Cheated by Asperger's -- Not worth living with!

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That's a good f***king point. I also really liked the video of the guy with no arms and legs -- it actually made me think of something. What if I were to completely bludgeon social situations, and not worry about it? What if I just smile to myself and say 'there I go again! I bet those people got a taste of something different!'

I'll spend a rare moment being positive, and since it's so rare, I'll embellish it fully. (Might as well, right? I spend enough time hating my life.)

The other day I was at an art show. The bartender girl there was giving me eyes, and after trying very hard I realized that I couldn't formulate small talk to save my life, and that I really had no way to relate to her in a way that is expected for just getting to know people. It made me feel pretty ridiculous.
After a bit, I decided to go look at the art on the walls. They were watercolour, oil, and acrylic paintings.
One thing with me is that I have what I can close to describe as a sensory orgasm when it comes to things with colour and texture. No, it's not sexual, but it is a strangely intense pleasure that I don't know if it is because of my AS. I have stared at a dried leaf for twenty minutes, realizing that I'm looking at one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, and the more I look at it, the more fascinating it gets. Then I pull it apart and feel the sensations of separation and crushing it in my palm. I can find a whole world of detail in a square centimeter of tree bark, and touching it with my fingertips really broadens the experience to nothing short of euphoric.
So, I was looking at these paintings on the wall, and when I look at paintings, I put my nose about 2 inches from the painting, and examine every square inch at a time, up and down, left to right. I look at the tiniest textures and colours, I look at how the light catches any physical textures, how the colours blend and the sharpness of the lines and strokes, etc. It takes me a long time to look at one image, and if I particularly like it, I can stare at it for a very long time and never get bored. Being able to touch the painting is even better, but that's not usually allowed.
So, I was having such an incredible time with these paintings, and it occurred to me that I was behaving strangely. It also occurred to me that I didn't particularly care.

Now, what if I were to endeavor to apply that attitude to the situation with the girl? "Hmm, I have no idea what to say to this girl. It doesn't appear to be working out. I can't be 'normal'. Oh well. I don't particularly think I am 'normal', and if I present myself as normal, I'll have hell to pay later when it becomes obvious that I'm just plain odd."
It makes me think of the idea of 'be yourself'. This is something that has never worked for me. Ironically, being anyone else hasn't worked great for me either in most cases, and in the situations where it has, it certainly didn't feel good.

But what if a reappraisal of 'be yourself' would include the idea that whenever we try to 'be ourselves' we're always doing it from a position of realizing that ourselves are very different from everyone else, and that's a bad thing, and so we're interpreting it as "Be yourself as long as you're just like everyone else in every way you want to be." Then of course, being ourselves doesn't work.

Perhaps being ourselves only really works when we have the courage to say 'Damnit all, I stick out like a sore thumb in social situations, but at least I'm not boring.' In the same way that I said to myself "Wow I probably look really weird peering at these paintings like a microscope, but if I were to look at them like everyone else does, it would be a lot shi**ier of an experience."

After all, I look at the NT population and I have two thoughts: "I'm different from them." and also "Most of them seem interchangeable." I certainly am not interchangeable. I can't think of a single person like me. I even get offended when people compare me to other people in looks or behaviour.
Maybe saying all the right things would mean that we'd have nothing to define us, to make us really memorable and interesting and spicy. In this way, I can see a blessing in AS -- but only if I have the courage to laugh it off and be okay with being alienated by everyone who I wouldn't get along with anyway.

It's only speculation, and I'm definitely not there yet -- but I might be onto something, if I could develop the courage and confidence for it.

Go for it. Yes. Exactly what you just said, only you put it better than I ever have.

I think " a scientist" is on the spectrum, Horus; they seem to test in the Broad Autistic Phenotype range, generally.
Add a few more 'over expressed genes', and then some impairments would arise.
Just anecdotal, but maybe you heard of the bright scientist who couldn't read body language?

