Accepting Asperger's Syndrome

Post Reply New Topic

So some of you may have read my threads on how I can't cope with university due to the anxiety. Well I have come to the conclusion that at the root of my anxiety is probably my inability to accept I have AS...

I was diagnosed in November 2006, and I was basically told I had AS and sent off into the world, without any real "AS-specific" support. Having spent 21 years thinking I am a certain way, then suddenly finding out you're not "normal" was hard to take, despite the fact that I was the one who suspected I had AS in the first place. I remember feeling relieved when i got my diagnosis, immediately followed by this feeling of dread and "omg, there really is something wrong with me".

I feel as though having AS makes me flawed, and that other people will think of me as being stupid, slow, ret*d and generally not want to be friends with me. I feel that I have to compensate by excelling at academic work. This puts me under a tremendous amount of pressure in order to be the best, and I end up collapsing under the weight.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel "Unseen Academicals" there is a character called Nutt who feels he has to constantly prove he has "worth" to everyone. I can relate because being the best at my academic work is my way of proving I have worth, but this way of thinking doesn't seem good or healthy... because if I do poorly at something then this means I have no worth.

I also think i have major issues accepting that I am "disabled". NT's are capable of having both good social AND intellectual skills, and since I have poor social skills I have to prove I am not disabled by having exceptional intellectual abilities (i.e. coming top of the class). I think at the heart of this is perhaps my own view of disabled people? Perhaps i don't view them as "whole", and therefore, do not view myself as "whole" if i am disabled. I know that this is a horrible thing to think, but i don't know who to change it. I know intellectually that disabled people are "whole" but I don't know how to really believe it.

Can anyone relate to this? How can I change my view of being disabled and be ok with it? How can I stop placing my entire sene of worth on my exam results? Am I an awful person for viewing the disabled in a negative light (assuming that I do)?

It took me a while to accept my AS and I see it as a list of symptoms to work on. Everyone has things about themselves they need to work on but that is if they want to change that about themselves. I don't like it when people compare AS to blindness, broken legs, deafness, because those things can't be fixed. Broken legs do get fixed of course because the bones heal and hearing loss can be fixed but that depends on why the person is deaf. If it was caused by middle ear fluid, yeah it can be fixed. Same as if someone has to wear glasses or eye contacts, their vision problems can be fixed through laser eye surgery.

I worked at my faults such as inflexibility because I knew I had to learn so I can move forward in life and not be disabled. I didn't want to live on disability for the rest of my life and not be able to hold down a job. I was just lucky to have a boss who had patience. She could have just fired me deciding she will not have guests see me in that state (meltdowns) and not want to come back and stay and they get bad recommendations and bam they get less guests.

The overwhelming majority of people who do not die very young, will be disabled at some point in their life-time.

Everytime you see someone using prescription lenses, you see a disabled person. That's just one disability.

One thing that helped me was realizing that the label changes nothing about myself. I have always been odd, awkward, and strange. I just now know why (at least unofficially). I spent a lot of time wondering WHY this wasn't noticed earlier. By the countless teachers who watched me being bullied and socially having no clue as to what to do. Why my parents didn't seek out help for me, even though my mom will openly voice to me how she wished she held me back in kindergarten because i was so socially behind.

I came to accept I can't change it. The past is the past. I am who I am. I always have been this way, whether it is called aspergers or not.

I know now there are resources I can turn to for help. Something as unofficial as this web site where others like me have congregated. Books, articles, etc. Things giving suggestions.

I have come to a point in many of my college classes where now I am making acquaintences because my classmates, who do see me as strange, have come to realize that I am smart and also willing to help them out (it helps all my classes are related to computers, my obsession).

Like League_Girl said, it is a list of weakness to work on. Things that need practice and help. Areas for growth to focus on.

I view my ASD as a list of assets and deficits that I and only I can fully understand and work on or accept. A clinician can help me and guide me to some degree. THe good ones do this. The poor ones leave the ASD indiviudal stranded with a diagnosis and NO guidance and NO tools.
I think the road to self-acceptance is a very fraught one for most human beings and for me, what has worked has been to really get to know my own AS trait presentation and my own personality in detail and to start working with that so that I could carve a life out for myself that suited me completely. It has been a painful and also exciting road.

It has been a long journey and I am 47. I fall down and get back up.
I was not diagnosed until last year formally and the year before with a self-diagnosis.

To know oneself and to understand who one is and what one is, is actually a gift. The key isn't wanting to be different or living life trying to be something I am not. That only leads to a projection of bitterness onto others. I've been down that road in my life and it is a dead-end. For me, the key is to really work with what is and find peace and joy and even struggle in the specifics of ME.

That for me, has been the way forward. And I am glad to be where I am.

good luck.

