After 2 years I still CANT accept aspergers and be happy

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^^^--- This.

But prejudice itself, simply prejudging others, isn't exactly what is talked about with racism that I've read. At least, not the radical politics, it is about power. Bullying on grander scale.

Your description sounds more like that racism rather than simple prejudgement.

I say the difference because I've seen people talk against "hate" and all being equal but not look at the power differential or structure.

Sorry, can't explain better.

No, you're making sense. You're talking about institutional power + prejudice (which is the definition of racism in many anti-racist circles). Prejudice by itself can't apply racism because it lacks the power. Racism's not the only thing that's like this.

Everyone is arguing over what the definition of prejudice is, what i want to know is how to accept aspergers, it seems impossible.

You can't accept Asperger's without first accepting yourself. The label is meaningless in this context. Asperger's is just a rough description of your neurology. You may as well say you don't accept your left hand as say you don't accept your neurology.

It is false to think you cannot improve yourself, but you have to put your energy into the right things. Weep profusely and rail against the injustice of your lot in life. But at some point you have to let that run its course and move on.

I can't tell you that. The last time I tried to say anything to you, you flamed me and said I wasn't autistic enough or depressed enough to know what I was talking about.

I can tell you why I'm not fussed about being autistic: I've always been autistic, I will always be autistic. Being autistic didn't ruin my life, but it made a lot of things more difficult, and I spent years trying to figure out why these things were difficult. Now I know, and it's better to know and understand my own history than it is to simply struggle along with no idea why I have trouble.

All disabilities are conditional like that, though! Have you heard of the social model of disability? I think that's what you're talking about, without knowing it. The social model basically states that disability is what happens when society is set up in a certain way, and your particular characteristics don't match those expectations. So, if you are autistic, and the society is set up for NTs, then your autism is a disability. But if you're autistic, and the society is set up for NTs and autistics, then you're not disabled. If you're autistic and the society is set up for autistics, then the NTs would be disabled. Society could be set up for lots of configurations of body and mind--like wheelchair accessible buildings without accommodations for people who don't use wheelchairs (in which non-wheelchair-users would be disabled because they would need to bring their own chairs), or a community of people using sign language and exclusively visual signaling, in which deafness is not a disability but lack of ability to learn sign language would be.

Disability is a social concept associated with a medical diagnosis. If you want to talk about the way that a diagnosis is associated with skills below the human average, range, then the word that makes the most sense is probably "impairment". And impairment in one area has nothing to do with strengths in another area. Being impaired in social skills, for example, has nothing to do with being good at, say, visual-spatial skills or memory.

That explains exactly what I've been going through. It only gets worse the longer it keeps going on. I've been ashamed of my problems, and get a pang of guilt when I speak about my autism as if it's some kind of dirty word that I should never mention. I punish myself daily for the things I don't get done even though, if I think about it logically and be really honest with myself, I know that I have tried my best and always do. I don't know how to stop this thinking. But I do know that having an unsupportive family has caused a lot of this. My father and siblings in particular acted out with prejudice. Dad forbids me from getting any therapy and insists "there's nothing wrong with me" and that my problems just "come from tension". My brother helped me talk about it to my parents at first, but surprisingly turned against me quickly and lashed out in a nasty email. One of my sisters did the same thing by email, having acted accepting at first, and my other sister ignored my emails and just talked across me when I tried to talk to her about the diagnosis. Also when I tried to talk about it again a number of months later she changed topics quickly, and when I was having trouble in a particular situation one night and needed her cooperation (we were at a busy pub and I couldn't hear a word she was saying and explained that to her), she deliberately made things worse for me for the rest of the night and roped my other sister in on the action. My mother made a bit of progress over time though, but because I've been made to feel so ashamed of myself I am very afraid to talk to her about my problems, even though she could be really hoping for me to do so.

