Neurotypicals are Humans too
Yes. I know autism feels like a curse. But when we only focus on the negative things in life, we'll never find the positives. God blessed the world with autism. We should be trying to find the strengths He gave us through our autism and trying to bless the world with them.
Let me put it in an analogy:
People fear big, ugly dogs, such as Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, or Dobermanns because they aren't pretty like Huskys or small like Chihuahuas or clean like Poodles. But, despite their shortcomings, they are some of the sweetest dog breeds. People like Cesar Millan used his influence to help break the stigma around Pit Bulls that they're killing machines. He taught people that dogs are influenced by their owners, and you have to train the owner in order to rehabilitate the dog. Pit Bulls can be dangerous, but if given the proper training and attention, they can become very loyal and obedient and calm and collected and gentle, etc.
Just like Pit Bulls, Autism has a stigma around it, too. People believe sterotypical things about autism. If we want to change that, we have to show people our strengths. We have to show them that autism isn't a curse. (We especially need to teach that to ourselves) Autism comes with great attributes: honesty, empathy, outside-of-the-box thinking, genuine emotions, etc.
But people won't want to help us when we are struggling if we treat them poorly. When someone doesn't understand autism, we shouldn't criticize them. We should inform them. When someone asks for advice for an autistic peer, we shouldn't be condescending. We should step into the shoes of the autistic person and give advice from our experiences that can help.
Toren Wolf, an autistic teen on YouTube, had a video where he showed a tiny mushroom growing right after a huge storm. We should all strive to be that mushroom.
You are all doing great. Storms are always tough, (I loathe any form of lightning and thunder) but there's always an eye in the storm. Seek for it.
You all are amazing!
Thank you!
In regard to how I feel about NTs, when I first found out I was autistic, I went down the rabbithole of resenting them. I couldn't stay there for very long because I've been blessed to know some lovely ones. My Meemaw (another name for Grandma) was the most loving, sweet, empathic person I've ever known, and she was NT. This leads me to think that people are people, no matter what their neurotype is.
funeralxempire
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I hate to be this way but I was offended by these posts. You can have your own opinions but please respect other people's views. We all experience different things. Yes, we all have struggles, and no one is trying to deny that. I don't mean to speak for anyone else but I don't think autism is overall a blessing for anyone. But for many (not all) of us it has blessed us in certain ways, while being difficult in many other ways.
We all have different experiences. I'm only asking that everyone respects others' experiences, both the positive and negative aspects. Even if you don't think autism has blessed you, you still have blessings. I understand that everyone has difficulties in life, but it's important to remember the positive things too.
You're allowed to believe whatever you like no matter how absurd, but don't expect me to cosign it. I respect that you might have different views, but that doesn't mean I'm obliged to act like any given absurd belief deserves to be respected. I can respect you as a person without respecting every overcompensating cope you might engage in.
Your hurt feelings aren't going to make my autism a blessing either. You being offended has no bearing on whether autism is fairly framed as a blessing (or worse, as a superpower). I'm offended by people pretending autism is a super power but I guess that doesn't matter if saying so offends others.
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"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell
You can have a great life with or without autism and you can have the opposite and feel sorry for all your problems and disadvantages. It's more to a person than a diagnosis like autism. You can't blame everything on autism if you think that you are disabled.
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English is not my first language.
I think we are all playing the game of life on different difficulty levels, and those on the spectrum are on average playing on a harder difficulty level than NTs.
Whether that’s a blessing, a curse or a neutral thing is down to individual philosophy and temperament I think. It’s a question that can be applied to all types of human struggles, not just autism.
nick007
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"Neurotypicals are Humans too"~
I'm a misanthrope & really hope all human including myself die off before we develop space travel enough where we can go & f#ck-up other planets the way we did earth.
"God blessed the world with autism"~
I'm an agnostic Secular Humanist. Using god as an argument in statements is patronizing to me.
Now as for as how I feel about being autistic, autism can affect different people in different ways & I do not think it gave me any special strengths, skills, or talents. However I have various other disabilities & issues some of which are unrelated to autism. If my autism would have given me something really cool & useful other problems prevented that from happening. I do think if I was more of an NT I would have been better able to compensate for some of my disabilities & issues. That said it's very difficult for me to know exactly what's autism & what's not as well as what my life would be like if I wasn't autistic. Everyone has to play the cards we were dealt in life as best we can. Some people are more unlucky or mistreated more than others are. it's very difficult for anybody to understand what a seemingly bad situation is like if they never personally experienced it. Even psychs who have advanced degrees to treat various mental issues do not fully grasp what their patients are dealing with unless the psych has struggled with those exact same issues in their past.
