In the Bigger Scope of Things - AS SO Doesn't Matter!

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jjstar
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21 Dec 2007, 6:46 am

In the larger view of the world and your role in it - having or not having Asperger's Syndrome - doesn't matter one iota. You know why? Because when the sh*t hits the fan and an asteroid collides with earth, or the Big Quake hits, or a catastrophe 1000 times worse than 9/11 manifests, nobody will give a flying f what you have. And neither will you. Remember this - contemplating whether or not you have AS is identical to contemplating your navel - it's interesting and then - so bloody what? It was an interesting interlude - now living begins. That's all this is. One huge interlude before living begins.


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21 Dec 2007, 7:45 am

A therapist told me that schizophrenics who focus on the disorder don’t fair as well as those who take the meds, learn the skills, and get on with their life, as opposed to making the disorder central to their life.

She felt the same was probably true for aspies. Based on what I've seen at WP, I tend to agree.

On a slightly related tangent, my boss told me that some people who suffer depression seem to think that if they just do nothing it will somehow, magically, go away. Even the simplest of exercise, like yoga, can increase dopamine levels.


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Izaak
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21 Dec 2007, 7:55 am

More than likely no asteroid will strike the earth for many thousands of years (if man can't prevent this.) No catastrophe will strike. More likely than not each of us here will live out their days in they way that they fashion for themselves.

Taking that view, one must make of life what one can. Reach for the stars, and live life to its fullest. To whatever extent that may be.

Claiming it doesn't matter anyway because you are going to die is rubbish. That it ends makes it interesting and worth pursuing rather than just existing. But it is a rather morbid psychological state to be in.



jjstar
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21 Dec 2007, 7:58 am

I don't know if you saw the commercial on TV for dog bacon treats. The dog saw the package and started going *ooHH! Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!* Bacooooonnnnnn! Yeah. It was bacon. Packaged. With a picture on the package.

Same thing with Asperger's. It's Asppperrrrrrrrrrger's!! !! Asperger's Asperger's Aspergers!! Ok. Scarf it down, savor the taste, examine it. Heck do a thesis on it. But - in the final analysis - it's just bacon.

At some point, you have to get your fill.


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21 Dec 2007, 8:02 am

We got by for thousands of years before Aspurger.

My generation just went into business, less social interaction, a good fit for our skills.

This current idea of being crippled by a horrible disorder was produced by psychobabbling pill pushers to make money.

It is who you are, and everyone has to deal with who they are.

Aspies have survived in every western culture for over 30,000 years.

It would have never happened without them.

Whenever someone else defines you, they are wrong.

AS is so illdefined that it does not make sense here, so forget the rest of the world.

I would not let the people on WP tell me how to live. I like them, but they are not me.

The next asteroid is slightly overdue, and Aspies have better survival skills.

You are not AS, you are a body and mind, and it needs food, sleep, exercize.

It does help to be doing things you see as worthwhile use of your limited time.

It is called living.



jjstar
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21 Dec 2007, 8:09 am

Living is way underrated when you consider the alternative.


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logitechdog
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21 Dec 2007, 8:16 am

Wonder why you just did not say Global Warming.... Who needs a asteroid, or earth quake or terrisots... We are attacking ourselfs



blue_bean
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21 Dec 2007, 9:05 am

I hope the asteroid comes before my next semesterly exams :P



gbollard
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21 Dec 2007, 5:39 pm

If a global catastrophe occurs, it will be over fairly quickly...

No sense worrying about it.

Besides, if the self-destructive thoughts in these forums are any indication, most of us would welcome it.



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21 Dec 2007, 6:04 pm

jjstar wrote:
In the larger view of the world and your role in it - having or not having Asperger's Syndrome - doesn't matter one iota. You know why? Because when the sh*t hits the fan and an asteroid collides with earth, or the Big Quake hits, or a catastrophe 1000 times worse than 9/11 manifests, nobody will give a flying f what you have. And neither will you. Remember this - contemplating whether or not you have AS is identical to contemplating your navel - it's interesting and then - so bloody what? It was an interesting interlude - now living begins. That's all this is. One huge interlude before living begins.


This makes no sense to me. I'm very detail orientated so basically I feel the reverse is true. Life should be lived in the here and now. Deal with what can and need to as an individual who is going though life in your own unique way. Life doesn't have a 'start and stop' to it. It carries on regardless. but to suggest AS doesn't ultimately mean anything is gross BS and an insult to those of us with very real problems that we must try to face everyday. Everything we are, everything we do - it all matters (regardless if you're AS, NT, Black, White or sky blue pink - mineral or vegetable :D ).


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21 Dec 2007, 6:28 pm

jjstar wrote:
I don't know if you saw the commercial on TV for dog bacon treats. The dog saw the package and started going *ooHH! Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!* Bacooooonnnnnn! Yeah. It was bacon. Packaged. With a picture on the package.

Same thing with Asperger's. It's Asppperrrrrrrrrrger's!! !! Asperger's Asperger's Aspergers!! Ok. Scarf it down, savor the taste, examine it. Heck do a thesis on it. But - in the final analysis - it's just bacon.

At some point, you have to get your fill.


BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! (gag!, Puke!) BS! BS! BS!


i've had my fill :roll:


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Izaak
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21 Dec 2007, 6:33 pm

autodidact wrote:
jjstar wrote:
I don't know if you saw the commercial on TV for dog bacon treats. The dog saw the package and started going *ooHH! Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacooooonnnnnn! Yeah. It was bacon. Packaged. With a picture on the package.

