Adults with Aspergers Seem 'Normal' to Me

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I've posted all over this forum?? Wow! Call the moderator! A rogue forum user is posting ALL OVER THE FORUM! - the nerve of it!

Forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious but isn't that what a forum is there for??

it's given you and significantly high proportion of others a fair crack of the whip I'd say - you've positively queued up to stamp your feet in a collective tantrum about my views!

That's what I mean by conformism! All queuing up to have a go at me - hence I've given it right back to you - which you don't like so it all starts again - don't dish it out if you can't take it back!

A simple 'Oh that's interesting, this is my experience' without the 'You are SO wrong and the whole forum is on my side' attitude would have sufficed!

I would never bother to dictate to people such as yourself as I can see that autism is akin to some kind of religious cult to you!

And I appear to be the heretic saying the unsayable - you should all listen to yourselves!

What next? a public burning??

Well suck it up because the extreme defensiveness I've had in response to my views says it all to me!

It's on a par with the Spanish Inquisition - and no I won't recant

Oh no, I didn't list at least 20 of my 'difficulties' - I must say a penance and ten Hail Mary's for my sins!

If I say the word 'meltdown' will that give me extra points?

Oh no humour as well! How f-king evil can one person actually be??!

I didn't say there was anything wrong with posting all over the forum. My point was is that you're advising multiple people to adopt your perspective on AS and disability, and in response to Yellowbananas, you call the people who don't agree with you "conformists." This strikes me as contradictory.



I am not "stamping my feet" or having any kind of tantrum. Disagreement with your views does not equate to an extreme emotional reaction. I don't think anyone else is, either. I haven't (as far as I am aware) said anything insulting to you or tried to treat you as an inferior.



I get the impression that there are two discussions happening here. One that's actually happening in this thread, and then the discussion you imagine you're having with those of us who disagree with you. You seem to think there's some element of "dishing it out" going on as well as an inability to "take it back."



I seem to recall that's what I did. YellowBanana did similar, and clarified she was speaking for herself alone when you made the conformist comment.

I also recall, when I described my experience, you told me that the two of us will never come to any sort of agreement, which is inconsistent with your statement above.



You post things like this and you wonder why people are not responding kindly to you. Autism is not some kind of "religious cult" to me. It is a part of who I am, but so are a lot of other things. I don't get the need to be dismissive and insulting over a disagreement like this. Despite your accusations, you're not being attacked, but you do seem to be on the attack. In fact, you seem to be doing quite a few things you're accusing others of doing. This doesn't strike me as constructive or interesting, but it may shed light on why you're not getting the reactions you apparently believe you should be getting.



No, you're not saying the unsayable. Many people have stated similar to you. None of it's new, at least not to me.

What's the point of hyperbole? No one's going to publicly burn you.



This is what I mean when I say that you're imagining a discussion that doesn't exist. None of the above has any relation to anything that has been said to you. You're not being subjected to any "Spanish Inquisition." Disagreement with your views does not equate to being tortured. No one asked you to list any number of your difficulties or demanded you do anything like "say a penance." Calling it humor doesn't really make it funny. I suppose it might be funny to you, but I expect you will continue to wander off into ever more extreme and insulting reactions while insisting that it's everyone else who is being extreme and insulting to you.

Denial:

http://psychology.about.com/od/theories ... mech_3.htm

Projection:

http://psychology.about.com/od/theories ... mech_7.htm

I think it's difficult to generalise as some people don't improve over time and retain social problems throughout their lives.
However I do get where you are coming from. I've met a few people now with AS and at least one individual I've met is able to cope in NT society very easily. I myself have self diagnosed with AS but have little problem in surviving in NT society. My brother was severely developmentally delayed as a 5 yr old is today quite successful both career, financially and in terms of friendships although he had a rocky marriage.

You've got to love how some people have overreacted to the original post/subject.

Yes, a lot of Aspies can/do appear "normal" at first glance, but that's only in the short term. As a survival skill you learn how to appear normal. But if you spend any extended time with an Aspie, like at work or as a family member, you will notice the quirks and differences. Even my close friends don't realize I have Aspergers because I can hide it very well. If they were to say, live with me for an extended period of time, they would see me in a less guarded state and notice how I'm different socially, my little habits and patterns, etc.

Aspergers is never as simple as the surface might appear…

Lol you don't understand satire do you?

I knew you wouldn't find a single element of humour in that post - humour's not your thing is it? Lol

I think the equating of the whole autism industry to a religious cult is quite a good one actually - people with original ideas rarely get credit for them

So tell me what fantastic things is your AS/ASD diagnosis enabling you to do today?

