A word that I hate: "overcome"

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Ooh, I'd like to beg to differ here (...sorry). Not everyone would agree, of course, but for me, I like expectations. Not the type that expects me to go out and party and get drunk, or the type that expects me to fail at things, but the type that expects that I'll be successful at whatever it is I want to do. It gives me an outside impetus to not give up, regardless of the horribleness I need to put up with. If there were no expectations of me, I'd likely be sitting at home on the couch reading all day (i.e. in my comfort zone).



Umm, dunno - can't help you, sorry. But -->



[Disclaimer: obviously this is just my opinion based on my own experiences and doesn't or won't encompass everyone.]

I was once told by a science teacher that I was the type of person who wouldn't be any good at physics so I shoudln't take it as an elective. So I didn't. Such a mistake!! Turns our I love physics (especially quantum), I'm just horrible at doing it! Having a form of dyscalculia I'm also horrible at maths, but just as I was about to pull out of it in High School, I was told in no uncertain terms (by the deputy Principal) that I would do maths. And not only that, but also Advanced and Extension units. So I got myself a tutor (my Dad drove me an hour there and back) and had lunch-time meetings with my maths teacher and gave myself meltdowns but I not only survived it, I ended up loving it - So much so that I almost took it as a major at Uni.

This goes back to what I was saying about expectations - if I'm expected to fail at something, I probably will, but if I'm expected not to, I'll go out of my way to make sure I don't. Human psychology 101. Obviously neither my Dad nor my maths teacher nor the deputy Principal expected me to fail, so I ended up not expecting it of myself. But it's not like I was expected to do it without all of the extra support, but everyone saw what I needed and gave it to me so I could at least have the opportunity to succeed.

Now, this might not seem like it has much to do with special ed teaching, but it might. I have a close family member with moderate/severe ID, and because of this, expectations for his speech (among other things) were low, and he would essentially speak 'babytalk'. However, one day another family member, while looking after him as a child, taught him how to pronounce certain words properly, and wouldn't you know it, his speech improved dramatically in just an hour just because expectations of him changed. However, when his parents returned, his speech regressed to how it was originally.

Also, Temple Grandin notes that when she was brought up in the 50's, she was expected to have the same, impeccable table manners as everyone else. And not only did she do it, she's grateful that she was made to do it.

Conclusion: People will trend towards meeting your expectations, whatever they are. Obviously expectations have to be realistic, but people can certainly surprise you as long as they're not left to flounder in an expectation with no support or well thought-out plan of how to reach it.

Hoookay, long post, sorry guys, but here's me getting back on track. 'Overcome' AS? Not going to happen. I can act as normal as you like and I'd still not have 'overcome' it. But overcome the difficulties I experience because of AS? Sure, I'd like to think I'm working on it. And I also like to think that by doing so I'm actually becoming a far more resilient and resourceful person that I otherwise would have been. Will I ever come across as completely 'normal'? No. But I'm learning to accept and even celebrate that.

You describe the pygmalion effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Thank's nikt. I should say unreasonable expectations, a lot of schools, parents and people in society have unreasonalbe expectations that with A, B, C or with X, Y, and Z the majority of asperger's shortcomings will be overcome. I think, a lot of people believe that or hope for it.

Sorry about the science teacher. Do you know what the wrost thing is? (sorry to beat around the bush NT like). It's sad because the teacher might have believed they were doing you a favor and it was the right thing to do.

Last edited by Smartalex on 13 Apr 2012, 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Omg, I do! I didn't realise it had a name. (That would have shortened my post significantly ) You've started me on a whole new Wikipedia tangent.

Yep, I'm with you there.



Too true. It makes sense to play to your strengths and not stress out about the other stuff by avoiding it. Whether it works out to be for the best or not can sometimes only be determined by hindsight. I know a fair few people who are brilliant pianists, but some hate their parents for pushing them to do it while others are incredibly thankful their parents did exactly the same thing. That's life, I suppose, and the very reason trying to be a perfect parent (or teacher or doctor or whatever) is doomed to fail. Which is nice, in a way, because it means that we don't have to keep trying to be perfect.

