the chaos around them. NT people tend to do this by "otherizing" people who frighten or scare them. This has been happening for some time now. For a long time, people thought physical ugliness was a sign of evil intention, and this persists even today (All villains in movies are presented in a few stereotypical ways: ugly, predatorily sexy, queer or nontypical for their gender, or with features that overtly show their evil intent, like eyebrows that are knit in anger/aggression, etc). If you were malformed, you must have been guilty of something criminal (The Elephant Man was a suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders for a time, despite his obvious gentility and the inability for him to have commited the murders).

When it was disproved that ugliness or other physical appearance features did not equate to being evil, it became mental illness. And since that was a very fresh and new idea back then, EVERYTHING was evidence of evil nature. You have depression? EVIL! No, that isn't right? ok, well...anxiety disorder must be EVIL! No again? Hmmm, how about...PTSD! EVIL!

Humans look for scape goats. They want to find a convenient way to place the blames of all evil behavior upon anyone who they can differentiate from themselves. This is why black men have a bad stigma upon them: They have been so easily otherized that people assume that a black man is naturally aggressive and prone to criminal behavior. Then they set up the scenarios for making this something they can reinforce with proof. If black men are forced to live in poverty so that they only have a handful of options to survive, and several of those options is to get involved in gang and criminal activity...then that means they get arrested more often, and that means they must be criminal, right?

The same goes for Autism. It is not "normal" according to society. And Autists act strange. And they don't have as much empathy. And did you hear the news?! This one Autistic person went on a murdering spree! They must all be killers then, right?

...

This is obviously incorrect. Most people with ASD are not violent. Just like most people with Schizophrenia are not violent. But the sensationalism of the media makes it seem important, and people are prone to their scape goat-ing and creation of stigma.

So ASD gets slapped with the stigma even though it is undeserved. There are hundreds more NT people who are murderers, and NT people are just as prone, if not more prone, to violence than people with ASD. But NT people outnumber people with ASD, and they do not like to put that mirror up for self reflection, so they shove blame off on other people.

My suggestion, after saying all this: Ignore it. NT people will either blame ASD people or they won't. Stigma will come and go...once there is a new shiny mental illness that they can tie to murderers, they will leave people with ASD alone. It is a fad, a popular opinion that happens to be wrong and ill conceived. A person with ASD who does horrible things doesn't mean that YOU are that person, or that YOU are ever going to be anything like them. ASD is a spectrum disorder, with a lot of comorbidities. That person who killed a bunch of others is one point on the spectrum, and their comorbidities are unique to them. And in addition they were put in circumstances that made their personal struggles harder to cope with, and agitated something that needed support instead. And the result is they acted in a way that is horrible and terrible, resulting in people dying and getting hurt.

But that is not YOU. It is not me. It is not anyone here. We are all different people, and we all just happen to be sharing the same space and the same diagnosis (official or unofficial), but that doesn't make any of us exactly the same.

So you said you don't like the violence and the idea of hurting or killing others, and you don't want to share Autism with people like that, and if Autism is like that then you do not want to be associated with them by being autistic either.

Ok. So don't. Either say that person's diagnosis is not Autism, it is Insanity (Leave it vague, and no one would argue with you...they were insane). Or stop acknowledging yourself as an Autistic person.

You have the right to not tell anyone. You don't have to disclose. Yes, there are obvious downsides to saying you aren't on the spectrum if you probably are. But YOU get to decide if that is ok for you, or not. It is ok. Don't let this hurt you. You have to live with your decisions to disclose or not, accept being autistic or not, and if not, then ok...I won't stop you, and no one here can really.

It is better if you accept that the external issue is not who you are, because that is a lot easier to accept. But if you can't do that, then you can try doing the opposite.

I hope you have some luck in either case, and some peace of mind either way.