Same thing with Asperger's. It's Asppperrrrrrrrrrger's!! !! Asperger's Asperger's Aspergers!! Ok. Scarf it down, savor the taste, examine it. Heck do a thesis on it. But - in the final analysis - it's just bacon.

At some point, you have to get your fill.


BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! BS! (gag!, Puke!) BS! BS! BS!


i've had my fill :roll:


QFT!



autodidact
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21 Dec 2007, 6:37 pm

Izaak wrote:
More than likely no asteroid will strike the earth for many thousands of years (if man can't prevent this.) No catastrophe will strike. More likely than not each of us here will live out their days in they way that they fashion for themselves.

Taking that view, one must make of life what one can. Reach for the stars, and live life to its fullest. To whatever extent that may be.

Claiming it doesn't matter anyway because you are going to die is rubbish. That it ends makes it interesting and worth pursuing rather than just existing. But it is a rather morbid psychological state to be in.


Well said Izaak! - JJstar if you are feeling depressed about the world right now, i'm sorry for being too harsh. We all need to vent stuff..


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anbuend
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21 Dec 2007, 7:38 pm

MrMark wrote:
A therapist told me that schizophrenics who focus on the disorder don’t fair as well as those who take the meds, learn the skills, and get on with their life, as opposed to making the disorder central to their life.

She felt the same was probably true for aspies. Based on what I've seen at WP, I tend to agree.


It's also possible that people who manage to get on with their lives without focusing on whatever neurological variance they have, don't need to focus on whatever neurological variance they have as much in order to get around the world. She sees a correlation, but the causation could be in the other direction, or some other thing, for all anyone knows.

What I was told when dxed schizophrenic, was that 1/3 of people with that diagnosis recovered without meds, 1/3 recovered with meds, and 1/3 didn't recover either way, so I'd take issue with the idea of people always having to take their meds either, even by psychiatry's standards. I've known a lot of people who were dxed with it more accurately than me (if you can consider such a vague diagnosis accurate/inaccurate), and a lot of them said the meds didn't touch their hallucinations or delusions at all, it just made them quieter (but not even less distressed). Other said they did help, at least some of the time, although sometimes the side-effects outweighed the benefits.

At any rate, I've found that the skills I have to learn require a certain amount of focus on what being autistic (or just, being whatever my neural variant is, regardless of whether it's related directly to autism or not) is. There's no prepackaged set of skills I can just learn, and I don't even learn the skills in the usual way that a therapist would be equipped to teach. As such, it's useful to hang out with other auties in order to figure things out that I might not figure out on my own.

I do remember, however, that a couple people in the psychiatric and psychological professions have wanted me to stay away from other autistic people. I find this curious, because I was in therapy since I was 7, was dxed at 14, and didn't really learn anything useful about myself until I was 19 which was when I got really involved with other autistic people, talking about what being autistic meant, etc. That's how I've learned the most skills, even.

And I still remember my therapist telling me that people who have sometimes even become my closest friends in the world, were probably not "really" autistic and that I ought not to waste my time with them, but instead listen to the therapist. (When the same therapist told me I had to overcome a circadian rhythm sleep disorder by sheer willpower -- one that I later figured out what to do with as far as medication and lighting -- in order to be considered an adult, I started contemplating ditching him, which is exactly what I did. He got irate at my parents. I'm glad I left him.) I have talked to a number of other autistic people who've had this experience with therapists, and a lot of it seems not about our well-being, but about people who might say things to us that are outside the therapist's control or medicalized worldview about us.

And, yeah, maybe if some of us could just learn a few skills and listen to our shrinks and have that somehow make that all we had to do in life, that's what we'd do. But many of us have tried all that and found that something else, something that includes actually thinking about how our brains work, works for us. I also remember a woman writing about having a medical condition that gave her extremely low levels of energy. She said that a lot of her friends tried to tell her that if she just quit focusing on her body then she'd stop having those problems. They meant well, but she knew (as they didn't) that her worst health crisis had come about because she didn't pay attention to her body's signals, learn what they meant, and slow down a bit.

So, I bet that advice works for some but not for all, and that the causation involved in that correlation often works the reverse of how the therapist imagines.


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21 Dec 2007, 7:40 pm

Also, it's not an either/or thing. A person can be very concerned about global warming, world poverty, peak oil, terrorism, and other major overarching issues like that, without losing sight of the everyday aspects of life around them including neurological variance. And indeed, if the person does not at least think about how ableism will be handled in such a catastrophe... disabled people are often among the first thrown to the wolves in dysfunctional communities during crises. All the more reason to focus on disabled people (including neurodiverse people) as important elements of building real and functional communities that don't just throw people away like that.

Indeed, my closest friend nearby is an autistic woman who perseverates on emergency/disaster management, and her specific interest within that area is making sure that both physically and cognitively disabled people are not left out of the crisis plans in any given area. She had seen the aftermath of Katrina coming, and indeed had talked to me about the possibility of something like Katrina shortly before Katrina even appeared (because another of her perseverations is weather, and she knew it was only a matter of time before a storm did that in that area), and was disgusted by how it was handled, both on a large scale, and also in terms of how disabled people fared, including those who were mass-murdered in nursing homes.


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