How has AS affected you in a positive way?

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It makes me smart. It makes me more sympathetic. It makes me appreciate people more than I think NT's appreciate others. If that makes sense. Though I am picky about who I associate with, when I care about someone I truly love them in a way that most people cannot love.

Also because I am on the spectrum it has caused me to meet some very wonderful and kind people whom I would never have known if I was "normal".

It helps me to see people for who they truly are.

Don't know that it has any positives. Having only discovered as 6 months ago, I am still pissed off and can't get past "what if". Only if I had not had AS I probably would not have married the person I did, and would not have the kids I do.

My intelligence and ability to leap to certain understandings about things.

My love of just looking at the sky and thinking about the universe.

My writing.

All of my obsessive interests.

My ability to see words as images (kind of disconcerting if someone wants to hurt me with words because I just see it as an image and start to play with it in my mind)

Definitely the ability to see fiction like a movie playing in my head.

My solitude. (Actually, I really, really enjoy my solitude.)

My husband. I am sure if I was completely NT I wouldn't be with him and that would be a shame because I really like him.

I agree about the impatience with housework. I'm impatient with the mundane.

My seriousness about things.

The friends I do make are so much more interesting then the ones I see NT people making (on average).

The way life is interesting to me and I just want to dissect it all and figure out how it works.

I go along with all the other positives.

I see no negatives - just some trivial irritations. I've just found out that I can't drive a car. Odd that. I've never noticed myself having a problem for 40 years, but last December I got a letter saying I officially had Asperger's which means that I instantly became incapable of driving.

An added positive or two, or an ampification...

Changing. Sounds odd that, I guess. We're not supposed to like change, are we. I think that's completely wrong. Change freaks me out, true, always has, always will. But I still like and desire it. I refuse to stand still.

Learning. I can't stop this. I think that I did start stopping doing it. (!). I then found out what was going on (which might have been a five year continuous/progressive meltdown?). Now I'm back. Researching AS and everything to do with the mind. Cosmology (it's moved on a bit since I last looked). General reading.

Laughing. I'm doing a bit more of this. Another skill I hadn't been paying attention to.

Communicating. Still not too good at this. Don't understand it much. WP smells of it.

This thread is LONG overdue. AS has many positives for most Aspies -- they're just not the "socially desirable" kind. It has helped me tremendously with my music -- being able to think about music in strange and highly-focused ways. And being able to listen to a song as both pure data and emotion all at once -- and being able to tightly cross-referrence the emotion with the data in my mind. At first, that ability freaked me out, like a thought I was hallucinating. But I've backed it up through tests, and it's real.

Most of these were learned skills, but could not have come about without AS.

I'm darned tired of people talking about AS like it's a disability!! You might as well say someone with a different personality, or say, red hair, therefore has a "disability". "Viva la difference!" I say. What "disability" actually means, of course, is "incongruity with other people" ("normal" people, who have certain "disabilities" relative to you!).

The bottom line is, you cannot accurately say, "That person is less than that other person because..." We ALL have pretty equal shares of strengths and weaknesses. Someone can "have it all", and then have it taken away in a moment of tragedy. So the moral is: "Don't envy -- envy is ill-informed."

" ... but last December I got a letter saying I officially had Asperger's which means that I instantly became incapable of driving. ... "

Why is this? Does the DMV ban Aspies from driving?

Does getting an official diagnosis lead to any more Cans or Cannots?

A good memory

High verbal intelligence

An ability to read quickly and absorb a lot of factual material

Unusual interests and an ablity to store all of the knowledge gained from my reading

A love of cats and other animals

An understanding for people who triumphed against great odds, like Roger Bannister

Most of what was mentioned above, so I won't repeat it. In addition to these gifts, I have insight into how my son's mind works. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I look back on the memories of people in my life and identify many who may be on the spectrum. Considering this, I have nowhere near the original amount of contempt toward them if I felt they did me wrong in some way or another by being cold, jerks, or stubborn.

Positives, absolutely...

I am very proud of who I am in life, the type of person I am.

While always knowing I am very different from the NT's out there, I feel for the most part it is in positive ways.

Even know socially I am not well versed, even this has given me the gift of sorting through those who care about who you are inside... and those who just give a keyrap about how well you can chit chat about the weather.

Maybe they have been few and far between, but good people usually are... these are the people who can see past it all to your heart.. corny yeah but true.

A few specific positives:

I seem to learn exceptionally fast and excel at almost anything I choose to do, unfortunate I cannot untilize this better but it's fun to kick butt on people who have been doing things/sports etc for years.

I have a big knack for problem solving

People may think I'm less empathetic but I'm probably more apt to deeply think about anothers problems and perhaps try to help them instead of just saying "Oh I'm so sorry I feel so bad for you"

I hear music in a way it seems they do not, like it "speaks" to my heart and soul.

My natural ability to paint realistically.

Really I could go on... but I will just say there are many positives that do help counter the negatives. I would not choose ever to be a NT, I would not accept a cure for "me". I like me.

I can work on a task for hours, and hours, and hours.

It's also given me a fair amount of creative problem solving ability.


So programming is exactly what I should be doing

I also get some weird dreams, which have inspired me before.