Am I a label, or am I a person?

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This something I've been struggling with my entire life, so forgive me if I suddenly get emotional or keep changing my mood after every sentence...

Up until I was diagnosed with Aspergers at age 9, I lived a relatively carefree life. I felt normal. I felt completely run-of-the-mill. As I grew up and learned about the myriad of discrimination in past and present (Jewish people in WWII, black people prior to Civil Rights), I remember thinking innocently to myself about how glad I was to be "normal", and not "different".

When I was actually diagnosed, I didn't really know what was going on. All I knew was that I was all of a sudden whisked around to various social skills classes, occupational therapy, and other interventions to help ease me into adolescence. Never when I was a kid did I feel 'different'. Never when I was a kid did I 'feel' like I was doing anything wrong. It wasn't that I didn't have social difficulties, but rather that I was completely oblivious to my own social inadequacy.

As an early teen, I realized my own differences, but instead adopted a supremacist attitude of thinking I was superior over my peers and didn't have to 'mess with all the social pettiness'. I felt like I didn't have a right to relate or empathize with ANYONE that wasn't also autistic/Aspergian.

Now in late adulthood, I am realizing my own mistakes and looking back on myself as a person. I'm going through a bit of latent adolescent angst, hoping that I'm a human being instead of a disorder.

And thus comes the question; does Aspergers make the person, or is it just one of many traits?

I know that Aspergers is a condition, but with the way it's described, it seems like it DOES have an impact on every aspect of life...does it mean we all struggle with the same issues, feel, look and act the same way for others? Or can we each cope in different ways? Are there Aspies out there that remain oblivious to their own faults and live life as impulsively and carefree as they were as children, or are we all hyper-analytical and aware of our faults? Are we all shy and unsure of ourselves?

I just want to know that I'm an original person and not part of a cookie-cutter mold...I need to know that even Aspies can be 'different'. I need to know that Aspergers is not the determiner of my personality. I need to know I can be myself...

Am I alone, or are there other people who've felt this way after being diagnosed?

Ask Howard Becker, he started all this labelling stuff. He's a nice sane guy and can be contacted here and he's like totally disposed to responding to questions like this if he's not too busy.


http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/

I've compared myself to another aspie, essentially we were brought up differently but had some similar behaviours such as pickiness with food and favouring to hang around small groups of people. I think the way you were brought up does affect the way you act. He had artistic, open minded parents while I have strict parents. He was very friendly and so were his parents. I've often wondered if my aspieness dominates my personality or if doesn't. I believe I do have a personality of my own but my aspieness comes into play when I get very stressed or very happy

I was happy before I got diagnosed because I didn't know I was that different. I just assumed I was normal and needed to try harder to be normal. But of course I had always felt different, then normal.

Basically traits are part of who you are. But yet the condition itself doesn't define you nor describe you from what I have been told. It's just part of you. I think when people say something described them, they mean their problems, the characteristics they have. Nothing ever describes me because everyone with AS, anxiety, ADD, learning issues, are all different and effected differently by it.

I used to feel for a while when I was 15 that every problem I was having or anything I do was because of AS and all it did was drive me crazy because I felt I couldn't be myself. I kept thinking "Would someone with Asperger's do this?" and if I thought "yes" I did the opposite. I even thought it sucked to come home and having to do something different every time than the same thing and I decided it was absurd and screw the label and just be myself. It was driving me crazy. Besides my brothers always did the same stuff too and they don't have AS. So why should I discriminate myself because of the label? Besides I was happy before the label so why not return to that? Of course I will still have the label but why not return to being just as happy like I was before?

I think even NTs would drive themselves crazy if they kept trying to not be NT and trying to do the opposite of NT. Even NT doesn't define them and they are people too, not the term.

Yes there are parts that we do that is part of AS just like there are things NTs do that is part of their NT. But there are lot of things we do that have nothing to do with NT or AS, it has to do with being a human.

To answer your question, not it doesn't mean we all struggle the same way or have the same issues, I think every aspie copes differently. I am sure there are aspies who remain oblivious to their own faults. I have heard of aspies in denial. Some even think their own condition doesn't exist. Two aspies can have the same symptoms but be effected differently by them.

People are made up of labels. Aspie, NT, gay, straight, introvert, extrovert, interesting, boring, fun, caring, careless... Everything about every person has a label attached to it. I wouldn't spend too much time getting stressed about the autism one. You're the same person you've always been, diagnosis doesn't change who you are.

My AS/HFA is one of two areas or "issues" in my life where I had long thought I was the only one like me, and my own overall experiences have been very similar to yours.

Aspie or not, you are just as unique as anyone ever was. Other people often find us odd, but only because they are more accustomed to something else and *not* because we have some kind of automatically-offensive or -intolerable hard-wired personality. So then, the key here is to not let a *diagnosis* define you while remembering even AS/HFA, itself, does not.

I prefer to see myself as a person. I never did care to see myself as a label. I am not autism. I am CockneyRebel.

I am a person with many labels, none of which are me.

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