Do Aspies normally suck at everything?

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Reading threads on here it seems alot of people lack self-confidence. Without bragging i'd say I have a fairly good self-esteem but I have had issues with this in the past. Is it normal for Aspies to feel like they have no talent or mess up everything they do?

First of all not everyone is grown up here so it is normal that many autistic children have to learn a lot to be good at things. Secondly and more importantly all people on the autistic spectrum have slightly different problem. Some learn to deal with autism and some do not. It is also clear that some have support and some have less support. So you would have to examine individual case. I suck at grammar. And I am proud of it.

Last edited by Highlander852456 on 26 Apr 2013, 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, it is not an "Aspie Trait", which is what I think your question is. Some people have had negative experences in their lives which might cause them to have negative thoughts about themselves. Due to the social isolation and exclusion experences by many on this board, there are many people who might have that type of negative thoughts.

A lot of aspies have dyspraxia, which means we suck at a lot of things and have done so since being children. Basically, I have trouble with nearly all manual tasks. Things like body movements and sports got easier when I became a teenager. That means my gross motor skills are superior to my fine motor skills. I can't do anything with my hands for s**t.

I used to deliberately seek out things I sucked at in order to improve at them, but after nearly a decade, I found out this was probably a counterproductive strategy. Did I improve? Yes. But I also wasted years and years being miserable. That said, I still get out of my comfort zone frequently, but not like I did in the past. I also save time for things I'm good at.

Now there's a bit of contradiction going on there. Before I have read on WP that Aspies are supposed to be geniuses who can focus on projects and so on, while NTs are ''stupid'' because they are ''so average''. Yes, I have seen the words ''NTs'' and ''stupid'' in the same sentences countless times here.

I am to say I'm intellectually average too. I'm not a genius in anything, and I don't have a ''clever way'' of doing things either. In fact other people offer me better ways of doing things while I was trying to do them in the least effective way, and not all NT's ideas are the same either.

Like I said, I do suck at a lot of things. I am not good with reading, I can't focus very well and I only like reading in small doses. I know lots of NTs that can get into a good book and love to collect shopping vouchers for book shops. Also I suck at beauty, even when I try to practice putting on make-up I still mess it all up and it always looks uneven on my face. Same with my hair. Other female's hair stays in it's desired shape. Mine flops down like a curtain, and I put clips in to hold it back and the clips slip out straight away. I can't have different hair. I just suck at beauty. And yes I can play the piano, but only with one hand, and some songs are slightly played wrong what I play, like I can't get one or two of the notes right so I just make do with what I know. But anyway I could go on forever here.

No to mention that people here are mainly to talk about their problems, not just achivements. I bet it would be pretty different if all aspiers here would only talk about achivements.

I am the "go-to" guy in my circle on all things business, and news and politics. I am very well regarded among my peers, and assume many leadership positions in areas of interest.

outside of that - yes, I do suck very terribly at most everything else

Here's my view on this: I think that self esteem (and feeling like one can't get anything right), is caused by parenting and by influence of acquaintances and friends. I don't think that autism or Asperger's has anything biologically to do with self esteem or failing/succeeding in tasks.

Those of us with autism, tend to be very different when it comes to how we learn things, and in what we consider important or unimportant in any information we take in. That often comes across to others as that we didn't learn what they meant to teach. Case in point: In school, a history teacher might have a lesson on the Cold War, and include such details as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and their ideals of the 1950s-70s, and how the USA responded by being worried of a nuclear attack. The teacher would mention that there were air raid sirens, duck & cover drills in school up until the 1980s, and etc. From that, the NT student might learn that when a foreign country acts in a menacing manner, we might be afraid, and we might overreact or misunderstand, and thus we need to communicate better and maintain good relations with all countries when possible. However, the autistic student might find the most important part of that lesson was that over 150 Federal Signal Co model 500T and SD-10 air raid sirens were mounted on steel poles in Los Angeles, and were tied into two control panels (one below the City Hall, and the other in a suburban auxiliary building 10 miles away), and were networked by the AT&T telephone relay system.

