For the Aspies who feel ashamed

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Right, before I start this thread I need to say something really important. There are some Aspies out there who aren't very fond of having AS, and so I've decided to start a thread exclusively for those of you who feel the same way about having AS as I do. Right, I understand there are a lot of Aspies who have found it easier to accept and are happy with being a little different, and that's fine, but I don't want to be accused on this thread because this is the haven, and if you have a problem with this thread then it's best that you don't post or even read through it. There are a zillion other threads on this site, so just concentrate more on those and let those Aspies who aren't happy (or even depressed NTs) to discuss our miseries on this thread, then that's fair and then there will be no bickering. Thank you, I'm glad we've sorted that bit out.

Now, as you have guessed, I'm not a proud Aspie. I know it's silly to go through life being ashamed, but I am, and there's not much I can do about it. The reason why I'm ashamed is because I look at everybody around me and just see how much more socially confident they are. I mean, I know all the social cues, but I just don't seem to have the confidence to express them, unless I've just heard some really good news what made me in a really good, happy mood (which is rare for me). All the time I am hesitating to speak, which makes me look more nervous, and I know that if I spoke without hesitating, things wouldn't be half as awkward for me, but it's just the social confidence is what I need - which I don't seem to have fixed into me properly. And that's what makes me mad with myself.
I have to try and push the fact that I'm the one with the Autistic brain and nobody else is to the back of my mind. Some of my really distant relatives, who I've never even met have AS, and they are on my mum's side. In fact, nearly every person on my mum's side of the family all seem to have mild AS traits, but they still seem to be able to function in the NT world and don't seem half as bad as I do (even though I have Dyspraxia and only mild AS). Apparently Autism is on my family, but saying that - how come none of my 12 cousins have this then? Why did it just go to me??? This is why I've got to push this to the back of my mind and get on with my life, otherwise I will break down.
But what really annoys me is I struggle because of a high anxiety disorder which is emotionally disabling, but the social services won't offer me help, simply because my IQ is average, and I'm able-bodied, and also able-minded enough to be able to work and live a normal independent life. This is why I hate having AS. I ''fall through the net'', meaning I need help but can't get it because I am ''normal'' enough. It's annoying. I am too aware of the world, yet I struggle to be in it. It's very complicated to be me. Due to the stupid government cut-backs, I've got less chance of getting the help I could do with.

Anyone else feel the same? (Remember - only for those who feel the same as me, or can empathise. Not for people to say ''oh get a life you whiny little p.u.s.s.y'', because that really doesn't help.)

I'll join. I'm not proud of having aspergers. I don't think there's anything wrong with people with aspergers, but there's a stereotype out there that I am in no hurry to align myself with, and I just don't want to have a disorder anymore.

When I first heard of AS, I thought 'that's me!'. It was exciting and I was glad (proud even?) to belong to something. AS seemed like an exclusive club and I spent a considerable amount of time getting diagnosed. I was relieved at first; I was aspie enough to belong to a 'clique' (first time ever!) but now years on, I'm bored of AS and I'm stuck with the realisation that I can't just press the 'normal' switch anymore (maybe I enver could) and this is me for the rest of my life, maybe improving but always lagging a few steps behind my peers

I'm not proud of the fact that I cannot hold a normal conversation. That I trail off or mumble and leave people mkaing sideways glances at each other when I do. I'm not proud when I look back over my life and realise how I must have come across to other people; I've hurt some really nice people in my ignorance.

God, that was depressing/ Sorry guys- feeling a bit morose at the moment.

Last edited by Lene on 28 Feb 2011, 7:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Yea I agree with both of you. This isnt like a gay pride thing, I dont see how you could be proud of this. I deffinetly think of myself as less since finding out.

it definitely makes me feel inferior to most of my peers. its something that i am so not proud of i would never want anyone to even know about it. I feel like it makes me as mature as a man of 5 years younger, which is to most, something to be ashamed of.

I hope its ok that I comment..I just wanted to let you know that I really like how you started and ended your post. I think it was smart of you and should prevent bickering. I was just talking about how annoying it is when someone posts something and others who cannot empathise chime in with things that are not helpful. Your way of writing this is much more effective then what I had to say.

As for empathsizing..I too find it annoying when I have to deal with things that seem to come easy to most people. You are not alone in this. I try to remember that most people are just "faking it" though and sometimes thats helpful.

I used to believe that everyone who was walking around all cheery and pleased with life actually was. Then I noticed that people who write fb status updates like "just had a wonderful dinner with my lovely husband" are kind of exaggerating to make themselves feel better. This happened when I overheard someone talking about what a dreadful time they had at dinner and how pissed they were at their husband. I realized that her post was full of crap! I began to pay attention to how often that kind of thing happened and learned that it happens quite often!