My problem is with the very idea that people should have to 'hide' anything

I prefer to be friends with people who accept me as myself, without having to put an act on and if the mainstream don't like it - tough! - these judgmental types are never intelligent so not worth knowing in my experience

Why would I want to dumb myself down and make shallow small talk all day to get someone to like me?

I love humour and satire (ever read "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift, or "Candide" by Voltaire or "The Importance of being Ernest" by Oscar Wilde? Brilliant works). However, I agree with Verdandi that your posts come across as offensive, aggressive, and angry, even if that wasn't what you intended. The tone of your writing is quite unpleasant and hostile. It's not the frankness or bluntness of your writing, but the way you phrase things. Remember, we have nothing to go on in terms of guessing the emotions and tone of your thoughts, only the written way you express them, and so we also take into account your past posts when interpreting your new ones. Your satiric post comes across as loaded with sarcasm and bitterness. There's nothing wrong with you having an opinion which is different from ours, but please don't put us down because we disagree with you. It alienates us from you and damages your credibility, because the discussion stops being one of sharing ideas and instead turns into a battle of egos. If our logic is faulty, fine, feel free to point it out, but that's very different from saying, "I'm super intelligent, therefore what I say is right and what you say is wrong," and it is this attitude which seems to underpin all your posts to date.

Yes I've read 'Candide' and know Oscar Wilde's works. Have you ever heard of the works of Karl Krauss? He's more my style.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kraus

"On April 1, 1899, he renounced Judaism and in the same year founded his own newspaper, Die Fackel (The Torch), which he continued to direct, publish, and write until his death, and from which he launched his attacks on hypocrisy, psychoanalysis, corruption of the Habsburg empire, nationalism of the pan-German movement, laissez-faire economic policies, and numerous other subjects."

A man after my own heart - he liked to skewer hypocrisy and needless to say was highly unpopular as a result!

"Kraus was the subject of two books written by noted libertarian author Dr. Thomas Szasz. Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors and Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry portrayed Kraus as a harsh critic of Sigmund Freud and of psychoanalysis in general."

"Karl Kraus has been a subject of controversy throughout his lifetime. This polarisation was undoubtedly strengthened by his immense sense of his own importance. This self-image was not completely unfounded: those who attended his performances were fascinated by his personality. His followers saw in him an infallible authority, someone who would do anything to help those he supported.To the numerous enemies he made due to the inflexibility and intensity of his partisanship, however, he was a bitter misanthrope and poor would-be (Alfred Kerr). He was accused of wallowing in hateful denouncements and Erledigungen.[citation needed] Along with Karl Valentin, he is considered a master of gallows humor."

I'm not looking for credibility with anyone - I'm just expressing my thoughts. This is the main difference between us - you want people to like you and therefore tailor what you say to play to the crowd - I don't care if they like me or not - it's the point I'm making that takes precedence. It's the main difference between a person wanting real intellectual debate or
a friendly chat. Most on here will modifytheir own thoughts and ideas in order to get on with others. I think the ideas are more important than that.

Yes I've read 'Candide' and know Oscar Wilde's works. Have you ever heard of Karl Krauss? He's more my style.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kraus

"Karl Kraus (April 28, 1874 – June 12, 1936) was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics."

"On April 1, 1899, he renounced Judaism and in the same year founded his own newspaper, Die Fackel (The Torch), which he continued to direct, publish, and write until his death, and from which he launched his attacks on hypocrisy, psychoanalysis, corruption of the Habsburg empire, nationalism of the pan-German movement, laissez-faire economic policies, and numerous other subjects."

A man after my own heart - he liked to skewer hypocrisy and needless to say was highly unpopular as a result!

"Kraus was the subject of two books written by noted libertarian author Dr. Thomas Szasz. 'Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors' and 'Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry' portrayed Kraus as a harsh critic of Sigmund Freud and of psychoanalysis in general."

"Karl Kraus has been a subject of controversy throughout his lifetime. This polarisation was undoubtedly strengthened by his immense sense of his own importance. This self-image was not completely unfounded: those who attended his performances were fascinated by his personality. His followers saw in him an infallible authority, someone who would do anything to help those he supported.

To the numerous enemies he made due to the inflexibility and intensity of his partisanship, however, he was a bitter misanthrope and poor would-be (Alfred Kerr). He was accused of wallowing in hateful denouncements and Erledigungen.[citation needed] Along with Karl Valentin, he is considered a master of gallows humor."

I'm not looking for credibility with anyone - I'm just expressing my thoughts. This is the main difference between us - you want people to like you and therefore tailor what you say to play to the crowd - I don't care if they like me or not - it's the point I'm making that takes precedence. It's the main difference between a person wanting real intellectual debate or
a friendly chat. Most on here will modify their own thoughts and ideas in order to get on with others. I think the ideas are more important than that.