This type of thing is weird to most NT people, and it scares some people into thinking we're some kind of weird-os. NTs tend to want everyone to fit a certain set of standards in the way people think and act, and autism doesn't always fit that. So constantly from birth, we're told we did things wrong or for the wrong purpose, and this gets drummed into our heads over & over. Result = poor self esteem, and "failing at just about everything", or believing that we will fail even if we succeed.

Charles

Some of these things sound more like a co-morbid than Asperger's. Have you heard of melancholia? I think a lot of aspies may suffer from it.

Also, my sister had hair issues similar to yours, and she decided to cut it just above shoulder length with the edges turned outwards. Everyone compliments her on it now while she used to get made fun of all the time for having unruly hair.

Maybe we're just aware that the things we're good at don't count for much, or that people tend to disregard them. I was always a very good student and generally did well on tests, but it never got me anywhere in life.

I didn't even do too well in school, even in my favourite subjects. I have quite a creative mind, although I am not genius-excellent at creating things, I still enjoy doing it and feel I am my own boss with being creative, but when I done a creative design in art class at school for my mock exam, I failed because everyone was meant to do something relating to an artist but mine didn't relate to any artists and they couldn't grade me. And don't call me clever just because I done something a little original - it's something anybody could make up on their own if they were asked to create a design.

And at school I was never intellectually ahead of the other children. I was mostly underaverage and was put in the special ed group, and then I may have caught up with the rest then after a new school term I fell below uneraverage again. I wasn't terribly underaverage though. Only with maths. Many Aspies here have mentioned pi and 3768 is the power of 4 of whatever that is. It sounds familiar because I remember being taught something like that at school, but I haven't a clue what it means now. I think I would do better in a social situation than I would trying to work out some sort of some involving pi or the power of a number or whatever.

This thread entitled ''do Aspies suck at everything?'' hasn't offended me, because I don't mind being intellectually average to underaverage. It's my social intellect what I seem to compare myself to other people with. I'm also a sort-of expert at expressing my feelings, (verbally or online), which is what I thought Aspies were supposed to be poor at.

Wow, that's very insightful and probably why I was initially 'noticed' for bullying (which is ultimately what killed my happy go lucky childhood). I remember in Grade 2 there were two examples in particular: one was drawing the sun and the other was moulding from clay something you saw that week. I won't bore you with details but my answers were embarrassingly literal and at the time I couldn't understand why mine looked nothing like anyone else's. The Sun isn't yellow I said to myself and it wasn't until years later did I realize they didn't literally mean the actual sun as it would look up close.

Even my own father told me that many people consider my way of approaching things 'very weird' and this was long before I heard of Aspergers and realized he has AS traits too, just not nearly to my level.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRQUtH9yU5g[/youtube]

Do you have Nonverbal Learning Disorder? This could explain some of your experiences. I definitely relate to a lot of what you say. Officially, I have NLD, Asperger's (just a duplicate of NLD in my opinion), and Dysthymia (probably actually Melancholia, which doesn't officially exist anymore).

I suck at alot, becouse of dyspraxia I have a body I struggle to control, becouse of AS and learning dissabillitys I have meny issues with all things achidemic and social, becouse of being bullyed, belittled and generally being told by others that I am in fact trash dateing back to when I was 6 years old I naturally developed depression, confidence issues, self-esteem issues, major anxiates etc.

I think if you drew a graph rating all of my strengths and weekness, 80% of it would be below advradge and the remaining 20% would be high enough to overcome the bad and make me in line with the advradge NT, problem is life tends to weight some traits so much more and they are my bad ones. Theres not alot of things I overall can do decently well when it comes to gainful employment.

Aspies like myself tend to be perfectionists when it comes to our strenghts and intrests so I often can't satisfy myself no matter how good I may have did. I greatly like being myself and would never trade my AS or life for any other however figureing out how to apply myself can as you might imagine is often a very hard task.

Does that make sense as to why meny will come off thinking we suck at alot.

It's probably because you have healthy hair. It's slinky or very thick, which is why the clips fall out. If it was more dry and damaged it would stay in shape better. Damaged as in colored, not destroyed. Also you have to remember that most women that style their hair use styling-products (like hairspray, hair mousse, salt water spray etc) and shape it with heat (hair dryers and flat irons). There's silicone spray to get it floppy and shiny too