So ya, all that has left me feeling confused and feeling shame for not being able to do everything that I look like I can do. I wonder if perhaps talking to my mother about that alone would help me start to fix things. She's been nicer to me since I officially moved out of their place, although I'm not so sure they'd be nice to me if they knew I was living off social welfare. But without that I wouldn't be able to stay here, where I've only recently managed to sort out occupational therapy and get help with my issues. I feel like I'm wasting my energy and my time feeling so bad about myself, but I'm confused about how to break the cycle...

I quite do feel the same way about my PDD-NOS. Except my pdd-nos has not had an effect on my family. I have kept it a secret, and feel like it has affected my social life development in part, and also due to my anxiety/OCD as well. It has affected me educationally where I got held back a year in kindergarden.

I hate it too. I hate how people find it a good thing. Whenever I get told it is a good thing i get sick. I hate myself for having it. I have to lie to feel confident. I have the kind of mentality that life is off the amount of friends you have which I know many other people think that way. I have to lie to feel confident in life. I don't have a thing I call the real me. I lie about not being asperger to people like doctors even, they will treat me differently if they know. I always pretend I don't know or care about things an Aspie would.

I relate to the OP. I was diagnosed with this curse when I was 8. I'm almost 24 and I still feel angry at myself for having it.

I hate it when other Aspies say ''I'm not ashamed. Asperger's makes me who I am''. Guh! Just stop saying that!

I look back on my life, and even not so long ago, and remember things I did that were so Aspie and the things what happened to me what is common to happen to Aspies (like being rejected from casual friendships and being told I'm weird) really makes me sick.

Sometimes I feel like I'm missing a lot of common AS symptoms and hope I was misdiagnosed and just have some other disorder. Then I find something posted here about girls with mild AS and it all describes me and I'm like, ''ugh f**k sake!! ! I thought there was a God for a minute!''

I cringe when I hear ''Asperger's'' mentioned out loud. It's such an ugly word. Why can't the prick who discovered it be named Hans Smith or something? Then it would be called Smith's Syndrome, which won't sound so...unusual and cringing.


I can easily imagine an NT version of me.

Nobody can promise that you'll ever be "happy" about having AS.

You should reach a sense of "peace" from accepting the reality. For me, learning about AS was liberating. I now UNDERSTOOD what was wrong with me, and it did empower me to better deal with it.

Still, five years later, I'm not "happy" about being autistic. Some times I'm very angry about how it has seemingly robbed me of so much in life I expected and even got to see others obtain.

I keep hoping to find where I "fit" and hoping that such an event will make me happier since I'll be someplace I work well and don't feel like such an oddball.

ruveyn – Your advice seems quite sound. As I have gotten older, it’s become quite obvious that, during our lifetimes, each of us will be struck with one or more maladies/conditions. We don’t get to choose which ones we are afflicted with. The best course of action is the one you suggest. Coupled with having appreciation (as things could always be worse).

You were not born disabled dog, you were born cat. When people say they don't like your cat, love it double!

Hate your cat and it will hate you back double! Love your cat and it will love you back double!

Cats don't give s**t, they are ready to take a fight - the only person you are fighting is yourself! It'll keep scratching you till you treat it properly.

I actually agree with Callista's analogy, but perhaps that is the result of fifteen years living in a mostly-black, low-income neighborhood in the southern United States. Perhaps "prejudice" is a bit misleading, though. Prejudice is, of course, the result of the misunderstanding which is the root of that hatred; and it is especially easy to internalize guilt and self-loathing when you blame your perceived shortcomings as the reason others misunderstand you (which is essentially a misunderstanding of yourself). And while race is external and ASD is internal, the foundations of racial prejudice are often owing to differing cultural perspectives and values, which are also internal / psychological. So I don't think the initial analogy was far off the mark, maybe it would make more sense to people who are more familiar with the internal dynamics of racial prejudice in America, because whether the issue is race or disability, the question is still about individual identity and how that individual perceives the self in relation to the rest of society.

Just as melatonin content of the skin is unchangeable, so too is neurofunctionality. Furthermore, while racism is socially condemned by the majority of modern academia, discrimination against non-NTs is still accepted, provided the NT words things correctly (i.e., "Candidate may have trouble with personal boundaries.")