I couldn't have said it any better than that, CockneyRebel.

I agree, I hate when the word "Overcome" in used in relation to being on the spectrum.

Only way I could overcome Aspergers is to be outright cured from it, most of my aspie issues can't be helped.

Alright. Let me give this a try. To other Autistic folks, I know this is technically wrong, but this is the best way I've figured out how to explain it to Neurotypicals in a way they can understand.

Alright. Unless an Autistic person actually has severe mental retardation, they don't actually have a "mental disability" despite it being considered that by society. Neurotypical brains, and Autistic brains are different, and both have certain skillsets where they are superior to the other. It very similar to the difference between men and women. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Autistics are from Jupiter?

There's a fundamental difference between men and women, and neurotypicals and autistics. Men make up 50% of the population; Women make up 50% of the population. They are forced to work together, and are expected to figure out how to cope with the differences in each other's thinking, and learn to communicate with one another. Neurotypicals make up 99% of the population; Autistics make up 1% of the population.

Really, the only "disability" in Autistics comes from our difficulty communicating with Neurotypicals effectively. But... by the same token... Neurotypicals could be considered "disabled" for being unable to communicate effectively with Autistics. The singular reason we are considered disabled, is because we are a super-minority. Because of that, we are expected to carry the entire burden of learning how to bridge the gap in communication between Neurotypicals and Autistics. Think about how many centuries women were considered inferior to men, and they had a 50/50 split, JUST for thinking differently. If it was bad for women, it's 50 times worse for Autistics. Autistics are no more inferior or disabled compared to Neurotypicals than Women are inferior or disabled compared to men.

Of course... there are still a lot of misogynists in the world. Don't be a "misautist".

Now society is technically right. That 99% of people doesn't owe us s**t to try and bridge the communication gap and understand Autistics. And any Autistic person is ridiculously self-entitled if they think society owes them that. However, there are a selection of people in the world who DO owe it to us to bridge the communication gap WITH us, instead of making us bear the entire work load.

1. Special ed teachers
2. Psychologists
3. Husbands/Wives/Partners/Lifemates/Whatever
4. Parents and/or other close family members

If any of those 3 are failing to cooperatively work on bridging the communication gap, then they are a complete and utter failure at their job and responsibility. A bridge is built much faster, and much easier, if it is built from both sides. You want to be a special ed teacher? Don't EVER f*****g expect autistic children to have to bridge the entire communication gap to you. That's what society does; you are SUPPOSED to be empathetic and nurturing. You need to, you MUST learn how Autistic people think, and communicate with them, as if you were Autistic, much like you are expecting them to communicate with you as if they were Neurotypical. It is the only way to be truly successful at your job.



Now, one thing that might help you understand this, is in understanding HOW the Autistic brain is different from the Neurotypical brain. To other Autistic folks, I know this is technically wrong, but this is the best way I've figured out how to explain it to Neurotypicals in a way they can understand.

This may not necessarily apply to all Autistics, but it does apply to me.

Alright, I'm sure you've heard about right brain and left brain. Right brain is creativity, and left brain is logic and reasoning. The Neurotypical person has some sort of blend of the two. For an Autistic person, we more or less have two left brains. Our logic and reasoning powers far exceed that of Neurotypicals, but our creativity abilities, are not quite that strong. Our right brain ranges from weak, to metaphorically non-existant. We can be creative; we can use our logical powers to deduce and analyze artistic and creative means, and construct them analytically, and produce a reasonable facsimile, though under close scrutiny by someone who understands art, will find the lack of spontaneity to be subconsciously apparent to them.

This isn't bad, this isn't good. It's just different.