Last edited by nessa238 on 26 Apr 2012, 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

In general I agree with this, but I think it is very possible to be blunt without being rude. I can survive quite well in NT society. I have friends who are NT, and it's easy to "sit on my laurels" and believe that I don't have a problem. Somehow, there is always something to smack me in the face and remind me that there are still issues going on, and that however hard I try, I will always be different. I don't see my efforts to "play the NT game" and use smalltalk as dumbing myself down. It enables me to get to know a wide range of people who are interesting and intelligent, and when I find there is something blocking our free conversation (like a misunderstanding) then I do my best to fix it. In my experience, people are willing to accept me as I am if I can show that I am willing to meet them halfway. If that requires me to use smalltalk, so be it. I don't take a "My way or the highway" attitude like you, because relationships aren't one-way. Even NTs have to compromise a bit to make a friendship or even a brief chat work.

Thanks for the recommendation of Krauss.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in this post. It's not that I like to "play to the crowds" when expressing my opinion. Not everything I say is going to be well-received, regardless of the way I phrase it. The difference is that I don't want to aggravate the person in the way that I say things, because (again, in my experience) people are less willing to accept something, no matter how correct it may be, if they are put off by the way I state it. Yes, the content is important, but the delivery is too.

There's always a certain amount of compromise - I spend most of my time when communicating with others having to severely lower my expectations of gaining even the slightest amount of intellectual stimulation out of the interaction as it ain't going to happen with 99% of people - so when necessary I talk in a more dumbed-down manner about trivial stuff with them as if it were of interest to me - the compromise is all one way in my experience though as the person who takes a reciprocal interest in the things I'm interested in is exceedingly rare.

So my life often involves pretending to have average interests/an average person's world view when I have to interact with the average person. They don't tend to see me as like themselves though so my 'average person' act is just good enough to get by. It enables me to interact and generally get what I need out of the interaction - it's rarely condusive to friendship though as we are too different.

This is general interaction necessary to live your life. With friendships I am obviously going to seek out people who give me the intellectual stimulation I seek - there's no point making the effot to get pally with people who I find stupid, unpleasant and boring is there?? Not that this type want to be friends with me anyway. People generally gravitate towards people like themselves.

Yes I agree but I find the idea that a person is only going to accept the logic/quality of an idea if they like you/are well-disposed towards you utterly abhorrant! This is how society works though and as a result the biggest idiots get people hanging on their every word just because they are cool or likeable! Yep that'll foster human progress!

Thomas Szaz is a very interesting person too:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz

"Thomas Stephen Szasz ( /ˈsɑːs/ SAHSS; born April 15, 1920) is a psychiatrist and academic.

Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the "Free World" as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry and "drogophobia". He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction."

"His main arguments can be summarised as follows:

The myth of mental illness: "Mental illness" is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as schizophrenia, as an "illness" or "disease". Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic." While people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, and that may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people "have," while behavior is what people "do". Diseases are "malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain" while "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are" Szasz cites drapetomania as an example behavior which many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a 'disease' and likewise with women who did not bow to men's will as having "hysteria" Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them.

It's such a complex thing to explain. Like an adult with chronic depression is different to a typically surly teenager. It is very hard to explain. Even ADHD is hard to explain. All kids can be hyper, you're lucky if you get a placid, quiet child who hardly ever has tantrums and is so easy to have. I've seen adults act hyper, especially when there's a group of them together as friends and they're all having a good laugh, but that doesn't mean they all have ADHD. But ADHD is still a disorder and adults do have it and it can be identified in a person.

It's like when I read all the common AS traits in children, the list went on and on! I was like, ''but a lot of those are typical in children, in fact nearly all of them are'', but there is still something different in the child what parents, teachers and doctors can identify (is ''identify'' the right word?) in the child, and is a definate possible way that the noticable traits can be observed and grouped together to create an ASD diagnosis in the child, and if the ASD is mild (like mine is), then the child can blend in with the rest of the children and only a few differences can show depending on certain situations.

There wasn't much difference between me and the rest of the children, but from a very young age there was something about me that made the other children not want to be friends with me much, and the older we got the more they noticed something about me, until they instinctively excluded me without truly understanding why. Even they couldn't pinpoint what the exact differences were in me, and even I can't quite pinpoint the exact differences I have to this day. Like I said, it is too hard to explain what it is in adults with mild disorders. People just sense something about their behaviour and seem to react to it without knowing why, even though the person seems normal.

It's so hard to explain, but I've actually worded my opinion in the most intelligent way I could possibly word it, so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm drolling because that is not what I'm intending to do.

Last edited by Joe90 on 26 Apr 2012, 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.