Which AS trait would you choose NOT to have?

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I don't think lack of motivation is an aspie thing. I heard it wasn't.

This. Except that I don't cry when I forget things. I hit myself. Or the nearest object, but the nearest object is usually my body.



DEFINITELY THIS.

the procrastination, and disorganisation are a major problem for me , especially as im supposed to be working full time from home, for myself.i am sick of getting my phone cut off every single month and recieveing nasty reminders , because i just simply cannot get aroun d to paying bills,and im sure the business would do much better if i could actually get aroundto doing the marketing etc that i know i need to do .
also the auditory perception, i have the same problems as others have described here , but also have a physical hearing problem and the 2 combined make for a huge nightmare in public. actually its a nightmare at home too, i just had a reminder of this when the phone rang and i couldnt tell where the ringing was coming from so couldnt answer it in time.

Reason why I don't have a job: not social, not good at putting words into a coherent sentence, shows lack of enthusiasm, the head spins, the light sensitivity, easily exhausted, easily hurt when being criticized, does not always understand orders especially if many things are said at once.

^I wouldn't mind getting rid of those things.

I see it as part of executive dysfunction. It's not the lack of desire so much as the difficulty in acting on the desire. My brain is cheese.

I'd like the ability to jump rapidly and effortlessly from the detail to the big picture and back again. I suspect that would fix a lot of the executive disfunction as well as the social ineptitude.

A close second would be the ability to quickly make sense of the half-baked information that passes itself off as communication in the NT world. To some extent I've trained myself to do this, but I can still get distracted by flaws in the syntax so that the rest of the info passes me by while I'm thinking "surely that can't be right."

Or maybe just knowing exactly what my feelings are as they happen would be the thing to go for. I can usually piece things together if there's enough time, but to just know intuitively at the time would allow me to take a bigger part in realtime social interaction and to look after myself better.

In that case, lot of people have it because I heard everyone procrastinates.

that's true.

People can procrastinate and still get things done. When procrastination becomes an obsession that's when it becomes a problem.
My problem with motivation has nothing to do with apathy but I need clear steps to get things done, and I usually need a caffeine hit to even begin.

Yes, that's a better way of expressing it. Actually my most serious deficits in what ever the hell is wrong with me is my social ability, but I've just accepted that. I just realized I wasn't equipped to handle what I couldn't achieve anyway. I realize that could be a factor of ADD alone or chronic depression. My psychiatrist told me yesterday since my dysthymia went untreated from age 2 to age 35 I am probably always going to be a little depressed no matter what the medication or how much. Untreated depression, they now say causes actual lesions on the brain.

A lack of motivation/drive is more a Kanner's/socially passive or aloof type of deal, i.e., more severe AS or HFA. Well, that's what the text says.

Well, I know they say the only difference is in the onset of language acquisition but I tend to disagree. I think there are differences like the one you mention. I don't know if I had a serious language delay-people let things happen as they may when I was a toddler, but my mother said I didn't talk.

The sensory defensiveness is highly irritating at times. It would be nice to not have to clap my hands over my ears every single time a fighter flys overhead or have to wear sunglasses inside just because the light above my desk is on.

Well, that settles it then, I have severe AS.



I get it, too, though it really only bothers me when I have something to do and keep on not doing it.


The things that bother me are:

-I have problems concentrating, initiating things and keeping at it and I am very easily distracted by sounds, because they break my focus and hinder me regaining it

-I’m dyspraxic (life would've been easier without it and ny body less bruised)

-Dyscalculia (I only get aritmetics and per cent and simple graphs, the rest is beyond me, like algebra, fractions et c). <not the result of AS, though.

-I’m slow at executing things. Every time we did experiments on the lab, I ended up last in line for the chemicals we were using, the last to finish it, the last to clean up, and sometimes I didn’t even have time to eat afterwards if it was that time of day. I have always been the last or among the last to finish tests and other tasks, even in subjects I’m good at. I need time to formulate sentences, and even simple tests/tasks like inserting the right word (they’re/their/there for instance) take up more time than the degree of difficulty would imply.

-In topics that are hard for me, I can only read/hear a little before I need time to digest it, like I can only take small doses at a time, step by step, with time in between. I’m very easily over whelmed and lose focus. When I try to read on my own, I forget the beginning of the sentence before I have finished it. I’m not dyslexic, I don’t have that problem with fiction (unless it’s a boring book, or unless I completely lack focus there and then).

-Very vulnerable for stress

-I can only do one thing at a time. Multitasking becomes no-tasking.

-It’s impossible for me to concentrate on things I’m not interested in. In school I kept hearing others complaining about how boring they thought something was. Then they’d sit down dutifully and do it. I realised that they didn’t even know what it meant to hate a subject. I can’t even find the vocabulary to describe the despair I feel in those circumstances. I can’t wrap my mind around it, I end up pacing (if I’m at home) or wriggle on the chair, pushing around the papers/books, unable to start or keep up or focus at all. It’s a very poor metafor, but it’s almost like I’m trying to escape my own skin when I feel that excruciating boredom.

-My inability to distinguish between several voices/sounds (such as TV and people present in the same room, or picking up on what someone says when it’s noisy around us)


I don't know if all these are the result of AS, or if some can be the result of co-morbid conditions like ADD, NLD, or even "sluggish cognitive tempo", which belongs under the ADHD-predominantly inattentive umbrella.

There's a difference between the lack of motivation / procrastination "everyone" does, and executive dysfunction / inertia.
It depends on how much you procrastinate, and how the procrastination looks like. I mean, for aspies it can often be a part of it to lack a sense of time. Often I feel like I have lots of time when I really don't.

I remember a funny situation where I tried to explain my executive dysfunction during my thesis writing to a person.
She didn't believe it was something special because "everyone" lacked motivation or procrastinated, and by no means I could explain to her that it was different in my case, though I told her that even one of my teachers had noticed something "more than usual laziness" about it (before I knew about AS). But nothing helped.
The funny thing was when I told her that I had just 3 weeks left for finishing the thesis. She was like: WOW! So now you're really pressed and stressed a lot?!
I answered: No... I feel like I have lots of time, but know I don't have, and work to act on that knowledge."
She was very, very surprised that I didn't feel stressed, because she herself would have been (as I've said before, so much for Theory of Mind), and then she realised that there had to be something unusual going on!!