Now, I'm getting ready to explain something important, and I'm going to use an analogy, but under NO circumstances ever think that Autistics are brain damaged. Alright, you know how a person who is perhaps in a car wreck, and receives brain damage, may find themselves unable to perform certain tasks that they were able to before? The section of the brain which operated that task, is now damaged. However, the brain is an incredibly adaptive organ. With a little bit of therapy, the person's brain will learn to perform the old tasks in new areas of the brain which were NEVER intended to actually perform that task. This can mean a lot of different things; it can even mean some things and strange and cool as a person moving the section of their brain which deals with hearing, and places it in the same part of the brain where a brain deals with sight... and then they are able to hear colors, or see sounds.

The Neurotypical brain does this, and so does the Autistic brain. Even though we may have an underdeveloped creativity center of the brain, we can train the logic center of the brain to simulate what the creativity center of the brain would have been doing. Neurotypicals can do this too. Ever heard of a rather famous book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain?

Now, here's where it gets really good!

This is the really cool part. I learned this one recently through studying Neurotypicals, and I understand them a lot better now.

We've all seen this chart a thousand times, but you'll notice a made a really crappy photoshop of it.



Yeah. Here's the part where I blow the f**k off of your mind.

I've been accused many times in my life of being atypically self-aware relative to neurotypicals, and I never understood why, until I figured out the above. When talking about Autistics, everybody always focuses on LOGIC VS CREATIVITY. But they seem to forget their are other parts of the brain... like the unconscious part of the brain.

To my best estimate from communicating with Neurotypicals, I personally (and I assume other Autistics by extent), operate nearly 90% of what Neurotypicals do unconsciously in the conscious realm.

Me and my girlfriend had an extensive discussion about what the Basal Ganglia and the Cerebellum perform unconsciously for Neurotypicals. And I found out that nearly 90% of everything that Neurotypicals can run through their unconscious part of their brain, I instead operate through the Left side of my brain. In other words. You do it unconsciously. I do it with the analytical logical part of my brain.

Mind blown yet?

This leads to some of the very obvious communication problems. Like in the physical expressions of emotions through body language, tone of voice, and the expression of emotion through eyes via the muscles around them. Since all this stuff is not handled on an unconscious level by an Autistic person, an Autistic person's conscious mind must be made aware of it, and then they must CONSCIOUSLY exert the mental effort to perform the task.

I am an Autistic person who's learned to read the muscles of the eyes, and perform neurotypical eye muscle movement. And Neurotypicals I've known for years have instantly noticed that my face is much more expressive now. And every single muscle movement is performed on the conscious level for their benefit... and for my own benefit. Because I want people to understand the sincerity of the emotion that I am feeling inside, without having the communication gap of their vast subconscious mind disagreeing with what I speak.

It's more than that though. This conscious/unconscious thing seems to leak into almost everything I do. I have played over 75,000 hours of videogames in my life. Do you know that I still consciously press the buttons for every action that I perform in a game? It took me a long time to realize that Neurotypicals don't.

Now I'm listing some of the negative aspects of having to perform unconscious tasks through the logic center of the brain. Here are some positive aspects.

1. Far greater self-awareness and deeper awareness of who you are as a person without extensive training to do so.
2. Able to resolve unconscious problems without as much effort
3. I lucid dream 100% of the time without even having to try to wake up (This may not be true of all Autistics), as my unconscious mind is nearly non-existant and cannot take control while I sleep. I actually had a very hard time understanding what lucid dreaming was for a long time, because I didn't understand how it was different from "normal" dreaming.
4. Being aware that you have conscious logical control over what other people's unconscious functions are, allows you finer control, and the ability to fix problems fairly easily that a Neurotypical would have immense difficulty with.

Now I know all of this is some rather esoterically concepts. But I hope it will get you thinking on the idea of how Autistic people are different from Neurotypicals, but absolutely in no way inferior, anymore than women are inferior to men for having a different way of thinking..

I wanted to emphasize something...

See what I mean? They have an atypically deep self-awareness because things that normally Neurotypicals would be handling unconsciously, they are processing as it occurs on an analytical level.




I disagree strong. I think this is wrong. You have every right to have expectations; and you should have expectations for Autistic people. But you need to bridge the gap too. For the love of god, bridge the gap too.

