"You dont look like anything is wrong with you"

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It seems to me that the bank teller was not prepared with a handy reply to your mother's statement, and just sort of spit out the best she could do on the spot. I wouldn't read too much into it.

I have only told two folks outside my family about my AS. One is a teacher in an adult art class. I sometimes get oppressed by the loud talking and music (when it gets cranked up) in class and either have to go outside and get a grip or even just leave and go home and work there. The teacher is a little flaky and sometimes gives very ambiguous directions on the use of very expensive equipment in the classroom. I felt it was best to tell her I respond poorly to that kind of thing, and why that was. If it is something important, she ought to be clear with me. She seemed taken aback, like she had expected me to bark like a dog or something. But in the long run, things have gone much better in class since then!

I also told a lady I work for in a volunteer emergency services activity. She wanted to push me into a supervisorial kind of role, which I would hate and suck at. I explained my situation and ended up in logistics and supplies, which I really love. She took my disclosure quite well. I wonder if she might have autistic relatives.

All of which reminds me of a joke. Glickstein is in Hong Kong on business and he finds a synagogue and walks in. It is time for morning prayer and there at the bimah is a Chinese cantor singing the p'suchay d'zimrot (morning psalms) with a definitive Mandarin accent. After prayer the cantor asked Glicksein what he was doing there. Glickstein said, I came to davon (pray) mincha (morning prayer). The Cantor said, that is very strange. You do not rook Jewish.

ruveyn

the "you don't look like theres anything with 'wrong' you" thing is caused y sociaties emphsis on apearence wich is ill founded and frankly ****ed

NTs are those that are not on the autistic spectrum (and I assume that those who say so are NTs, or most people who say so at least).
We could also say people in general, that would cover the same thing as I wanted to say. I've just heard that the obsession with normality is an NT thing.

I could but I won't. I don't feel the need to explain my son's actions to a perfect stranger who we care nothing about and will probably never see again. I'm more focused on getting whatever it is we're doing finished quickly and out of the way. If someone asked me specifically then I'd be happy to explain to them.

I consider:

"You dont look like anything is wrong with you"

To be a compliment.
Even after I was told that there was "something wrong" with me all those years ago, my family stood by me and claimed adamantly that there wasn't.
It was a relief to be told that there wasn't anything wrong with me by my family.

I don't think that "wrong" was the really the right word to use anyway.

Different, unique, variant, character or temperament would probably have been better words to use.

I believe that this whole issue is either being approached from a very strange angle or not being analysed properly from the inside out. It's utterly bizarre that there isn't more solid, provable information on these topics. There's never enough detail. A lot of what I've been reading is either clouded in "mystery", fluff or very wholly writing. Since 1990 I've not been told explicitly what it entails. This will just make people more afraid and suspicious about the condition.

Sadly, I gleaned no useful information from this article at all, though I appreciated it's message, the message was a very vague and unspecific one. A shame, the opportunity was there:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music ... 745453.stm


I've found that people approach this whole thing in a very socially stigmatising way. There's this false cultural dichotomy of "valids" and "invalids".

Conditions aren't inherently "evil" and the absence of a conditions isn't "good".
It's more complicated than that.
"Wrong" is a word culturally loaded with negative bias, which probably doesn't even attempt cover the complexity or subtlety of the issues being discussed.

Okay.

So who's role is it then, and when is it appropriate to say?

The Media?
The Government?
The Health Sector?
The Parents?
The Organisation saying that they speak on behalf of AS people?


I'm sorry to be cynical, but it's really like an inescapable vicious circle or "No win" situation.

Where you're damned if you do tell or you're damned if you don't.

If you don't tell, you could run into difficulties and misinterpret non verbal signals.

If you do tell, you could become socially ostracised/stigmatised and ignored even further for being "disabled".

Ironically, it does take a lot of guts and social communication skills to say that you have a different way of thinking or difficulties with social skills.

If you can't approach someone to say that you have problems approaching people, then how do you approach them?

The joke about the agoraphobic who went to the clinic and the doctor said: "You're cured!" comes to mind. It's a similar kind of loop.


How do you begin?

Who do you tell?

And how do you tell when it's "appropriate"?


Just wondering...

My friend said that to me when I told them I had Asperger's, xD.
She doesn't know what it is though, obviously.
EMZ=]

It drives me crazy when people say that. Meanwhile, the over sized lobes of my cortex are squishing each other so much, that I can't even think straight.

I find that I get evaluated on appearance alone too. I used to get a lot of friction because I didn't know how to deal with other people's challenging behaviour, and was labeled as just being "difficult" or "anti-social". As opposed to just being unable to deal with the people around me, and in some cases what they were doing.
I would have been cut more slack if I had been visibly 'disabled', like with Down's Syndrome.

The bank teller's remark seemed thoughtless, but maybe she was caught off balance. Your mum was probably trying to be supportive by raising awareness, but I myself probably wouldn't randomly disclose.

All this reminds me of an exchange I had.
(Diagnosed autistic as a child, disclosing) Me: 'I'm Aspergers.'

Other person: *takes a look at me* No you're not!

lol I get it to especially when I turn round and say that I am multiply disabled and autistic in general, honestly though no one is surprised when I say I am in aspergers diagnosis but they are when I say I can only see from one eye, ocular albino and am dyslexic and dysphraxic an half deaf lol. I think they expect me to have a freaking third head, or a tail or to have barely no face.

The pure stupidity of NT judgement, a conversation I had on facebook actually last night, is absurd that if your autistic you should only be bloody gardling your own name or be in a wheelchair gargling your own name. Or be like bloody rain man one person once turned round and asked me if I am good really good at maths. Or if we are multiply disabled we should have barely no quality of life

I think your mother was being out of line. You're an adult, you should be the keeper of your diagnosis information.

My mother would never randomly disclose my AS to another person, while I'm standing right there. She would respect my privacy a hell of a lot more than that.

Hell, this is why so many people with AS that I've met resent their parents. Because they embarass them so much in public by thinking that they need to educate the entire world about their adult kid's AS.

No wonder the teller responded like that. How many times do you think she's heard things like "Oh yeah, my son has terrible hemorrhoids" or "Hi, I have AIDS"?

Are you sure your mother doesn't have AS, and just doesn't know that it isn't socially appropriate to say things like that?

^ chuckle.
I am the type of ASD person with fairly poor capacity to gauge how the information i communicate will be received. i talk. I think little about how it will be received. (poor on the spot ToM.)

and so I will monologue and make mention of the fact i have hemorrhoids, Hep C, have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and many other small tidbits of mindless information that unfortunately relate back to the stark reality that that i am ensconced in myself as one of my most important "special interests."

I do wish it was otherwise...but alas...it is not.

Thank you for saying that! I have often wondered the same thing! What difference does it make, if I have a headache, and everyone in the same room has one? It doesn't relieve my pain one bit, and I am not comforted to know that I've got lots of company in the headache reality. Maybe it's all part of that mirror neuron deficit?

Mirror Neurons wont help you think positively about a headache despite how many people in the room have 1.

I think though i dont look obviously 'disabled' the way i hold myself and react to things makes people realise theres something not quite right. I don't like that though; i think any day i'd rather people think i was lazy then have a 'social disability'. I'm not going to lie to you, i'm pritty ashamed to be the way i am and though i wouldn't change it-purely due to an absolute hatrid and fear of change!- i think i'd rather be alittle bit more like other people. Aspergers is my shamful secret and i don't want any1 2 know about it

Sure! Excactly what I mean.

(Haven't thought about the mirror neuron thingy, though. But maybe it's true.)