Ever Heard "I know you're AS but..."

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From the nicest people, I get such comments as, "Maybe you will get used to the noise with enough exposure", "Can't you be less ... you?", "Be more normal!", "Stop hitting youself! I'm getting very angry!", and talk of my "craziness".

Then there are occasionally those who also know of your diagnosis but project and assume you are as, or almost as, functional as them in certain areas. They cannot understand severe executive dysfunction and sensory issues, which is not surprising because it comes so naturally for them in comparison that they cannot imagine such extremes. And it's difficult to explain in depth because that requires a lot of trust in them and how they will view and treat you afterwards. They also say, "Actually, everyone experiences that", sometimes adding "so no need to put yourself down", when you are simply stating facts.

Yeah. It also seems like when i explain to someone about having AS, they never understand at all and still think i should be able to know all these little social things they know just as well as anyone else. I think that if you come off as at least somewhat intelligent, a lot of NTs just can't grasp the idea that you don't understand a lot of things the same way as they do.
When there were two managers at work telling me that something i said was "rude," even though i didn't understand why, i explained to them that i have AS and that i try but don't always know what the right things to say are. And then they kept just saying "but you still need to think before you speak." It's like they didn't understand at all when i told them about AS. And then another time when a different manager accused me of being argumentative when i just thought i was trying to make sure they had all the information about a certain situation... I told her about my AS and that it causes me to come off differently than how i mean to sometimes and that i didn't feel that i was arguing, she said that i was arguing and lectured me about thinking before i speak and not arguing. I still don't understand how what i did was in any way negative, even though both of the managers there told me so. How is thinking before i speak supposed to help if i don't know that what i'm about to say is bad in the first place? Uhhhhg.

I get things like "stop being pedantic!" or "just grow up and stop being immature!" Oh just like that? Well you'll be very disappointed I'm afraid.
Because there'll be more pedantry and immaturity where that came from for the next 80 or so years I'm alive. I can't just grow up in 2 seconds because you told me to. Because if I could I'd be acting and feeling my age by now wouldn't I?

My favorite..." I know it's busy and crowded but it's no reason for you to be freaking out."

OoOooOOooOoOhHhHhhH, This really p*sses me off! !! This is more of the "If I can't see your handicap, it's not really there" attitude, made even more patronizing by marginalizing what we go through..."Oh, that happens to everybody, you're just exaggerating or overreacting for drama and sympathy".

I hope to come upon these people severely injured and bleeding to death, so I can toss them a band-aid and say "Oh, everybody gets a scrape or a cut now and then - don't make such a big deal, you whiny baby."

That's right up there with "all kids do that".

I agree with all of these - I've heard them. I was labeled as "confrontational" in the offices where I worked. Other people would whisper and complain endlessly about this supposedly huge problem but smile and say nothing to the boss, and I would sit down and tell the boss about the problem. It always seemed more logical to get it out in the open, fix it and then no more problem, right? Trust me - don't do it. It never works out. There are always layers of politics and people's feelings and things that are impossible to grasp attached to those kinds of problems.

It's an AS symptom to supposedly have no empathy for others and to be unable to put yourself in their place, but I find that continually from NTs. They either don't care that you are AS and they're just cruel about telling you to knock it off, or they are incapable of grasping that you have a problem.

To be fair I think it may be confusing to them at times, at least speaking for myself I know that I've worked very hard all of my life to create the Force Field external personality that blends in. It's social, it says the correct words for greetings and it smiles and is presentable. Many people only see this - they don't get to know me beyond the Force Field so they believe I'm just fine.

I can't maintain the Force Field however. If they came to see me in person the very next day, they would be shocked by the difference. When I worked in offices I was over the top good at those types of things - better than most even - but would be out sick the next day. I always used every one of my sick days plus vacation days (for sick days, never went on a vacation) and even extra days beyond that. They usually let me get away with it because I did so many times the normal workload and made myself valuable in other areas.

People who see you in the midst of your Force Field don't know it's like watching a play. They believe you ARE capable of this or that because they think they've seen you behaving "normally".

I guess the answer is we should all be as whacky as humanly possible every single day and never even try to blend in.

Before I even knew what AS was (well, I knew, but I was very naive) I knew something was "wrong" with me, and it was incredibly apparent, especially in romantic relationships hahaha.
I always had the hardest time explaining to people why I couldn't do something or another, or why I was this way or that way about something... because, back then, I had no reason.

I remember getting into a fight with an ex-boyfriend who was trying to get me to explain why I felt a particular way about something. I blue-screen-of-death'd. He simply couldn't understand why I wasn't giving him an answer, and kept yelling about how I'm "over thinking it!" and I should "just say what [I] think, don't hold back!"

I never have (and never want to) use AS as a crutch or an excuse, but there truly are some things I just can't do anything about.

My husband pulls this. Sometimes he seems to think I can take off my AS issues like a hat. He doens't seem to get that there are certain things I cannot do, or cannot deal with and that I can't decide to change just because it would make things easier. (I cut him slack, though, because I think it cannot be easy to be married to me, no matter how much he loves me.)

Geez, these comments make me think of the character Frank Burns from MASH (the all-American, paranoid idiot/hypocrite . . . course, Larry Linville said he based his character on every idiot he had ever known ). It al pretty much boils down to ignorance . . . if they dont know/understand something, they make a stupid comment/assumption about it. Hell, I work at a place that has machinery running all the time, so I HAVE to wear ear plugs . . . but that just filters out the harsher stuff. Still reeks hell on sound and touch (touch because its so loud, it actually vibrates your body <shudder>).

oh god this so many times over.

I had one last week. I was in a nice quiet pub, just relaxing, and they decided to turn the background music up to almost nightclub levels - naturally that didn't go well for me, and I went outside. My friend's response: "I know you have AS, but you just need to chill a bit!"

As if the word 'chill' in that context didn't make me want to kill him already...

Take that into the situation of a person who is visibly disabled:

"I know you have no legs, but you just need to stand up and walk a bit!"



Maybe we need to play these back to the speaker every time so they can hear how ridiculous that is.

"I know you have AS but it's your sisters birthday - stop having a meltdown. Don't be so selfish."

The sad part it that's pretty close to what she said.

It was more like I was telling her and my psychiatrist that I got so angry that I was having trouble keeping all my anger inside then my mum interrupted with a 'well I hate that. We're having lunch with your sister.'

So I'm just supposed to tell my already out of control emotions to wind down because that b***ch who made my life a living hell wanted to have lunch with us. I'm not sure if the anger was towards her, my mum or just the fact that I never wanted to go out to lunch because I was only prepared for the psychiatrist appointment. Also, my senses were so sensitive smells made my head hurt and I was wincing and blocking my ears when the restaurant got a bit noisy. It could have been due to my newly acquired hyperacusis.

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My psychiatrist aid that, relating to me not being able to get back to writing a story. It was more to do with ADHD but it still annoyed me a bit.

I think what most people mean when they say that sort of thing is, "I know this is something you might have a hard time with and I can appreciate that but you don't have to be a dick about it.", which can be true. It's not fair to take it out on the rest of the world if you have a personal issue you have to deal with. I know, it's not that easy. In fact, it actually is in the dx, so I get that. But it's not fair to take it out on everyone else either.

But it's not fair to take it out on everyone else either.

Huh?

If you are driven outside by excrutiating noise level, how is that taking it out on everyone else?

Are you saying that we should sit in whatever level of pain and just say nothing and suffer, at the risk of creating an inconvenience for someone else?

My question is why would ANYONE who cares about any of us even a little want to inflict pain and suffering on us simply so they can eat a lunch or do whatever it is they have in mind they want to do?