how did you come to an acceptance of being different?

Post Reply New Topic

I'v been diagnosed with everything from, Dyslexia, Twice Exceptionality, A.D.D, A.D.H.D, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the last one I find particuarly amusing considering the extent of personal self loathing I went through, for pretty much my entire teenage life and well into my adult life. It's a wonder at all that I survived my teenage years, let alone my adult years considering how completely unusual my own mind is. I'v almost never taken any medication to treat my condition aside from the odd valium, and I did a trial of dexamphetamine from a psychiatrist but the side affects were intolerable. Pity really, it was the first and only time I could ever keep track of numbers, with any reliability, in my mind.

Any diagnoses of a neurological/cognitive disorder is somewhat subjective. And even once, one is diagnosed the actual diagnoses, is at best only a vague, conceptual model of the mind of a minority of people in society. The doctors if actually pressed hard enough depending on how antagonistic or freindly they are will tell you that they don't understand the actual underlying biological basis of a neurological/cognitive disorder like Aspergers Syndrome.

Don't get me wrong it helps to have some basis in which to actually identify how your mind works, especially if your not neurotypical, like 90 percent of the human population.

I have a special writing skill, that I have learned to stop fearing and learned to start loving.

I learned to stop fighting my disorder and just start working with it.

I had to give up my dreams to study and find work at a University and instead I went into a semi-seclusion.

I find working out like an athlete helps to alleviate the symptoms of my neurological/cognitive disorder. But I'll be damned if I can work out, now, as hard as I used to back in the day.

A few glasses of wine, a couple of times a week, certainly doesn't go astray.

I lucked out and learned to vaguely cope with the severity of my neurological/cognitive disorder. And I am most definitely at the more severe and painful end of the Aspergers type Syndrome.

And when I say lucked out, that is because I could imagine never learning to cope with it. I could imagine completely losing it, trying to cope with it. I can imagine the worst case scenario where one's whole life turns to hell because of Aspergers. I could imagine living off the streets and life generally being a living hell, just because of Aspergers.

Anyone who genuinally falls into the category of having Aspergers needs as much support from their family as they can get. I think my family pretty much saved my life. Without my family taking care of me I can't imagine where I would have ended up. My mother gave up trying to force me to be what she wanted me to be and learned I wasn't well when I was pretty young and just gave me the means to survive and left me in peace. She gave me the financial means to live with dignity in my own house and live my own life. And she just learned to accept me for who I am. And that's sayin somethin.

And then I married a great woman.

ionno when i accepted the fact that i was different, but it was way before i knew what asperger's was, or even before i could be effectively explained what it was. i dont remember when i accepted it, honestly, ive pretty much always known/felt i was different and it never really bothered me.

I think I not only accepted it, but also gratefully grabbed onto it as (1) the best explanation I'd found yet for differences since childhood in me from others, (2) justification that I wasn't just being antisocial or uncommunicative, (3) the idea that I could function well the way I was, without having to change.

I understand that well and agree.

But that's just it, is not reasoning, it is a spontaneous response. A naive world-view, like being stuck in that development.

I like to think that since this world-view has stuck with me for whatever odd developmental or accidental reason and is now coupled with the experience of how 'normal' and 'other' are perceived, it actually opened my eyes to how the concepts are entirely of the human mind, but not inheritable natural. That there's no traits that is odd but that it is just perceived so and labelled odd by the one how perceives it.

I think this plain realisation itself helps so much in how we all interact with each other. I don't understand why not most people intellectually work with the same idea.

I love the metaphor by the way. The Sun orbits around me, the Earth, hehe