Here's a very simple example. Equal expectations. But one puts all the burden of bridge-building on the Autistic, and the other is a mutual bridge building exercise:

Wrong: "You need to look people in the eyes."

Right: "If you watch the muscles surrounding the eyes, you will be able to see a lot of movement and motion, shifting of shapes. The height/width ratio and angles of the muscles around the eyes will change, and that these different shapes which are produced give a much greater depth of emotional expression than the human mouth does. This is why people want you to look them in the eyes. If you study and watch the muscles, and listen to the context of what the person is saying, you'll eventually be able to use that data to better understand the subtleties of what the person is really saying and meaning, because Neurotypicals are silly like that, and don't just say what they feel and mean in a literal fashion, even if that would make communication a lot easier. This will also help you communicate with Neurotypicals, because after you have studied it for a while, you'll be able to figure out how to replicate the muscle movements that Neurotypicals are making in order to better help them understand what you are feeling and thinking and trying to say."

It's kind of a big difference isn't it? Both have the exact same expectations to "look people in the eyes". But one says "I want you to bridge this gap on your own." The other says "I am trying to think in the same literal analytical fashion as you do, and I want you to share in this effort with me, by trying to think in the non-literal non-analytical fashion that Neurotypicals do, and then we can both understand each other better."

Karilyn, thank you so much!! !

I came off as an ASS, a lot. First, I read through this forum and I didn't understand that people were venting and don't actually hate ALL NT's. Someone, thankfully explained that to me.

I can't respond to what you wrote as a whole, I've read it, 'digested' it (NT figurative speech that, lol, I'm praised for in the NT world, that's sad), reviewed my ed pysch notebook and book (yes I paid attention in class). I have to respond paragraph by paragraph, sorry. After a year of studying for my 09 certificate, my teachers recommended me for spec ed so I switched. There's more to it but I won't explain that now because I'm trying to focus on what you wrote.

"Alright. Unless an Autistic..." I hear where you're coming from and I have, in the past, politely referred to AS as a mental disability. I didn't mean it pejoratively, but I hear where you're coming from and I was wrong to think of it as that.

"There's a fundamental difference," very true and a much better perspective than mental disability.

"Really, the only "disability,"' because it's such an NT world, my girlfriend has a lot of trouble with job interviews. So too does my young friend S and, he has trouble understanding when NT's are taking advantage of him. This is the NT's fault for taking advantage and job interview but, the AS people suffer a lot. There is a communication 'disability' and I can't downplay this or sugar coat this otherwise I can't effect any change.

"Don't EVER f***ing expect autistic children to have to bridge the entire communication gap to you." You're right to be pissed at me, I got frustrated because I thought ALL of the venting I read about NT's was literal hatred and I thought it was felt by everyone. Ultimately, I'm on the forum to learn. To learn perspective, and just*, understand.

*'just' is my undenyable NT-ness coming out that I'm praised for in the NT world. On this forum I learned that it exists. It's unconsious communication and though I sat on this word, 'just' for 20 or so minutes I couldn't explain it consciously. If I were to erase it, I wouldn't be genuine, honest.

"right brain and left brain" studied it forwards and backwards in ed pysch.

"This isn't bad, this isn't good. It's just different." I agree, my entire grad school cohort of 'type 09-ers' learned this too and we hope to teach to both sides of the brain. Note, I'm at the tail end of the first generation to learn about right/left brain for education.

"under NO circumstances" gotcha, we had to use car accident examples to understand parts of the brain. We didn't think of 'lefties,' 'righties' or 'whole brains' as defective.

"adaptive organ" we got into this a little with broken arm and someone becomes left handed, right et cetera. We briefly develed into people with strokes learning to adapt. This was only brief.

Dude, the drawing was amazing! None of the EGO is underwater? Occasionally will a wave hit it? I understood amazingly and I never have really grasped this before. Thank you.

