Is it good or bad when people tell you their Asperger/

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but I am fragile x


basically a broken x. gene

I'm OK with it

I was there at 3.5 years and I have not changed
I still care about peeps sometimes though

I only have social inclination up to a certain point.

Asperger's is NOT extreme anxiety disorder. And renaming it to that would be incredibly dangerous. If you have extreme anxiety disorder, that is particular to you and it is not the same as being Aspergian or Autistic. Not everyone who has Asperger's has anxiety disorder. That would be like saying that everyone who has neuropathy in their feet is a diabetic. That is just not true and saying that it is would be unimaginably dangerous.

And being unable to communicate in a neurotypically traditional way and living in your own world does not make you selfish. It makes you unable to be understood. and the inability to communicate effectively and to be understood is what forces you to live in your own world. Being selfish is a choice. Someone who is forced into a situation where they cannot be understood does not make them selfish. So even though the word Autism means what it means, it does not mean that the word is accurate. It was a word given to describe people by someone who has no idea if the people are selfish or not because there was no ability to communicate.

People who only see me from a far away and outside perspective and who do not take the time to actually know me, often believe that I am a selfish b***h who basically has to have everything her way all the time. But when they do take the time to actually get to know me, they realize that I am one of the most selfless and giving people they have ever met and they are blown away and astonished. It is not fair to assume that people are selfish just because we don't understand them. If they actually get to know me, they realize that the reason that I have to have things my way all the time is not because I am a b***h but because I am so neurologically fragile and vulnerable that if the environment is hostile to my neurological state, I will actually lose the ability to function. But rather than taking the time to understand, they decide that I am a b***h and they treat me as if I am one. That is not my selfishness, it is theirs.

I had been a caretaker for an non verbal Autistic young man. People from the outside would think this guy was extremely selfish. He also had very aggressive tendencies. It was very interesting because I was able to reach him in ways that no one else could, not even his own parents. And he would physically beat them up regularly. I did not rely on words to communicate with him. What I found is that this young man is actually one of the most loving people I have even known. But without the ability for people to understand him, the breakdown in communication is what caused his aggressive behavior. Of course his parents wouldn't listen to me either because I am not a doctor or a therapist and so who am I to be able to actually know anything? My Autistic friend has also had the same experience when he was a caretaker. All of the sudden the Autistic children in his charge, who had been super aggressive with everyone else, were extremely relaxed, loving, and gentle with him because he knew how to communicate with them in their own language. Yet, he also is not a doctor so no one respected his knowledge and understanding.

Everyone has the ability to communicate whether it is verbal or not. Not everyone has the ability to learn subtle and different forms of communication. Not everyone has the ability to understand that there are forms of communication that they are not aware of. But just because you can't understand how someone else communicates does not mean that the person isn't communicating. To think that way is ableism. People become aggressive when others cannot or will not even acknowledge that they are communicating. If the only communication a caretaker will accept is a communication that the caretaker automatically knows and understands, and the caretaker is not able to learn how the charge is communicating, there are only going to be a couple of outcomes. One might be aggression, another might be suicide and the third might be a lifetime of living as a defeated and dehumanized person. None of these outcomes are good and responding to being treated like that your whole life is not selfishness.

Yes to this.

A few different specialists have told me that Asperger's is basically anxiety. I'm not saying that is true but why do they say it? When I last had an appointment with a therapist she didn't know that I had ASD so when I was telling her about my anxieties she asked if I was on the autism spectrum because of the list of anxieties I was telling her. The things I told her that make me anxious are what typically make people (NT or not) with anxiety disorders or PTSD anxious. But when I told her that I don't feel Asperger's really fits me she was like "yes but Asperger's is about anxiety". And she wasn't the only therapist/specialist who said that either.

The things that make me anxious are things like:-
- extreme current events (I understand these make anyone anxious but if you look at my previous posts you'll see what I mean)
- extreme weather (even though I don't dislike it)
- things that are unlikely to happen, such as plane crashes
- how other people feel
- how other people behave
- being judged or rejected by peers or strangers
- certain phobias, like vomiting
- bad things happening, such as loved ones getting ill and dying (already happened with my mum, so that makes me even more anxious of losing other relatives that I love)
- the future (the past makes me depressed)
- my ADHD making me forget appointments and executive functioning
- employment (I don't get anxious in my job but I do worry about losing my job or something and then having the pressure of looking for a new job and getting one that I might not feel suited to)
- being out in public because of fear of strangers judging me
- certain noises that are distracting or too distressing to ignore
- money, health, wellbeing (although this is a common thing to worry about)




It's just what autism means. Autism = selfism.