Acceptance has taken a very long time for me, and I am still not entirely there. The way I do it is to attack it intellectually, which is the best tool that I have. I first ask myself why I want to be accepted? It's a stupid question, but one must ask oneself these questions for an intellectual foundation.

For me, I want acceptance to reap social and financial benefits that are out there. But why do I want this? Sure, everyone wants this, but why do I want this for myself? The answer is different for everyone, but it's a question one must ask himself early on.

For me, I want these benefits to share my gifts to society. I believe I have things to share, and it can help make my life richer, while enrichening other lives. Using this as a general goal, I build the rest of my life. Of course, I have to tolerate changes along the way, but hey, the wheel of fortune never stops turning.

First, AS cannot be 'fixed' - you can't rewire the brain. Alter your behavior all you like, your internal impulses, reactions and thought patterns will not change.


That having been said, wblastyn, do you think of people with dyslexia as pathetic disabled losers to be pitied or sneered at? They also have an invisible handicap due to neurological functioning, that can't be fixed.

Of course there's no organized social movement advocating in-utero testing in order to eradicate them from the planet.

Yet.

I guess I really don't understand the drive to prove yourself, but by the time I found out what AS was, I'd already had a career for many years, in which I excelled in most areas, except those that required social interaction. Unfortunately social interaction is the political glue that keeps you employed, and that's the real handicap of AS.

Bottom line is, no one is good at everything - no matter how neurotypical their functioning may be. But by the same token, having AS doesn't make you useless. How many people lived entire lives and managed just fine before Hans Asperger ever diagnosed it for the first time? My paternal Grandmother died several years before I'd ever heard of Asperger Syndrome and now that I understand it in myself, I have absolutely no doubt that she had it, too, but it didn't stop her from having a full life. I don't recall anybody ever whispering that she was defective in any way.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that Hans by specifying a set of behaviors and giving that set of behaviors a name, may have set us aside from the herd as a separate 'group', that did not 'unmake' us as people. Each of us is still an individual human being with strengths and weaknesses. It just so happens we belong to a subset that happens to share some specific weaknesses - no big whup - just as those DXd with dyslexia belong to another group who share a weakness, that shared weakness does nothing to make them less useful or less valuable than any other humans on the planet.

And oddly, AS, along with it's weaknesses, often by way of compensation gives us a little added smarts to make up for our trouble. It certainly tends to give us different angles and perspectives on a great many things, and that's not a bad thing. I think I usually see the world a hell of a lot more clearly and realistically than most of the wide-eyed zombies around me.

But I admit, I do sometimes feel strangely 'different' sometimes since being diagnosed. I'm more self-conscious about such simple things as walking across a parking lot, and getting in and out of my car. I wonder if I walk funny, or move oddly in ways that I've been unaware of all my life. I'm acutely aware of how my mind processes social interaction now, and for nearly fifty years, I'd rarely even thought about it - but now I do, and it makes me feel even more awkward and goofy than ever.

I find myself flubbing sentences, garbling words out loud and stumbling over thoughts that I can't quite process fast enough to get out coherently. I used to be a professional broadcaster, for gods' sakes! And I do think most of that is psycho-somatic, because I am hyperaware of my own wiring now. Sometimes its as though I'm trying to handle the social interaction itself (which alone, is difficult enough) and simultaneously stand outside the whole thing and analyze it as its happening, and I can't keep up with both at the same time. And I wonder if that will ever stop, if I'll ever get back to feeling just myself again, or if I'll forever think of myself in terms of the AS.

I can't say yet, but I certainly hope it passes...

Oh, yeah. I can definitely relate. So much.

I wonder if telling people I have AS would help me accept myself? I find that I try to act "normal" in an attempt to hide my "disability" from others..

What do you think is the best way to tell people? "You know how I'm kinda weird/quiet/etc? Well..."

Hey there Goddess! I haven't seen you in ages beautiful.

As to the topic, I agree that accepting one's AS is rather important in the long run. Sure there will be intial angst and depression upon discovering it. I guess many of us went through that but at some point you got to quit knocking yourself for something that won't change. I pretty much accept that I'm AS or somewhere close to it and won't ever be quite normal. Accepting it does enable you to move on and focus on other matters in your life.

Yes, I also feel that I have become "more autistic" after my diagnosis. I was also much more willing to interact with people before the diagnosis, then when i got it I kinda felt well I'm not good at interacting so why bother..

I also analyse myself more when I'm interacting, making sure I'm making eye contact, etc and it makes it more difficult. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the way i was pre-diagnosis.

Magicfly, like you I also am more/less accepting depending on my mood that day. I wonder if i could shift the balance so that most days I am accepting.

I agree with the other responses, so I wont enter a wall of text with the same information. Accepting yourself and who you are is difficult, but very important. You won't ever be able to make everyone like you, so it's best to focus on the one person whose option really matters, yours.