"operate nearly 90% of what Neurotypicals do unconsciously in the conscious realm." Ok

"In other words. You do it unconsciously. I do it with the analytical logical part of my brain" That did blow my mind! and I never could grasp that.

"and then they must CONSCIOUSLY exert the mental effort to perform the task." OKAY (lightbulb/ah ha)

"And every single muscle movement is performed on the conscious level for their benefit... and for my own benefit. Because I want people to understand the sincerity of the emotion that I am feeling inside, without having the communication gap of their vast subconscious mind disagreeing with what I speak. " Wow! Ok. Look, I learned how to do some stunt driving and racing by learning a pedal manipulation technique known as 'heel toe' driving. This involved complex manipulations of the pedals with my left and right feet at the same time. It involved percise movement with my left foot and I'm right handed so my left foot was the hardest appendiage to control. Consciously manipulating my left foot percisely, my right foot percisely and both at the same time was PAINFULL and mentally exhausting. The pain and exhaustion FINALLY went away as I gradually learned to get a 'feel' for it->do it unconsciously. Is it painful or exhaustive for you to CONSCIOUSLY interpret facial expression, display them, and consciously press game consoles? Did it get less painful and exhaustive?

"But I hope it will get you thinking on the idea of how Autistic people are different from Neurotypicals," Yes it did greatly, thank you.

I'm at the point of burning my brain out from going through this all, it's painstaking. I can't comment on any more right now I'm just overwhelmed mentally right now. I spent over two hours trying to write all I have.

Karilyn thank you so much, if you have the chance, do you want to do the drawing on photoshop like you did for the autistic/nt, for nt/as/autistic.

I can't say if 100% is underwater, but I can't necessarily find any in my own mind; I just sorta didn't want to redraw the lines. A lot of the Id is definitely above the surface; though I think a tiny bit is below the surface. And from my understanding of the Ego, 100% of it is above the line; all my self defense mechanisms I'm fully conscious of; this shouldn't be that hard to understand why though; the Ego is effectively the mind's ability to rationalize; and that is effectively what the Autistic mind specializes at on a very conscious level.

I think if I was to actually redraw it, I'd redraw the Ego MUCH larger, and entirely overwater, with the Super-ego as maybe about half the size, but not non-existant; this is my interpretation of my understanding that most of a Autistic person's consciousness is internal (or possibly religious), and tends not to reflect as much of the desires of authority figures as Neurotypicals do; that doesn't mean we lack moral consciousness; it means that our moral consciousness is less affected by society and environment than Neurotypicals (This is why we are somewhat more easily victimized by malicious people; and why some Autistics are very suspicious of Neurotypicals as amoral or power-hungry, having been burned by someone with a very different moral code in the past). As for the Id, I'd draw it as about the same size, with both the Id and Super-Ego being roughly 20-25% underwater.

The only thing I've been able to clearly locate an identify as underwater is some very basic things. Like, muscle control. I may have to think to push a button on a videogame controller for the 10 millionth time, but I don't have to think of how to make all the muscles that coordinate in my thumb to press the button.

Likewise, there's some other weird basic things, that are occurring subconsciously. Like, having learned to look at the muscles around the eyes recently, my girlfriend made a point to tell me she loved me while I watched the muscles around her eyes. I saw a shift of muscles that was unique and different, and logically I knew it must be love. Now this is nothing new; I've known logically that she loved me for a very long time. However, there was some part of my mind which still exists subconsciously, some sorta primal instinctual part of my mind, that was able to read that muscle movement, and recognize it as love, and I felt a surge of emotional response to it that I've never felt before to her love for me.