Sometimes I feel selfish or may even sound selfish because of some of my anxieties. I think of other people a lot but sometimes if I'm too overwhelmed with anxious thoughts I can have irrational thoughts like wishing the world could revolve around me just for a few hours and f**k other people (excluding everyone I know and love). For example if the neighbours are noisy I sometimes get so worked up that I wish they'd all just go away and be quiet.
I think all humans think like that sometimes though, it's quite normal.
But I have got lectures here on WP about being an entitled selfish as*hole (not using those exact words but it still knew it's what they meant), but the thing is that it's in my nature to please others and I understand and care about other people and I can empathise really well and all that, but if I'm too anxious I can sometimes burn out and need to think about myself sometimes. We all need to think about ourselves sometimes, NT or autistic.

I understand and respect your frustration but as someone whom you would label as and HF/Mild/Asperger's/Whatever you like to call it person, you have no idea of what you are talking about when you say that it's more like a mixture of social anxiety, general anxiety, and depression. Yes, from a young age, I did seem to be able to talk in the right tone of voice and present some correct facial expressions and I "seemed" to even make friends with nt peers. And for some part, I actually did manage to a couple of times. But trust me, you are only making these conclusions from outside observation. You have NO IDEA at all what being an HF/Mild/Aeperger's/Whatever you like to call it person was or is, at least not for me.

I have no problem with you. I like you and I think you are a good person. And I do understand where you are coming from. I also know a lot of people who are labeled as mild and Aspie and I also see the documentaries and I also read the blogs. I also agree with you in the sense that their struggles seem to be what you say they are. But when I actually ask them the deep questions, I understand that that struggles are much deeper and have a very different root cause as do mine. If you saw me personally, you would make very erroneous assumptions as to what is going on with me because you would not know me deeply.

I have a cousin who has an Autistic adult son. He is very obviously Autistic even though he is verbal and able to communicate pretty well. He had to have ABA therapy as a young child and they focused on his verbal communication and that is why he communicates as well as he does even though it is not communication that is at the age level that he actually is. But interestingly, his mother and I have gotten very close recently and the more she has gotten to know me, she has commented repeatedly that I am much more severely Autistic than her son and she is extremely concerned about my ability to survive without help since I am not eligible for any help because people consider me too high functioning. If people who did not know us well saw me and her son side by side, they would automatically give all the attention and help and services to him because his Autism is immediately visible and it is obvious that he cannot make it without significant support and help. I would be dismissed as basically an NT who has some anxiety issues and who is selfish. But even his own mother is now fighting for me as she fights for her son because in her own words and by her own observation, she has seen, realized, concluded, and stated, by her own observation, that I am much more severely affected by Autism than her son is in every single way except in my ability to speak and communicate. And unfortunately being able to communicate becomes a curse rather than a help because the ability to communicate makes everyone believe that you do not need or deserve any help.

Joe, the site isn't letting me quote your last post so I have to answer without quoting.

Your therapist is simply wrong. Asperger's is not about anxiety. Apergians become anxious because they are socially abused and neurologically assaulted all the time, every day of their lives. This would cause anyone to become anxious. If society were suited for how we are designed, no one who is Aspergian or Autistic would be anxious. Your therapist has no idea of what Autism and Apserger's actually is.

And you are not selfish, you are exhausted. People who do not understand your struggles label you as selfish just like they do me. I know you are not a selfish person. What you need is rest and recovery. If you were able to get that, people would not think you were selfish. But they won't allow you to have that rest and recovery and then they blame you for the effects. That is not fair to you and it does not make you selfish.

And yes, the word Autism is literally a word that is based in the definition of selfishness. But it was given to us by someone who was simply observing behaviors without having any understanding of where those behaviors were coming from. That person never actually knew the people he was observing. he simply made his own erroneous conclusions based on behaviors that he had no ability to understand. That is what doctors and therapists are still doing a lot even now. And this is why your therapist told you what she did. She has no idea what is actually happening in our situations. She has come to her conclusions in a way that is completely baseless.

But I think I was born with anxiety, it didn't just come after years of social mistreatment. It's like my whole existence is run on anxiety. I don't know why they didn't just diagnose me with AD (anxiety disorder), unless diagnosing young children with anxiety or depression wasn't a thing back in the 1990s. My family have always been very supportive and loving and understanding and I have received a lot of helpful support over the years, but I'm still anxious and I always will be.