Addressing the whirlpool :

Quantitatively, someone can have substantially more "undeveloped areas." Look at the scale of" scatter" on a cognitive profile test; someone can have a huge scatter of 160 verbal 80 non verbal vs. 160 verbal to 130 I.Q. performance. Both have autism, and I've heard it said here on this site, "there is no such thing as having mild autism, autism is autism, either you have it or you don't. " Would the former have an easier time than the latter? What about a 100viq and 70 piq, as comparative?

A few examples :
1)Some here can't work to be gainfully employed to even own a car , and if they could buy a car; then they couldn't even drive it down the road due to sensory overload or just by virtue of being "spatially impaired."

2) Some "here" can't even say "hello" to someone without causing a major social upheaval, but others are able work and be reasonably satisfied and do have some semblance of a social life- it's all here in the posters.

There is more to "aspergers" than the DSM 299.80 criteria. I think of it more accurately as a "pervasive developmental disorder;" with the probabilty of it being more than the quality of being cutoff or disconnected from another's mind - (a mirror neuron impairment). Then add in comorbids(depression,anxiety) in the equation, and seizures and or sensory overload.

Some can adapt and others are not so able. Some are happy with it and others are in misery.

I just wanted to add - You said you can't relate to anyone over 10 and a lot of responses are about bullies.
How about getting and Elementary Teaching degree.
You hang with 10 year old's and help the system change bully practices and help aspie kids learn to cope.
If full college is hard to handle, then just take 2 or 3 classes a year til you get there.

Lol, that's a big step though - I still don't know if I'll ever be able to go that far myself. For now if its something I know that I literally can't control I'll try to put it out of mind as it happens. I read a study online somewhere that one of the issues that may be linked with some forms of autism/AS is the mind not forgetting enough due to a certain chemical process - so we hold onto memories both helpful and unhelpful. Its that much more frustrating when I wake up in the morning, am in the middle of showering and have some major social flub from when I was in junior high come to mind and I end up feeling as much shame as if I'd just acted it out. At those points I keep reminding myself of my current philosophy on reality - we are not our identities, our minds are given to us by 50/50 DNA from our parents, the rest is a cross between their instruction and environment, at all points in that walk environment is invariably identical - you could play a ten minute slice of time back 1,000,000 times and see the same exact things happen the same exact way. Hence I try to remind myself that there's nothing else I could have been or done at that moment, that at least helps a little.


While I can really enjoy visual art I think I have more of what you're talking about with audio where I get a reaction that I can only describe as spiritual and timeless with music, I've had people suggest it could be kinesthetic but I would argue that not so much that I see anything literally, in my minds eye yes, but its more like all six of my senses unite there - kinesthetic/motion/touch as strongly as visual. As my name implies I like a lot of dark, techy, moody drum & bass - that's something that some of my close friends can relate to, and its one of those things where, at least in the US and I'm getting the impression most places outside of London, if you play it for most people they'll usually start twitching out and will be able to stand...maybe a minute of it...before they have to turn it off. I don't get that, I probably never will, but closest understanding I can draw is that its supposed to be a social extension, a social extension involves vocals/singing, it needs to be uncomplicated enough for the singers personality to be the forefront, it needs to be in style like today's fresh press of the oven at the GAP or Abercrombie, hence electronic music takes all of that and spins it in reverse already.


This is where we can't give too much to ourselves, as in when were in public we do need to at least know our traits and keep their effect minimal. Even in private I do try to keep it going just so that it stays fresh, but, I've grabbed what I think are the most vital pieces so that its not back-breaking work. Typically when I'm out and about I just won't say much, won't make eye contact with anyone that I don't need to (sends a strange message), when I am dealing with a clerk or someone else in line I try to be engaging and keep my conversation crisp (it depends on the topic though, if its something I can't go on I'll sort of just nod as a way to try to tell them that I'm listening but not fully on page with the material). I think the trick for us, someone else said it on the first page of this thread very well, is trying to get AS/autism recede into us and have 'us' matter more than the AS/autism, which I completely agree. We all have very different personalities even in spite of likenesses and I have a hard time seeing this as our dominant trait of identity - thus we're better off telling ourselves that we're us first, autistic maybe second or third, even fourth, and living that way as much as possible.