It was very confusing, as logically, no aspect of the movement of a handful of specific muscles should particularly alter my perspective of her love for me. But I did experience a greater sensation of love than I had in the past; from something as nonsensical as a movement of muscles. That was one of the few times where I was very acutely aware that there is in fact a primitive primal subconscious which exists at a very basic level which is still able to read these things, even if I wasn't aware that it could read these things. If I was to take a guess based on the neurological sensation, I would guess that I felt it in the same part of the brain which registers "fire hot"




Trust me, it's pretty hard for me to grasp that Neurotypicals do all this stuff unconsciously. It might be an interesting idea to keep in mind that since Autistic people do this consciously, that's why we're known for sometimes becoming overwhelmed by all the things Neurotypicals want us to do. Imagine if you had to consciously control your tone of voice, and control the muscles of your eyes, and control your mouth muscles, and your body posture, and your language through your hands, and do this while simultaneously having a casual conversation with a loved one. That's a LOT to keep thinking about at the same time.

One thing I envy Neurotypicals is their stronger basial ganglia. Did the immediately preceding paragraph sound familiar? It's probably because that sounds a lot like what you are told to do in training for job interviews. The basial ganglia, as you know, is responsible primarily for converting repeated actions from conscious thought to subconscious muscle memory. So you go through enough job interviews doing all of the above, and eventually it "comes naturally to you." It's much harder, if not impossible in many cases, for an Autistic person to convert things to that subconscious muscle memory.

So imagine how hard it was for you doing job interviews the first few times. For many autistic people, that's EVERY SINGLE conversation you ever have with anybody. So it can be very exhaustive at times, which is why some autistic people get very peevish about it (but I try to maintain a state of understanding Neurotypicals). It doesn't help that a lot of us underwent some rather abusive therapy as children with people who didn't care about bridging gaps with us.

NOW, in the case of my girlfriend, I can chill out, and not worry about it so much, because I know she understands me and tries to bridge gaps to me, so if some of those various little things I have to control are inaccurate, she's not going to worry about it. But workplace can be a bit different.

And to some extent, it does get easier, but it tends to with only the simpler things. The more complex the task, the harder it is to assign to subconscious muscle memory. It's like, our logical center of the brain is SO POWERFUL compared to Neurotypicals. It's much like a person being right handed; you can do stuff with your left hand, but why in the world would you? The right hand is so much stronger. So your mind and body is extremely reluctant to reassign a task which would be easier with the right hand, to the left hand. Same with reassigning a task from the logical center of the brain to the basial ganglia.

I'm actually curious to experiment with this now that I've discussed it extensively. Being Autistic I find I have immense control over what is normally subconscious functions of the human body. I wonder if I can actively force and control my mind to reassign more complex repetitive tasks into the basial ganglia for the ease of latter use.


I'm pretty sure it's the same for both AS and Autistic. All of the above that I said about Autism, was technically short for "Autistic Spectrum" and should equally apply to AS as it does to Autism and HF Autism.

A lot of this is based of observing my own mind, and neurotypical's minds. So some of these may be me attributing unique aspects of myself as an individual to the broader concept of autism, and may not be universal because of that. But I feel reasonable confident that they are, to some extent, consistant among other autistics, even if I don't interact with them that often in real life.

Karilyn, I'm exhausted. I tried to read all that you just wrote. I'll come back to you later, it's not that I'm not interested it's just a lot.

I'm having the same type of problem. I did all the work through highschool, and college, and I adapted like crazy to fit in, make friends, and make it through relationships, but I can't get a handle on the job thing, even with a degree. So I end up hearing random hurtful things, and being forced to do job applications that I know I can't fill the job description on. My mom is a psychotherapist, which makes you think she would get it, but she doesn't. "you've got nothing going on" and "just get any job until your dream job comes" When "any job" never calls back, and try a million other things. "overcome" makes me sick.

No problem. Respond whenever, I'm subscribed to the thread and am more than willing to try and explain things.

Hi Karilyn,
I havn't seen this diagram before and I'm onterested to find out more about it and a Freudian view of AS v. NT. I'd be grateful if you could point me to some material about this.

Thanks for elaborating, cubedemon6073.

I'm not sure how what you say about details v. whole picture, ties into issues with being oneself. But I gather that part of what you're saying is that being oneself isn't as straightforward as it sounds when one identifies oneself with tendencies to behaviour that society would not accept. I think that's a good point that problematizes the notion that one should simply be oneself, which one hears said a lot.