General Autism Discussion

Oh, definitely happy about that. I'm moving to Niagara to take care of the family vacation house and the dog after my grandparents move away and before my parents retire there. And I'm moving right when everything in that area starts hiring for the summer and I have a couple leads already. I really don't want to work food service anymore though. I'm planning on staying in that area afterwards to spend time with my parents since I haven't really been able to in the past 5 years.

Oh yeah! Then cheers to you!

Anybody else here ever left wondering how many of your personality defects or personal issues are actually because of the autism, and how many are just you? As a guy who has had anger management issues, and bouts with paranoia I can safely say I've wondered it about myself. I end up asking myself, is this because of my autistic brainwiring? Is it a side effect of the social isolation and problems that come with being autistic? Or is it completely unrelated and am I just kind of a bastard?

I suppose that in the long run it doesn't matter. Where your issues come from is a lot less important than trying to fix them.

I've never had a real problem working retail. Occasionally I'll have what I would describe as a fairly autistic day (a day in which all my tics are ratcheted up more than usual) but those are few and far between, and have rarely ever impacted my performance.

edited 25th Feb '15 7:39:57 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Anybody else here ever left wondering how many of your personality defects or personal issues are actually because of the autism, and how many are just you?

I've wondered that many times.

I think ultimately, it doesn't make sense to think of autism as something separate from who "you" are. People are who they are regardless of which labels are applied.

edited 25th Feb '15 7:50:56 PM by storyyeller

I know. I was just thinking about it when the subject of "would you take a cure" came up a while ago. I'm sort of curious about how many of my issues would actually vanish with such a cure.

There is also the case where Autism is acting as a barrier for people to help fix issues or autism is aggravating other issues.

Without autism in the way, that would clear the path for you to start addressing those issues.

I would like people to have the option then evaluate what is best for them based on their case.

Well, I was under the impression that I, my personality, quirks, and mere existence, were the source of my misery for... Let's see, 5th grade up until 3 years ago when I was diagnosed... About a decade of my life, I have been utterly convinced that I was broken for no particular reason other than I was traumatized by the bullying and friendless existence I had living in Botswana resulting in my short temper and poor people skills.

And now I find out, after all these years that it wasn't just the bullying, I was always like this and the incident just made it worse or something to the point where it negatively affected my ability to deal with people significantly.

I always thought it was just me. My diagnosis has just helped me externalize my anger slightly towards something other than me because my bane finally had a name.

Unfortunately the extent of this is in this thread. Otherwise I'm utterly convinced I am the problem regardless of my Aspergers. When I'm here I'm at least reminded that maybe my issues are somewhat clinical.

Pretty early on I just sort of decided that I absolutely didn't care what others thought and that I wouldn't bother trying to define myself according to the values of people I didn't really like anyway. My diagnosis helped me understand why I am the way I am, but I managed to kick the inferiority gremlin out. He manages to get back in sometimes, but normally I can't be bothered to try being anyone but myself. I don't see the point.

I envy and despise you people for whom self-esteem comes so god damn bloody easy for.

Are you sure you don't have Depression as well?

edited 26th Feb '15 4:09:28 AM by Greenmantle

Oh no, I know I have depression. It's just not relevant to the thread so I hadn't brought it up.

I wouldn't say that depression is entirely irrelevant to the thread, either. These things might happen together, and maybe a depressed state exacerbates ASD symptoms?

I was told that due to unawareness of my ASD and therefore not knowing how to deal with it caused my depression. It was a lovely cause and effect chain. Thing I didn't now I had caused a catastrophic meltdown in my first semester in college leads to depression diagnosis and eventually lead to ASD and ADHD diagnosis a year and a half after the depression one.

Doesn't surprise me. I had something similar, combined with a family history of mental illness^note  My now dead mother was Schizophrenic. Mind you, ASD doesn't mean one can't be (somehow^note  God knows how! ) popular and charismatic, especially if one uses it as an USP.

The social cirumstances also have to be taken into account. If the school and family can provide a support network, things can work out much more easily with less emotional "collatoral damage" than otherwise. It's not so much your fault as the fault of the relevant adult authorities.

At this point I find knowing that I suck to be slightly more healthy than going back to the stage of my life where I hated adults, believed them all to be worthless and awful people who would never actually do anything to help. I mean, I still believe that I'm far less vindictive about it now.

I mean, how could anyone have known, it's like how I keep being told "You were so high functioning there was no way anyone could tell you had Aspergers." It's not like I saw counselors so frequently that as trained professionals they should have been able to notice that I wasn't just suffering from ordinary shyness and violent temper or anything. Not at all.

Sadly, you may simply have to accept the fact that it was more or less random circumstances that did you in. Had you grown up in another place or time, your outcome might have been different, but you weren't, and ultimately there is little point in blaming anyone or anything. You play the cards you were dealt, my friend, not the ones you wish you had.

edited 26th Feb '15 7:27:12 AM by DeMarquis

Quite. Keep buggering on, as Winston Churchill put it. Remember, even those with all the Privileges and advantages in the world can still totally mess it up.

I already have been, but that doesn't mean I'm going to magically stop hating it. All this is just me venting, I'm past at least 75% of it by now.

I wish I knew about this earlier, these Tweets are hilarious

Looks like a Google search for Autism Speaks' hashtag yields more negative about them than positive. Nice.

What are Autism Speaks and what is the problem with them?

edited 26th Feb '15 10:59:05 AM by SaintDeltora

The main problem I've generally heard of with them is their over-focus on childhood autism. Whats this that people are upset over?

They want to cure autism, something that many autistics oppose.

They frequently refer to autism as a fate worse than death.

Some of their board members have expressed sympathy for parents who murder their autistic children.

They ignore all criticism from autistics.

They exclude autistics from their leadership. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only major advocacy group that excludes the people they advocate for from their leadership.

edited 26th Feb '15 11:01:51 AM by lrrose

"They frequently refer to autism as a fate worse than death."

...Ok I've never heard them say that.