With women though, I don't think being yourself will work. It doesn't for almost any guy. Then again when I say it won't work I mean that it won't work with most women you'll meet. To even end up in a relationship that's worth anything you can't of course play the game of putting on too much of a front, I've watched people wreck their own lives because they were too good at it and thus weren't forced to touch base with what matters or what they necessarily need - none of it seemed consequential in any immediate sense. My advise, sort through all the girls you've met and think of the ones who have reacted to you well even after talking to you and seeing a quirky side, or think of the ones where the adjustments needed would have been little more than you being able to see them a certain way at that moment and respond in kind. From there you just need a theory of what type works with you. Throw away the 'would work in theory', or 'Hmm, if I'm a nerd I should date a nerd', the stereotypes are generally junk and what you're best off getting good at is understanding neurotypes and figuring out what type of energy the right girl has about her, what her mannerisms look like, how she tends to dress or think, that'll help you also - when you see girls that you passed on - understand why it was pointless. Then again even with girls you aren't interested in, I'd still advise being friendly where possible but realize that in this day and age everyone's lost and grabbing at perhaps a few too many straws.


Exactly, and I've come to the conclusion that most people out there, comparatively, don't have to try hard at all. I say that because some of my biggest lasting social faux pas and social skill issues from my early 20's were over-originality, ie. I'd hear a conversation, say something on point, but on point in a way that wasn't always on the general thrust of the conversation. The given conversation had a fact brought up that could take direction A or B, 99%of people would think A, I said B, which gets to be a problem when you do it several times a day or almost predictably. The reason they say they can't fathom it or relate to people who'd do that is exactly as they say it - they can't.

One of my other issues that I still to this day lag with is that I almost never say anything truly spontanteous, unless I'm with people I can trust to let it roll off if it doesn't work. I learned as a kid even - every single instinct I have is completely and utterly wrong. So, when I nailed my behavior down to being on-point, even when I still laughed and joked (unfortunately Chapelle type humor, stuff that's sort of dry and brainy), enough people accused me of having no personality. Even now when I'm out with certain people - whether its my boss or certain other friends, we're with a group and one of them will say something very odd or spontaneous (ie. CLEAR out of the blue), its received ok coming from them but I know that if I would have done the same in the past it would have caused at least 10 or 15 seconds of incredibly uncomfortable silence. I feel like I'm getting a little better with this one but I'm noticing that its 90% presentation, just like if your body language is off everything will fail even if you're rote social skills are perfect, it seems like if your body language is on or if they can read your presence better it seems like you'd have to say something pretty far out there in a scary way to have a fail. Mind you, I'm still far from being the life of the party at a top 40 or country bar but, my battleship doesn't get sunk every time I speak anymore either. If there's one bit of advice I can give to you at at all on NT's - they respond well to people who hold themselves with authority and tend to punish those who don't - ie. much of it is a strength/weakness thing rather than pure social skill issues.


Lol, no. That's only something I think most people with AS would try if they've been control freaks over their own behaviour for years, find that its not working, and they start getting adventurous with the question of "What have I *not* tried yet?". Of course that's a decision that usually lasts all of five minutes before they pull back and say "Pfff... no...f--- this....". I think with enough self-conditioning we find ways to re-articulate ourselves in a way that NT's can more easily understand, on account of that the mask gets thinner, lighter, much more easy to maintain, but taking it off entirely isn't something we can do, most NT's then again can't do it either.


Also it means that they're mostly average achievers. Regardless of everything you've been through or the differences you have to struggle with, you don't need to be 'God on Earth' in terms of achievements (ie. end up famous on some level) to justify your right to existence or your right to dignity.


As a believer - and not believing in free will - I believe that God has full responsibility and full foresight over everything; ie nothing has ever happened in history that wasn't prewritten by him. My take on it is that this is something for us to experience, we grow through what our vessels endure (we don't own the thoughts of the vessel as they're earthbound but - in an eternal sense we are shaped by living as them), in that sense everything from individual differences to disabilities to all out evil in the world is all precisely there for color depth, as they're is no accessible universe outside of experience.


