NTs don't take our disorder seriously

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Well, I think it has to be hard for them to understand what we feel. Specially if you are one invisible asperger that has been among them all your life, trying to hide who you are to fit better. Many people do not even know what asperger is and when they know, I do not think they can even imagine what it feels like for example, to be left in a room with someone alone and not being able to talk because you do not know what to say, even if that person is someone you know. That is my great fear now that I am going to get my diagnosis soon.... how do I tell them, I mean my NT's. I think they are going to think it is BS... They see that you can work, drive, have your life, etc, so for them if you can do all those things why shouldn't you be able to go out and make some friends?.... I suppose it is not their fault, how can anyone understand what they have never experienced?

So only option left is to make people know what we feel in any way we can, some aspies have blogs, others write books... the more we say it out loud the better they'll understand.

Ask an NT how one learned how to cry. And what if the person never had an instinct of crying, ask them what would that be?
Then ask an NT how they learned the social rules.

If they cannot answer them, that's why. Especially if they don't know the question itself or saying it's natural. Assuming every human does, when it's not (in aspie's case, the 3rd question).

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I thought NTs were supposed to have empathy and be able to put themselves in other people's shoes and understand how they feel?

I think it is impossible for them to understand, unless they know what asperger is about. I find it easy to talk to my psychologist because she understands, or at least she tries, even though I see she is lost sometimes. Doctors know what we are supposed to feel from a book, but what I have discovered is that that book misses lots of traits that are not written anywhere, and for me the only way to check if certain things from myself are shared by other aspies is to check forums like this.

So imagine NT's, our families and friends, again, that they never heard much of asperger, they have seen you grow, yes a bit weird and freek, but you go to school, then you work, etc.... In my case I know for sure that they do not have a clue of what I have been through. For them I have always been lazy, selfish and egocentric. The rest, they miss it completelly, because as many aspies I learned since very young to hide most of the stuff that they did not like. My meltdowns I suffer them on my own. Yes they see for example, I normally have an out of scale reaction to certain situations, but what they think is that in that moment I am being bad, jelous, or whatever crosses their minds, nearly never they get the real thing. .... you say something and they understand the opposite. This has happened all my life, now I understand why.

NT's can have empathy if they new what it feels like.... Like if a woman never had a baby, she can imagine how much it hurts, but will never know the real thing untill she has a baby herself, the moment she does, she will have real empathy with other mothers, until that moment she can pretend.

Again, for me the only solution to this is to help people, in anyway possible to understand asperger condition.

I think they can do if they want to, but they don't always want to.

The NT's in your life will need to educate themselves on what Asperger's really is. If they really care about you then they will take the time to read up on what AS is. Reading these forums has greatly helped me, but I have to say I still have problems at times about certain Aspie traits because of the books that are out on AS and how they make you think that all Aspie's act a certain way. Then when I think a certain trait is something to be expected - like Aspie's lack empathy, I'll have an Aspie get mad at me and say they have empathy - then I'm back at square one and feeling like I don't know anything. There are no AS trait set in stone, so I do believe it's constant education about Aspieism from NT's, but also patience on the Aspie's part too. Aspieism is like learning a completely different language. I would expect if one has an Aspie in there life then the NT would get used to that person's traits. It's all going to come down to whether the NT's in your life will want to spend the time to learn about Asperger's in order to communicate with you better otherwise it won't work.

I'm just putting this out there too - it's going to be difficult for some NT's to accept your AS without an official diagnosis. My Aspie friend isn't diagnosed, but from talking to him over a long period of time and reading a lot about AS, I am able to "see" different Aspie traits in him. Of course, people that have been in his life that don't care about him and haven't read up about Asperger's have actually gotten mad at him for certain things and when he told me what these certain mannerisms were made sense to me that an NT would get mad because they don't understand why he was acting like he was. I am a firm believer that the important people in your life do need to know about your Asperger's. I don't think work should know, but that's up to each person on what they want to do about that. I just don't think that a lot of co-workers would be too understanding - especially if they're doing the same job.

I explained to some NTs that my brain works differently and I process social information in another way. For example, I have some sensory issues, I have higher emotions and I tend to make literally interpretations in social situations.

I have found out that everything you read about Asperger's not everything is mentioned in the books for a reason. Someone told me on Facebook it's due to keeping certain things private between doctors. I guess this is to keep people from faking conditions I assume. Now I wonder how much of my issues are really due to AS because I have kept thinking over the years I had something else wrong with me because I had not read about it in other aspies in books. Someone told me on another website that reading about autism for 15 years is nothing and it might be because they don;t have all the information in there. That makes me wonder how in the world can people understand autism then if everything isn't mentioned in books about it.

It was great that my ex boyfriend bothered to read about this condition and educate himself on it for the sake of me but my mom said he knew nothing about it and didn't even know what it was. She told me you can read about something but that does't mean you will know what it is. But instead he used it against me and was saying things like "I don't see how you can be diagnosed with it" and saying "That's not AS" when I had anxiety and then a meltdown at his grandparents for no reason. I told him I also had an anxiety disorder and that changed nothing. Instead of just accepting me, he used the label to make it describe me and have it fit me into a mold and that just made him not understand me and to justify him not caring. "Oh from what I have been reading about Asperger's, no where online did it say that they will start freaking out while waiting at a house and then start crying so I don't have to understand it and accept that behavior." Even I couldn't tell him then why it happened and what the trigger was. Now I think it was the unknown because we had plans and we stopped at his grandparents as the plan went and instead of leaving, we were just waiting there and letting his grandfather procrastinate and I got anxious because I didn't know when we were leaving and how long we would be there for. But that wouldn't matter. But I learned from him that just because someone shares the same condition does not mean they will understand. He took everything he read about it literal. Lot of people do.