No need to apologize - that's what I made this thread for! Share the negative part of your AS with others - it makes you feel so good. It does me anyway

Thanks! Yeah, it does help.

I probably am ashamed! Although intellectually i think AS is something neither to be ashamed or proud of, it just is. I know i could wake up tommorow as an NT and just be a thousand times happier and all my thinking about AS is coloured by this.

I'm normally proud of it, because it finally explained so much of my childhood when I was diagnosed, but then there are the occasional times where I think of it as a curse.

Mostly in the times where I get misunderstood online with one of my friends which leads to her cutting me off on one or more sites I know her on for an x amount of time. Which then results in me having a minor anxiety attack. All because something I said came out wrong or was grossly misinterpreted. It's those times where I wish I could articulate my thoughts better so it happens less often. But I can't. I can "improve" as much as possible, but some things will never get better no matter how hard I try.

Sometimes...I just want to be normal, but then I cry because I know I can't.

I don't know if "ashamed" is the right word, because I don't think I'm ashamed of having AS...I'm neither proud nor ashamed, really--it just is, but man does it suck! If there were an "NT pill" that would make me NT I would take it YESTERDAY. I am so sick of 40+ years of not "getting it" with social things, having to work harder than hell at things that seem to come naturally to others, not being able to talk about emotional stuff, obsessing about things...argh I mean, I'm glad I was diagnosed because it explains an awful lot, but I hate having AS and I do NOT consider it a "gift" or something positive. Ugh.

~Kate

Nicely framed thread you have here! I, too, have felt increasingly frustrated working with the tools that I was given. When I first stumbled on the idea that I might have quite a few autistic traits, I thought that this knowledge would help me turn my life around with ease. I thought that I would come into my own as a bright and successful young adult and get my life working. I have had some academic success, but my social life has barely gotten any momentum at all. I feel like cursing every time I accidentally make a weird facial grimace, blank out on someone's name, or go off on an oblivious mental tangent. From many perspectives, these things aren't so bad, but in a group of almost-anonymous classmates who I might want to impress, it's enough to raise a few eyebrows. I can't simply open with the line "I have autism, kinda"; that's a little too personal to tell just anyone. So, I'm resigned to confusing people without them knowing what's going on.

My life is stagnant, and my motivation is low. Not the most attractive qualities in someone that wants to have a serious relationship at some point in their life. Do I really have to appeal to pity to find someone? I don't want pity but I may not survive without it. Is that overly dramatic? I'm not sure, but I am sure that I will not be happy without friends.

My initial excitement has faded, leaving me disappointed with myself and unsure of my future.
...


Joe, you were right about this being cathartic. I feel 10 pounds lighter!

I'm with you guys.

I just don't know why people would be proud of it. All it's ever done for me is burden me, socially, mentally, AND physically.
That and the stigma that comes with aspergers makes me ashamed to admit I have it.

Asperger's Syndrome is the source of all misery. I despise it, and I wish no one had diagnosed me in the first place.
I just wish I could be normal. This life has never been worth living. No point in accepting yourself when nothing has any value. Boredom, depression and anxiety, you're always there for me. <3

I'm hoping the ADHD medications will help me slightly, but I'd probably need a ridiculously high dose accompanied by awesome panic attacks, visual hallucinations and severely increased insomnia. ^_^

It's basically my last hope, and I'm only nineteen. I'd rather be a drug addict than a person with Asperger's Syndrome.

If nothing helps, there's always that bottle of pills in the drawer or the rope that I tied to a branch deep in the forest.

This is how I feel (except ''ashamed'' is the main description for my mentality). I feel so angry with myself because I bring problems on myself out of anger or irritation, then complain at the consequences. I'm always doing it and it's starting to piss me off now. Like when I'm out in public and I inwardly get irritated with people, for a few seconds I show them that I'm irritated and not care what they think, then immediately after (when people start staring at me and thinking, ''oh what a miserable cow!''), I wish I hadn't shown that I was angry, so I try sending signals (using body language) to make them think that I wasn't angry at them I was doing something else. But it's too late. NTs aren't stupid with this, so I've made myself look like a miserable angry person, and the humiliation is done. It's all very well, but I live in a little village and I get the same bus every day, and I'm bound to see the same people (after living in the same village all my life), and soon nobody will want to strike up any small talk with me whilst waiting in the bus stop because they will just think, ''here comes that miserable girl,'' and I've got people thinking that of me now, and that is why I'm so angry with myself. I could stop this silly behaviour tomorrow, but it's so easy to say that when I'm sitting alone in my quiet bedroom sharing issues with other Aspies on my computer - because at the moment I'm not out walking in the street with all the crowds of annoying people (which makes me anxious and irritable).