There's no one-size-fits-all answer either, just like there is no 100% strategy. Everyone has certain situations where one approach will work but not the other, than another set where the other will work but the first won't. I'd say seek to figure yourself out as well as you can, read some Carl Jung if you think it might help, and go from there. The better you understand the differences between parts of your identity that are only as they are because of societal conditioning and parts of your identity that are set in stone the better sense you'll have on how to go forward.

It's been awhile since I haven't posted on this forum, and this thread greatly caught my attention (I just finished reading every single post). This morning I got up feeling depressed, more or less in the way depicted by PistolSlap in his initial post ; I often feel that way, althought I do try to be positive and live on, but this morning I really couldn't overcome my sadness and tiredness (I had a bad cold all week, which didn't help at all). To state the obvious, this discussion really stands at the core of the problem most people with AS encounter : somehow we can rationally accept our lack of social skills, but there always come some moments when our lives stall before us and we just can't seem to go on.

Althought I too could rant about my situation for pages, I thought maybe I could shed a positive light on our condition. Sorry in advance if my sentences seem awkward or my words are out of place, as I've been having a cold all week and English isn't my native language.

1- First off, I'd like to point out that we Aspergers are in general a lot more realistic in the way we perceive life or things in general, which doesn't help to overcome our feelings of sadness and depression. Althought it is true we might have a hard time in some aspects of our lives, the same could be said about a lot of NTs. As someone else mentionned, NTs have their problems too : some are born utterly ugly, dumb or have been raised in dysfonctionnal families, others have been sexually abused during all their childhood, some have a hard time finding a mate just like us, for whatever reasons, some do find a mate but find out that it isn't at all what they expected, some are totally unhappy with the career or social life they have...

The main difference between them and us, I believe, is that they have a much easier time than Aspergers creating themselves lies and fallacies to put aside the negative aspects of their lives and go on. They also have an easier time lying about themselves or their supposed happiness, and in the end having people around them believing they're great/happy helps them to adopt a positive image of their lives, which is something we Aspergers have a hard time doing due to our very realistic way of perceiving or conceiving things. We Aspergers look at others in social situations where they praise themselves or their accomplishments, and sometimes our literal minds forget how most of them just play a game of self-contentment or happiness ; what do you really think they do when they get home? They just sit in front of the TV and compare themselves anxiously to icons and models, and realize they're not really what they can presume to be in a social context.

This is more or less the "purpose" of socializing if you ask me quite frankly : to praise other people false social-images just to have others praise your own fallacious image in return. Have you ever witnessed how social people never seem to really fill their self-esteem with such praises? They more or less consciously know that such praises are not really objective and just part of the social masquarade. Well, we Aspergers just can't seem to praise anything that's false or superficial, so we just don't get praised a lot in return. All in all, we have to accept that we don't have access to all the lies people use to boost their self-esteem, but it doesn't mean we're inferior to them in any objective way. Actually, dealing and accepting my own true self makes me feel smarter and more insightful than the average person, which in return compensate for the lack of self-esteem that's offered to me in social situations. Whereas I have an average-to-low self-esteem about my true self, people have an average-to-high self-esteem about their false self ; which is really better in terms of objective self-contentment?

2- Another thing I'd like to mention and talk about, is how we can actually use our disability to overcome the feelings of guilt associated with our condition. Sure people put a lot of pressure on us for not always behaving in a normal manner, but who are they really to judge? At times, I'd really like to alterate their neural patterns and make it like an Asperger to see how they would cope. Most football jocks who think they're really manly would litteraly s**t in their pants, the cool and strong-headed dude would bang his head on the wall in tremendous terror, and the snob know-it-all would desperatly cry all day. And what do we real Aspergers do? We fiercely go throught life despite all our quirks and amidst all the people snobbing us and looking over our shoulders in a arrogant manner.

I'm 28 years old now, and I have only one friend, never dated a girl, still live in my mother basement, and still don't have a real job. Do I feel guilty about it? Not at all... despite all the difficult situations I've been throught and the issues I have, I still manage to wake up every morning, groom myself neat and clean, eat healthy, go to college and study hard in hope to create myself a future, I lift weights 4x times a week, I take care of my appartment despite craving for my special interests, I play the guitar despite nobody ever praising me, I read things and educate myself to become an aware citizen, I try to create myself a decent value-system, and so on. And what do other perfectly "normal" people do in general? They just go with the flow with elegant laziness, not really caring about what they're doing and thinking (so long as it doesn't affect their precious social image), they sit in front of the TV and lament their lives and hope somebody will save their perfectly fonctionnal selves.

