Does Wrong Planet Make You Feel Normal?

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The question here could have been clarified, but I did not analyze it as much as I usually do because I actually understood it to mean that I felt welcome. I have visited two other sites that insisted those living on the Autism Spectrum are welcome, so to speak, and to visit but I found the posters were not as detailed and as analytically inclined as I am. They seemed to me to be more like NTs, in that there seemed to be competitive and commercial aspects of the structure of the sites that I found threatening. There is an inclusive nature to this site that is, in a sense, comforting.

Thank you very much.

Not really, because at times I've encountered the same thing I encounter in a lot of autism groups:

1. I describe something that, were it described in front of people who had specific difficulties that I had, would not need explanation.

2. People totally misunderstand and think that a person would have to be depressed or something to have difficulty with those things.

3. I try to explain why in my case difficulties with those things are an outgrowth of autistic perception, not depression.

4. People think I'm just trying to justify feeling sorry for myself (because the only way they would have trouble with those things is if they were feeling sorry for themselves and not acting).

And so on and so on and so on. With people believing that since they have no innate trouble with that sort of thing, then neither do I, and that I have no good reason to explain such a thing in detail.

Which is the same reason I stopped attending an in-person support group in my area. Nobody went so far as to act like the problem must be emotional, but everyone was very wrapped up in telling how easy certain things were, that are in fact very difficult for me, because our expressions of autism are different.

The news flash that people were not getting is of course that autism looks different in different people, and can result in very different patterns of strengths and weaknesses, and that in my case it has (in some cases always, in some cases getting more so as I get older) been extremely heavy on the difficulties in self-care, motor planning, and comprehension of what is around me, and difficulty combining all those things into various supposedly simple tasks. And that simple willpower does not change this.

(In fact the one thing that does change it is, seemingly paradoxically, having someone do more things for me, or having some sort of automated system that does them for me if a person doesn't, so that I have free brain space to do everything else. It's like, if I have to feed myself, get myself water, and go to the bathroom, then I'm going to be able to do about a total of half of one of those things. If someone helps me with two of them, though, I can get the other one done. The more energy I expend, the less I have left to do the things. Like a more complicated version of Spoon Theory.)

At any rate, misunderstandings over the self-care element of things, and over how I feel about it (I don't really mind, and I'm not down on myself, it's just accurate to say I have trouble in that area), have at times made me feel very abnormal here, whereas I don't feel abnormal in this way on the daily living list I helped set up (with a friend of mine) for autistic people because a large portion of that list has serious problems in this area or they wouldn't be on that list.

It makes me feel more normal, and that I'm not the only one.

Yes.... and no.

Yes, I feel more 'normal' when I'm reading WP because I can relate to people's experiences here, and don't feel as much of a weirdo as I do IRL.

And no, because I've become aware over the past two or three weeks that, having found WP a couple of months ago, I'm making much less effort to be 'normal' in my everyday life and am hiding my aspieness less. This has surprised a few people. I haven't mentioned Asperger's but I've been less inclined to play the NT charade. It slightly worries me as I spent a long time (best part of 40 years) practicing to be an NT and now the NT mask has slipped

I didn't vote because I feel normal anyway.

No it doesn't Nothing can do that except for friends, and I've had some pretty bad friends who go behind my back.

no. but then again the internet doesnt either, and i consider this the internet

Yeah, I actually feel less normal in the NT world since I've been on here, but I'm more accepting of myself because I know I'm not alone. And if I have a bad day feeling left out of the real world somehow, I know I can come here and find people who think more like me, which is such a huge help.

You do? How can you be an Aspie and feel normal?

Best,

Idaho Aspie
www.AllThingsAspergers.com

normal ? no , i have always been different my whole life , but now i know im not alone , there are people that are like me ! i never knew that before , i always felt like i was the only one who didnt quite fit in ! its good to know im not alone in this ! !!

Welcome to the club Loveusagi

Best,

Idaho Aspie
www.AllThingsAspergers.com

The word normal is a first-class example of mis-use of the language; the NT world is trying desperately to forget the meaning of the language we speak, and we must save the language, the medium of communication.

"Normal" is a statistical word - it means the majority set. If I blindfold you and take you into a room with 100 hand bells on the table, and have you pick up and ring each one, then tell me if they are all "normal", you would reply in the affirmative.

When you took off the blindfold, you would see that you were mistaken, because 90 of the bells had black handles, and 10 had white handles.

The black handled bells are the Normal bells; the white handled bells are the ab-normal bells, because they belong to the ab-normal set.

None of the bells are defective in any way, they just look superficially different. They all play the same note in perfect tune.

We grew up in an NT dominant world where "Normal" came to be mis-interpreted by illogical and poorly educated NT people to mean "WRONG"!

There is no reason to be afraid of the language we speak when you know what it means, and can explain it to less fortunate LF-NT's