Each time I get anxious about something I won't stop fretting about it until I get reassurance from at least one person. Today at work I heard rumours going around that worried me (I won't go into all the details here) and I had to make sure they were just rumours by communicating my worries to my supervisor, who I could tell by his expression that what I have heard is all nonsense. And he usually is the first to know everything that goes on. If I hadn't of seeked reassurance from somebody who I trust then I would have been worrying about it all night instead of enjoying my evening. It's just the way I am. Some people laugh/make fun of me for it, and yes even I sometimes laugh at myself for worrying about something so absurd but I don't think that at the time. It's because I'm always thinking something bad is going to happen and I crave answers and reassurance.

Communicating and reading social cues is not a problem for me. Worrying and fretting all the time is a problem for me. Maybe it's because I find it frightening living in a society ran by greedy rich people that care more about money than they do about the wellbeing of the public and all these things are just out of my control. But just because something is out of my control doesn't mean I mustn't worry about it.

I understand. I once had a friend whose daughter had the same issue. Ever since she was a tiny baby, she had always had severe anxiety. I am not sure if the anxiety is physiological or if there was a trauma in utero or shortly after birth that caused the extreme anxiety. I do understand though, that it is a very real thing and that you definitely need help to manage it in your life. That is completely fine and you deserve all the help that you can get with this.

The issue though, is that the anxiety that you experience has nothing to do with Asperger's or Autism. It is real, and it is an anxiety disorder. It's just not Asperger's. It's something different. Now a lot of people with Autism and Asperger's do suffer from anxiety but it's for a different reason. So yes, you have a real and significant anxiety disorder and you do need and deserve the help but your therapist is wrong when she says that Asperger's is all about anxiety.

You haven't heard all of it yet. She also said that ADHD is 'just' impulsivity in adults and hyperactivity in children - and she was diagnosed with ADHD herself! I would have expected a little more awareness of what ADHD is from a therapist who has ADHD. Yes ADHD is impulsiveness but not just that, it has other symptoms too. She just seemed to think that every one of my problems is autism and not ADHD or anxiety, even though I told her I'm diagnosed with ADHD.

Someone really needs to tell her that she's a crap therapist who just likes to see everything through the autism lens.

She should definitely find another profession. Can you change your therapist to get one who can really support you and help you instead of one who is so stupid and ignorant? I have had to change therapists several times before I found a great one whom I really love. My new therapist, I have been with her for about a year and half now, is wonderful. She is very humble and never pretends to know more about something than she actually does and she always wants to learn about Autism from me. Her humility has been amazing and I find that the ability for me to just be heard and understood by her is what is the most therapeutic thing for me. I would love for you also be able to find someone like her. If you lived in my town, I would definitely give you her info.

It's at least possible that they've noticed you have a lot of anxieties and other issues related to your diagnosis and since for you the social issues largely play out as anxiety and since some other aspects are more muted it's easier to say it that way.

Even if it's not very precise it saves a few minutes of discussion and clarification and possibly hurt feelings.

Also, I'd suggest if the doctor viewed a broader selection of your interactions they'd see a few more things that support the diagnosis even if they can potentially be explained in other ways it's a case where the hooves/horses thing applies.

The most obvious one would be discussions involving issues associated with or adjacent to autism and the distress they induce, largely because they seem to be taken fairly personally ('higher probability of' becomes a statement made about you or your future more directly), or over fears of assumptions others might make.

It's not as though NTs don't also do it ever, they're just less prone to it or when they're not less prone to it, it might hint at some other applicable diagnosis.

I don't like the 'proper' term because of how value loaded it is, so I'll call it autistic inconsideration. There's stuff we're prone to failing to consider. It doesn't make us inconsiderate like the synonym for rude but when stuff 'falls off your plate' it's impossible to consider what's outside of your mind, so what else can it be called?

It's typically different from something done to elevate ourselves or demonstrate that we have high status, so proper term could use an update.

It works both ways though. There are plenty of things that nts are less able to consider about the neurodiverse population. But rather than understanding that, they will blame us and make us responsible for their inability to understand us.

Absolutely. Even what I'm describing there is based on how NTs would evaluate us for failing to understand their poorly explained norms.

If you're a small part of a bigger picture your experiences obviously matter to the discussion, but how much weight they receive (or how much time to express them) is rarely communicated in a clear manner and yet we're always 'at fault'.

I hope the term 'autistic inconsideration' carries less value loading than 'autistic narcissism' although both are obviously from the perspective of NTs evaluating us, not the other way around.

I'm down for pathologizing NTs, but sadly they're the majority so we're obliged to understand how they view us much more than they are obliged to understand how any of us might see them.