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Your hurt feelings aren't going to make my autism a blessing either. You being offended has no bearing on whether autism is fairly framed as a blessing (or worse, as a superpower). I'm offended by people pretending autism is a super power but I guess that doesn't matter if saying so offends others.
You obviously didn't read my full post. I'm not trying to make anyone's autism a blessing or argue that it's ever a blessing. It's too complex to summarize every way it affects someone in one word. All I'm saying is that for some people it comes with positive aspects (as well as negative ones of course) and it offends me when people assume that it can't have positive aspects for anyone just because it doesn't have any for them. (assuming they would know if it did, which they wouldn't because you can't be sure that a certain part of your personality is unrelated to autism)
Also, it appears you are saying it's "absurd" for me to believe that my autism, which you've never experienced, has positive aspects? Well okay then, I guess you know my brain better than I do. Unless you're saying that it's absurd to believe that autism is a blessing, in which case you're right, it's very absurd, and as I've specified numerous times, I was never trying to say that in the first place. What I was saying is that autism affects everyone differently and I ask that you respect everyone's experiences and that they may be different from your own.
I am not offended by someone's views on how autism affects themself. I am offended by someone making generalizations and assuming everyone else must be affected the same way.
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Have very strong opinions so sorry if I offend anyone--I still respect your opinion.
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funeralxempire
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Your hurt feelings aren't going to make my autism a blessing either. You being offended has no bearing on whether autism is fairly framed as a blessing (or worse, as a superpower). I'm offended by people pretending autism is a super power but I guess that doesn't matter if saying so offends others.
You obviously didn't read my full post. I'm not trying to make anyone's autism a blessing or argue that it's ever a blessing. It's too complex to summarize every way it affects someone in one word. All I'm saying is that for some people it comes with positive aspects (as well as negative ones of course) and it offends me when people assume that it can't have positive aspects for anyone just because it doesn't have any for them. (assuming they would know if it did, which they wouldn't because you can't be sure that a certain part of your personality is unrelated to autism)
Also, it appears you are saying it's "absurd" for me to believe that my autism, which you've never experienced, has positive aspects? Well okay then, I guess you know my brain better than I do. Unless you're saying that it's absurd to believe that autism is a blessing, in which case you're right, it's very absurd, and as I've specified numerous times, I was never trying to say that in the first place. What I was saying is that autism affects everyone differently and I ask that you respect everyone's experiences and that they may be different from your own.
I am not offended by someone's views on how autism affects themself. I am offended by someone making generalizations and assuming everyone else must be affected the same way.
I'm basing my observation that autism always has more drawbacks than benefits on my participation in autistic communities and the people who participate in them.
I have yet to encounter someone who insists that it's a blessing who also doesn't describe significant deficits caused by autism (although often in other posts or discussions). When seeking to frame autism as a blessing or a gift they'll point to very small benefits and exaggerate their value and downplay all sorts of deficits that cause significantly greater difficulty than the benefits could ever offset.
That's not to suggest that most of us can't find small positives or that most of us would wish to be not autistic, only that the costs always seem greater than the benefits so it's hard to view it or describe it as anything but a net-negative. If it wasn't a net-negative it wouldn't be a disability.
Besides that, your perspective might change as you're forced to participate in the adult world. Shortcomings those around you have accommodated might become more obvious and problematic when you're out in the world as an adult, not everyone cuts you the same slack as you might have received as a kid in academic settings. I hope your perspective is still as positive in 15 or 20 years.
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"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell
I have yet to encounter someone who insists that it's a blessing who also doesn't describe significant deficits caused by autism (although often in other posts or discussions). When seeking to frame autism as a blessing or a gift they'll point to very small benefits and exaggerate their value and downplay all sorts of deficits that cause significantly greater difficulty than the benefits could ever offset.
That's not to suggest that most of us can't find small positives or that most of us would wish to be not autistic, only that the costs always seem greater than the benefits so it's hard to view it or describe it as anything but a net-negative. If it wasn't a net-negative it wouldn't be a disability.
Besides that, your perspective might change as you're forced to participate in the adult world. Shortcomings those around you have accommodated might become more obvious and problematic when you're out in the world as an adult, not everyone cuts you the same slack as you might have received as a kid in academic settings. I hope your perspective is still as positive in 15 or 20 years.
I agree with everything you say here.
As I've said before, I never tried to argue that autism is a blessing. I'm only saying it often comes with some positive aspects, among other negative ones.
My guess is for most if not all people it's a net negative, but I think it's complex enough that terms like "net negative" are overly simplistic, even if they're true.
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Diagnosed ASD/ADHD age 5. Finally understood that age 17.
