Aspergers Syndrome is my condition not who i am

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grimesy
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09 Mar 2009, 7:31 am

im starting to think just becuase someones diagnosed me with it doesnt mean i have to live my life thinking it controls me. I have friends ok sometimes i can see what make us a bit different i talk about it to then and they dont really notice it much so i just sometimes i think AS is just in your head.

i dont refer myself as an aspie or part of any spectrum im just a human person



Liresse
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09 Mar 2009, 7:35 am

If your friends don't see a difference, maybe you don't have to have it at all?

As for me, mine doesn't control me. But I'm also not in denial or anything. At the moment I definitely am not coping with life as well as other people, for all I try.


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grimesy
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09 Mar 2009, 7:41 am

yeh im sure i have it very sure

i just dont like alienating myself from other people

ive had times when i just hated myself for f*****g up social interactions but you just have to work at it.



AmberEyes
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09 Mar 2009, 8:39 am

grimesy wrote:
im starting to think just becuase someones diagnosed me with it doesnt mean i have to live my life thinking it controls me. I have friends ok sometimes i can see what make us a bit different i talk about it to then and they dont really notice it much...

i dont refer myself as an aspie or part of any spectrum im just a human person


Neither do I.
I am just a human being.
The danger with labels, is that other people begin to treat you as less than human and don't believe that you should be held responsible for your own actions. Being labeled may also give other less informed people the false impression that you're "ill" or can't improve yourself.

This is why I steer clear of words such as "with" or "have" because these words seem to put diagnosing parties in control of me (in other people's eyes at least). These terms would also imply that I'm helpless (to some people) which clearly isn't true.

If I say "I am" that puts me more in control of the situation. The phrase "I am" makes me feel more responsible and in control of my own actions.

I am like this...

These are my current difficulties...

I can try and improve my current situation by...

grimesy wrote:
i just dont like alienating myself from other people


Neither do I.
And other people do say that I alienate and stigmatise myself when I do this.
They're right.

That's what labeling myself has done in the past, alienated me from people who could have helped/understood had the situation been presented to them in a less negative and frightening way. What labeling and a list of negative criteria results in others lecturing me about what I "should" have based on a barrage of negative stereotypes, not all of them rooted in fact.

There is something called biological variation which means that not everyone is the same. Not everyone's issues are as severe as others.

Some people are naturally less social and vary in their abilities use/are able to interpret non-verbal social cues. Perhaps some people come from family or cultural backgrounds where non-verbal cues, socialisation and eye contact patterns are different/slower anyway.

I wish that there was a milder term in use such as "social dyslexia" or "crowded room confusion" for someone like me that wouldn't wouldn't turn others against me but would instead form some kind of mutual understanding. This understanding should be based on what I'm actually like rather than what other people think I should be like based on information and misinformation that they might have read about elsewhere.

This would be far more helpful and productive for both parties than this whole "How does it make you feel?" non-sense which doesn't really help anybody. I know how things make me feel: that's not the issue here. The issue is my difficulty in being able to effectively participate and keep up with fast paced, crowded social situations and coping with abrupt changes in routine.

Environmental factors really...



grimesy
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09 Mar 2009, 9:40 am

you talk alot of sense in an ideal world there wouldnt be any labels

i never chose to have aspergers syndrome so to me i would much prefer the term social dyslexia it makes much more sence than AS. i dont consider myself to have a syndrome



dadum
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09 Mar 2009, 10:40 am

The stuff and traits they have put together to criterias and began to call "autism" or "asperger" is part of natural human variation. Whatever they choose to call it, it will still be there. Note as well that it's about traits that you have, not symptoms from a condition.(altough they call it a condition, it is still nothing more than a criteria, unlike for example Down's Syndrome, which is a specific condition)

As I see it, that means it is part of who you are and would make "autistic" as an adjective much more gramatically correct, than "autism" as a noun.
That's one of the reasons I prefer "autistic person" to "person with autism/asperger", not sure if it makes any sense.

I wish people could just use respectful language such as "black person", "homosexual person", "american" or "woman" without thinking it matters too much. I suppose people like to think in black-and-white: autism=bad, american=not bad, gay=bad 50 years ago, not bad anymore. (changed from "person with gender disturbance" to "gay")



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09 Mar 2009, 4:08 pm

I do think that AS is who I am, not just a label, because my entire personality can be described in terms of the symptoms of AS. Before I knew what Asperger's was, it was always sort of hard to fully explain my personality to others. Now, if people really want to know about the "real me," I can just say, "Have you ever heard of Asperger's Syndrome? That's me!" :lol: I'd say that my OCD would be more of a label, something that is just a part of me but not something that defines my entire personality. But pretty much everything I do in life is Aspie in some way or another.
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