Separating AS from personality.

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I see what you mean. I also know (more or less) the things that I like or dislike, but I think ASD shapes my personality. And, as you say, there are a lot of things that separate me from the common traits of ASD, but there are also a lot of NTs who have autistic traits. So I know I'm unique, because I'm different from others, and that's good!


I think it IS my identity. Most people around me don't know I'm autistic (yet), but I'm developing some kind of superiority complex like, I think more logically and have been told that I'm really inteligent. So I guess I see the positive things of my autism, and not so much the bad things or the impairments, so that's why I'm proud of being autistic.

Are personality and identity related concepts? Are they the same thing?

I think my personality is a union of many different factors and ASD is one of them. The relationship of personality to identity is another ambiguous area.

Why in gods name is that "scary" - just because some people have differing levels of integration of self/a less ossified identity to project out into the world, or perhaps have taken the time to be critical of unreflective impositions of identity and identity politics?
Identity and personality are complex and immensely person endeavors- your saying the emotional and psychological landscape of another that isn't how you think it should- isn't as neat and orderly and fixed- as it should be or what makes sense to you is "scary"?
Sorry but that sounds sadly parochial and myopic.
Also,the "lack of empathy" bit that's just a BS aspie stereotype.

I pondered this for a while years ago and eventually came to the conclusion that the question I was trying to answer was logically absurd and therefore not worth my time to really think about. I felt better after that.

One's "identity" could be separate from one's "personality"

Or they could be intertwined; it depends on the person, really.

In me, my "identity" and my "personality" are like cousins rather than brothers/sisters.

Good description. Do you mean that you have a certain persona for real life that is related to you, but not exactly your real identity?

Surprisingly, I'm still not very good at adopting a persona, though I do better now than I did when I was a kid. I could probably benefit from, say, adopting a more "intellectual" persona in front of academics.

I tend not to be good at, say, adopting a more patrician persona when I'm around rich people. I have such a disdain for the pretentions of some of these people that I defiantly reveal my "working class" background more amongst these people than I do around other "working class" people.

One example: one person told me "never to tell anybody you're from Queens (a borough in NYC)." There are certain people in Manhattan who will not associate with people from the "Outer Boroughs" (e.g., Queens). Well....immediately upon entering a room full of snooty people, I announced to the world that I had just arrived from Queens, and that I had taken the subway.

In other words, it's really difficult for me to adopt a persona--because (1) I can't pull it off; and (2) I don't really WANT to pull it off.

It's easy, think of the things you do/like and how you behave and your preferences and just comb out the autism.

For example

1. I get very obsessed with topics like sonic or a specific idea
2. I get easily overwhelmed
3. I dislike injustice

#1. Is a common and key symptom, it's apart of me but still related to autism
#2. Due to sound sensitivity, again a symptom
#3 has no connection to autism, you could argue it's apart of ridgid thinking but I think that's digging too deep. My whole family is very passionate about injustice and inequality and I think it's apart of me.

I think this is true and that being the case, I don't agree with the statement that Autism does not define me. Autism defines me tremendously. In fact, I have had to write the equivalent of an instruction manual for the people that I love explaining my Autism to them so that they can understand my personality and treat me fairly. I don't think you can make a clear separation between the two.

I understand that people don't want to be known and identified only by Autism and I think that is what they mean when they insist that Autism does not define them. I agree with that as well. But I don't think that something which makes your brain work differently and thus affects every area of how you perceive, process and respond to life can be separated from your personality. Your personality is based on how you perceive and process and respond to life, that is part of the definition of what personality is so it is very intertwined with Autism or with any any condition that affects how that is done.

And just like with any group of people, you have people who are gentle and nice and people who are aggressive and mean and people who are introverted and extroverted and all different kinds of things on the Autism Spectrum. So you do have a wide range of personality types with Autism just like with anything else. But because Autism affects us at such a cellular level, I say "cellular level" because I can't think of the right word, and so much affects how we interact with people and with our environment so profoundly, that I imagine that it really plays a role in shaping each of our personalities.

I think that people don't like to think of Autism being a factor in shaping their personalities or defining them in any way because they automatically assume that that is a negative thing. I don't see it as all negative. I don't see it as all positive, I just see it as a factor. Some aspects are negative and some are positive. It's just what it is.

Last edited by skibum on 01 Jun 2016, 5:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

God, I do this too, particularly around my rich cousins. It's a perverse streak I really wish I didn't have, I just have this hatred of pretension - and pretension seems to be central to doing well financially.

Exactly! Thanks for saying that!


I'd love to see more or less what you wrote in that manual, if you could show as a summary. Maybe I could do something like that, too.

I see it all as one, which is why I prefer 'autistic' to 'with autism'. It all makes up who I am.

There is no other me that has ever existed, or ever could. Who I am is my personality.

Sure, so much of my personality is defined by my autistic traits. I'm only just going through the diagnosis process now, and I understand now how so much of who I am is because of those traits, but prior to this I was particularly proud of how much of an independent don't-need-anybody person I was, how I wasn't shallow and image obsessed, how I wasn't caught up in all of the trappings of socialising that most people seem to be, how I was true to myself. Now, I understand that those things could be typical of some autistic people rather than just being unique things about me. But the fact is, they are me, however those aspects of my personality came about. I guess it's all a bit free will vs. determinism. How much of who I am is my own doing, and how much is the autism? But the point is, they're one and the same. There is no parallel universe where there's a different me.

I believe that if you get rid of the autism, you completely change the person. You wouldn't be you any more, without it.

Actually Lisa, it's not a manual per say, but every time, for example, my brother whom I am super close to, says something to me that clearly shows that he is not understanding that what I am doing or saying is because of my Autism, because it is really difficult for me to explain verbally, I write a long, detailed email to him so that he understands what he said, how it affected me, and why I am affected the way I am and why I responded the way that I did. Then I include some information about Autism and why an Autistic person has a tendency to do what I did. Sometimes I will link in some articles or youtube videos with people explaining the situation as well so that he knows that I am not just making it up. That helps him understand me much better. I have to do that a lot so if I were to put all those emails together, it would make a pretty good How To Understand And Treat Skibum Instruction Book.

If you want, I could remove the names and pm you one so you can see how I write them.

^^^^
This

I'm really really REALLY trying not to offend anyone but I just had an epiphany.

What I'm seeing and how I'm interpreting it is; the people who are seeing autism as their personality and identity, seem to be clinging to the diagnoses BECAUSE they had a lack of an identity before either 1. Discovering autism or 2. Being diagnosed.

That's just what I'm seeing, call me wrong and whatever but this is how I see it,