Have very strong opinions so sorry if I offend anyone--I still respect your opinion.
Neutral pronouns preferred but anything is fine.
Feel free to PM me--I like to talk about most things other than sports.
While I could care less about one's autism not blessing to someone, I just don't buy the being a loser in life and the lesser than human bit.
Pain and suffering?
Most humans have that. It's just a matter of what they're blaming that on.
Everyone has their own priorities as to how they came about such conclusion.
Unfortunately, most priorities are largely influenced by the norm itself.
I'm not going to elaborate how humans are evolved and largely conditioned to a point that social death scares them more than physical death.
Sympathy? That's another matter.
I know how to make do with my 'so-called deficits'.
Usually, my language based issues.
No, I won't be talking about cognitive trade offs; but I happened to be good enough to use said language issues to get away with a lot of things.
All I need is the lack of emotional lability, really. Gradually getting that, in actuality.
Oh, and I found that most of the emotional lability isn't a part of my autism.
It's this stupid unprocessed grief that I finally found and put a stop to it.
Literally went from this spoiled shite that I kept fighting to someone more stable and more like myself overnight.
... Still pissed about it though. Because it took over 20 years.
But my language processing issues is definately a part of my autism.
It's literally in my neurology. And it has it's wide range of downsides.
How the heck did I make do with something supposedly so frustrating to have?
The offset is complicated.
It consists of learning psychology deeper than just knowing your culture and without masking.
One of the prospects of memory issues is to kill certain habits off.
If the brain is like a power grid... And autistics are generally monotropic...
All I need is better transitioning. I already gained an ability to zoom in and zoom out, I just have to master that.
But transitioning requires more energy.
Then get I healthier.
See how complicated I have to go through to offset issues by solving issues that are solvable and make do with any of them?
Also no.
I'm aware not everyone knows how to make do. Not even NTs.
Most autistics way of 'making do' is brute forcing their pros to offset their cons.
Or something else entirely like exploiting it's features not unlike with alexithymia and staying cool in high stress situations.
I don't have that.
I even lost some good out of it because of things unrelated to autism.
But as far as I'm concerned, I don't blame my autism for most of my problems in life.
Many people in my life did though -- and I'm going to exploit the hell out of their assumption over that.
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funeralxempire
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I have yet to encounter someone who insists that it's a blessing who also doesn't describe significant deficits caused by autism (although often in other posts or discussions). When seeking to frame autism as a blessing or a gift they'll point to very small benefits and exaggerate their value and downplay all sorts of deficits that cause significantly greater difficulty than the benefits could ever offset.
That's not to suggest that most of us can't find small positives or that most of us would wish to be not autistic, only that the costs always seem greater than the benefits so it's hard to view it or describe it as anything but a net-negative. If it wasn't a net-negative it wouldn't be a disability.
Besides that, your perspective might change as you're forced to participate in the adult world. Shortcomings those around you have accommodated might become more obvious and problematic when you're out in the world as an adult, not everyone cuts you the same slack as you might have received as a kid in academic settings. I hope your perspective is still as positive in 15 or 20 years.
I agree with everything you say here.
As I've said before, I never tried to argue that autism is a blessing. I'm only saying it often comes with some positive aspects, among other negative ones.
My guess is for most if not all people it's a net negative, but I think it's complex enough that terms like "net negative" are overly simplistic, even if they're true.
I think we're discussing the topic in broad strokes so a bit of oversimplification is fine so long as the oversimplifications capture general trends and everyone involved understands there might be exceptions to those general trends.
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funeralxempire
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I'm curious, among the undiagnosed autistics, how often our bullies were other undiagnosed autistics bullying us because our mask slipped and they recognized it for what it was. Basically they're bullying the weirdo for being weird before anyone notices that they're weird too.
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"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell
I'm curious, among the undiagnosed autistics, how often our bullies were other undiagnosed autistics bullying us because our mask slipped and they recognized it for what it was. Basically they're bullying the weirdo for being weird before anyone notices that they're weird too.
Or in my case I used to bully my younger brother and even used to called him autistic (I think he was nicknamed Auto-bot). turned out he's totally nuerotypical and I'm the one who is probably undiagnosed.
CockneyRebel
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I'm curious, among the undiagnosed autistics, how often our bullies were other undiagnosed autistics bullying us because our mask slipped and they recognized it for what it was. Basically they're bullying the weirdo for being weird before anyone notices that they're weird too.
Or in my case I used to bully my younger brother and even used to called him autistic (I think he was nicknamed Auto-bot). turned out he's totally nuerotypical and I'm the one who is probably undiagnosed.
You've got a very good point there.
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