Well, I really don't give a damn if some socially successful jock think of me as a total moron or loser. As I said, how would he cope if he had my neural configuration? And why exactly should the hot social girl be the objective judge of my life? She can barely understand the most simple underpinnings of human life, so why would I grant her authority to evaluate something as complex as myself? Long story short : don't let people be the judges of your life and accomplishments. We have a developmental disorder which most people don't understand. I know it can be hard, but we have to accept the egocentric fact that only we can understand and judge our own lives.

3- One final point I'd like to cover is why living a hard life necessary be a bad thing? We live in a society where our most insignificant discomfort is amplified as an outrageous threat to life. Nobody should ever feel pain, nobody should ever cry, nobody should ever disagree with nobody, and so on. Well my friends, if you havent already figured out, pain and suffering is a perfectly normal and sane expression of life. I'm currently reading Nieztsche, and he expresses what I've secretly believed for years : pain and suffering is the single most important motivation for the conservation of life. You might not agree, but this is one of my strong personnal belief. People who suffer end up being more aware, sensitive and conscious of their surroundings and have the will to surpass themselves ; happy people are just way too busy being happy and preserving their state of happiness. If you read just about any great scientist, artist, musician or writer, you'd find out that all of them suffered more than the average person ; most of them had some kind condition, spreading from Asperger syndrome to syphilis. Althought I might not end up being a great scientist, artist or whatever, I am proud to think that when my life will end I will have understood and experienced more of this universe than the average human being.

Well I think I've said enough and I hope I've lighten up things up a bit in here... I'm getting tired (I still have my cold), so I'll just express these three points for now. I might get back here later to discuss more in depth some of our issues.

Take care!

Last edited by Bigbang on 02 Oct 2010, 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hmmm... nobody is responding. For some strange reason I always tend to close threads. I'm not really sure if this is a good or bad thing...

No, you had a lot of good thoughts, particularly on the smoke and mirrors game people play hoping to ward off major depression I never quite thought of it that way but at the same time I really think they're wired that differently that these things can make them happy to an extent. Myself I can't even bring myself to watch one sitcom per week, I just end up feeling deeply depressed about an hour or so that I completely wasted - even if it might give me some small talk ammo its just not worth it, most people can do this for hours and feel perfectly ok with it.

Well, I tried that idea I had about 'laughing off' my social blunders, and it worked a lot better than I thought it would.
People tend to look at me really strangely, because I think I tend to look at people really strangely, I don't think I've got a good idea of appropriate situational eye contact -- anyway today I found someone peering at me as if I were a shifty scoundrel, and I thought "Hmm, there it is again -- I must be doing something wrong -- Okay, I won't worry too hard on it and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong." Instead of instantly trashing myself in self-deprecation.

It was a lot easier on me.

Good start. Next, try to project that confidence. Don't immediately crumble if someone says something harsh; try to stand and sit with your back straight and eyes not looking at the ground, if possible; speak with a bit of force; and always act as if you think you're above social rules rather than below (without seeming to look down on those who follow the rules). Mixed with a healthy dose of sincere kindness and a touch of friendliness, this is a lot of how I manage a satisfactory social life. (The other part is humor. Self-deprecating is easy, but may not help you seem confident.)

Good start. Next, try to project that confidence. Don't immediately crumble if someone says something harsh; try to stand and sit with your back straight and eyes not looking at the ground, if possible; speak with a bit of force; and always act as if you think you're above social rules rather than below (without seeming to look down on those who follow the rules). Mixed with a healthy dose of sincere kindness and a touch of friendliness, this is a lot of how I manage a satisfactory social life. (The other part is humor. Self-deprecating is easy, but may not help you seem confident.)