For example, today a really smelly man got on my bus (he usually says hello to me), but he sat right next to me, and the unwashed smell almost suffocated me. I showed that I was annoyed by shuffling right to the edge of the seat and looking right in the opposite direction, with a very grumpy look on my face. About 4 seconds after that I felt guilty (it might have upset him). Then I saw a woman, who was sitting nearby, glaring at me for ages, as if she saw my reaction. I thought, ''oh s**t, why did I go and do that?!'', so I then tried to make it look like I was sitting on the edge of my seat and looking the other way to see if I would see someone I know out the bus window. Hopefully it worked, but I doubt it.

I just wonder, how do NTs manage to hide their frustration? Say if a really smelly unwashed person came and sat next to a young NT woman, and the woman really hated dirty smelly people right near them - what would they do? Would they just sit and ignore the fact that they're sitting near someone who is really dirty and smells bad? Surely not! (And I have a sinus problem where I can't smell things as good as most people, but I still felt drowned by this man's smell!)
I'm very self-conscious about smelling - I have to wash every day, put deodorant on, and change my T-shirt and underwear every day, because I hate the idea of me going out smelling. And having this man sitting right next to me, the smell of him must have lingered after he got off, and I feared people who just got on might have thought the lingering smell was me!

I don't feel ashamed so much as I do victimized. I know it sounds petty, but... why me? Out of everyone who could have gotten stuck with AS, why me? Did I do something to piss off whoever/whatever controls these things?
I'm fifteen, and I often imagine what the last decade and a half could have been like for me if I had been born NT. Every time I do this, I start to cry, because I realize how much easier things could have been for me if I hadn't had AS.
Sometimes during conversations there are short but noticeable silences. I'll take a few seconds to review what I'm going to say in order to make sure everything is socially acceptable. Whenever I've tried to be carefree about it and just say whatever comes to mind, it hasn't turned out well.
Let's preface my next statement with this; I am agnostic. And whenever I think about what could have been, had I not been given this curse, the next thought that comes to mind is, "****, if there's a god up there, he sure has a sadistic sense of humor."
There are a few gifts that I think I have because of AS- but I'd trade them away in an instant to be rid of this horrible thing.

Last edited by The_Postmaster on 06 Mar 2011, 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't have any gifts. I'm not a clever Aspie. I was in the lowest sets at school for maths, science, technology, and god knows what else. And my NT cousin was in the top sets for maths and science, and has average social skills aswell (he may not be loud and confident but he is not lonely and shy). All of my grades were below C (and I only got a C because of my excellent creative mind - I created a design for a piece of furniture what was really good).
I don't think anything good has come out of having AS. People may say ''but you're a nice person'', but how's being a nice person like me good, when you're so nice that people eventually end up treating you like s**t?
People say ''you can be a trusting, dear friend'' - but if I'm such a perfect friend, why don't I have many friends? NTs don't want a trusting dear friend - they look for someone who is assertive, confident, good interests, converses at the average level, and is trusting and dear to a certain extent. I'm so trusting and dear to people that they soon get sick of my niceness and just think it's time to get me to do whatever they want and take advantage of my good nature. That's not good.

Whatever good points I have, the bad points overtake them. If I put all the good points in the left scale and all the s**t in the right scale, the right scale will be really heavy and touching the floor, and the left scale will be up in the air. (I might try an experiment actually - get some scales and a lot of marbles, and each marble represents a good or bad point, and I count up all the good points and put them in one side and then I count up all the bad points and put them in the other side. I can see the results now.)

With the creative mind - you can't have a creative mind in this world. I've even created an imaginary music band, and found random pictures of people on the internet and pasted them on to Microsoft office word to be the members of the pop group, then grouped together lots of random songs from YouTube and downloaded them on to media player..... Now in the real world, that is really sad (not as in unhappy sad, but as in weird sad). NTs listen to music produced on CDs. Sometimes I do too (thank god!)

Last thing - my fear of small children. When I was a child, I used to have a fear of dogs and would avoid going to people's house who own a dog, but when I got to my teens I grew out of it very suddenly, and now dogs don't worry me (only if they bark loudly, but that applies to any loud sudden noise, not just to dogs). But now I've seemed to have developed a fear of children under the age of 5 to 6 (depending on the child), and I try to avoid going to people's houses who might have a small child. It's not even the screaming what's the only thing what puts me off - it's just an unexplained fear I've got of them. I know why. It's because I want to be a child again myself, and I'm so jealous of children for being children. I've got to be all grown-up and responsible, but sometimes that's difficult when you feel in a really bad mood or if you're feeling bored and want a bit of excitement, or if you want your mum to come with you to the doctors because you're too anxious of going on your own..... Also, I wasted my whole childhood bawling when there were other children at my house (eg my brother's friends), and I just think that if I could be shot right now then born again in the same mum, but could pick who I wanted to be before being born, I would pick ''confident NT'' (don't mind if I was boy or girl), and then be born all over again, only being a happy sociable child.

I only get one life, and the whole thing is took up with having AS.