I dunno... for half a century I tried to treat the world as though everyone in it were like me. Not much worked terribly well, but I had faith. Like my mother told me, God had made me like I was and he had a plan for me.

Everything wears thin over half a century though. Belief in God evaporated from me one day, dissected away by the touch of Occam's Razor. A while later, Aspergers started to soak in through the cracks in the foundations. Reality broke in but my self confidence dissolved away. There's some computerish things I'm still unusually good at, but the people stuff? Where can I start.

We've a work group of twenty people. More than half of them, to my uneducated but newly sensitized eye, are odd in one way or another. A succession of organisational cultures has selected for such people, evolved a management style to keep them productive in one way or another, and is now the most significant obstacle to budget-driven organisational reform.

Most of those people are trapped in the same everyone else is just like me cycle that held me prisoner, and most of us are ignorant of it. The organisational interest leans towards sustaining that situation, because organisational knowledge of autism and its roles in human power structures can lead to legal liabilities in areas like non-discrimination and prejudice. Still, there are larger policies that bind us that mandate fair treatment.

So, where were we? Try to project that confidence? Don't crumble? OK. Doing that. What next?

Oh yes. Humor.

I feel that way a lot. I feel like Aspergers Syndrome takes away my ability to have any kind of life. Things that help me to be hopeful is that I found out there are all kinds of treatable health conditions that can lead to Aspergers Syndrome symptoms. I also found out that Carnosine helps with reading social cues. I tried Carnosine and it did help me to read my son and my husband a lot better. There is a ton of information on the internet about nutritional deficiencies in Autism and Aspergers Syndrome on the internet as well as other excesses. I found that food intolerances can cause problems with oxcytocin release, which is involved in reading people and attachment. Kirkman Labs can help with food intolerances, especially with wheat and dairy. They have enzymes with Dippeptidal Peptidase (DPP4) which digests cassein and gluten. Another thing to try is colostrum. It is said that are immune systems are not regulated so we frequently get sick and have immune mediated shutdowns in the frontal lobe. Colostrum will regulate your immune system and help with food intolerances. I tried both the enzymes and the colostrum and found them to be beneficial. Hunt for links in what is happening to you and research as much as possible, there are all kinds of things that can help affect your neurology, so things are easier for you. Everything is linked. There may not be a cure, but the symptoms can definately be minimized. You may need certain supplements your whole life, but the supplements and nutrition can make you better so your life can be better. As for lack of eye contact, It is said that glycine improves eye contact, also a deficiency of zinc is said to cause gaze aversion in kids, so it could be causing that problem in you. Zinc is commonly deficient in people on the spectrum. If you are better able to look people in the eyes that could definately help with your social life. Another thing you may want checked is your metal levels, particularly mercury. Our bodies don't unload heavy metals due to a lack of gluthathione. Mercury can cause the same symptoms as autism. I would do anything to lesson or get rid of the symptoms of AS and found information that was useful, you have reason to be hopeful. I really recommend Kirkman Labs, they measured up with the enzymes and carnosine.

If you arent in prison and have your health, your life can't be ruined at 25.

We've all learned coping strategies to varying degrees, especially us older guys. You can learn them too. And most of us have more to learn so it's not like you are the only one.

We all seem to have similar experiences as the OP. All I can say is grin and bear it, like I have done. But, as for Horus, I truly sympathize. It is one thing to lack social abilities and relationshipo skills; but memory problems? motivational deficits? At least I can be satisfied with my art and other achievments, and remember them. Memory lies at the core of our humanity, so we should not underestimate how devastating such deficits can be.

Hi Bigbang, thank you for your great post

I think your first point is correct.When i am depressed, i try to figure out what went wrong, i analyse the situation and try to understand the behavoirs of others. Furthermore, I also read some book about how to cope with emotions. It told me to just think of all the bad habits of the others, of how bad the person who made me sad and so on. It seems to me that the last kind of behavior is the one which the normal people stick to: Instead of intellectually trying to understand the truth behind what happend, and why it went wrong for you, they try to calm down there emotions more "efficiently" by making the others bad person, in order to easier forget. So the aspergers people seem to keep more sad, because they are more realistic! As you said too.