Autism and Your Future

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I don't wish to have children, either, because I get too focused on my stuff at home to take care of anyone. I also hate staying at home for too long; it gets dull. If I had a child, I would specifically adopt an autistic child. However, I want a full-time career and spend more time just having fun, since I'm not getting much of that as a student right now.

Addressing some of the comments above, undiagnosed people who are truly on the spectrum would need to be impaired in order to be so. Usually, what happens is that getting diagnosed and getting proper accommodations minimizes the impairment (but without the accommodations, the impairment will resurface).

I don't get the antagonism in this thread.

Can you specify where the 'antagonism' is?

The need for accommodations is evidence of impairment.

Something that some posters seem to believe is that the majority of undiagnosed autistic people are minimally impaired (if impaired at all), and can function as well as any NT with little to no difficulty. I am not sure why people want to believe in such a thing as there is no evidence that a significant population of such exists. Not that it is impossible for someone who is diagnosable to have a good outcome, but rather that trying to point to them as the rule rather than the exception is highly unrealistic.

I think that could change, provided accommodations were more readily available and just getting past the interview stage wasn't so fraught for many.



What antagonism?

People think that but they don't realize that being undiagnosed doesn't mean that you are functioning. I never got diagnosed as a kid even though I had a lot of problems because they didn't diagnose it as much back then. They knew something was wrong. I was in many special classes and schools and did a 30 day evaluation in a mental hospital and went to their day treatment program for a while. I don't think they knew what to do with me. Since leaving school I haven't been in the mental health system and didn't even have insurance of any kind until last year. I get away with my lack of functioning by being supported by and living with my mother. I don't even leave the house much.

Sometimes people have trouble imagining or believing in things outside their realm of experience. I've had people (nts even) that were just baffled at the idea of a person in their 30s that have never had a bank account, a real credit card, never did an income tax refund, and doesn't work yet is not on ssi or welfare.

When I was trying to get my id and couldn't get enough proof of identity so many people acted like they didn't believe me because most adults my age would have many things on the list. I didn't.

I was referring to Stoek refusing to read your insightful post. I didn't understand why.

I did

Hang around here long enough and you'll understand

I can't. I am addicted to WP but also can't afford to spend this time here because of my busy life. Maybe I should just leave. Somehow. But then I keep coming back...

Oh - he said he didn't want to have a debate on the topic. I posted my opinion anyway, and he let me know he hadn't read it. I mostly posted it for the benefit of others at any rate, because I doubt he or I will change our views anytime soon. I didn't see it as hostile.

Oh, okay. Weird. I just asked because I've met him in person and he didn't seem like a rigid opinion kind of person at the time. I kind of dislike close-minded people, because that means they're not willing to learn and explore further.

I don't mean he's rigid-minded, I honestly don't know him well enough. I just mean each of us has an opinion and my experience is most people regardless of neurology don't easily change many of their opinions.

It's when people do change their minds that I'm surprised.

No, you didn't say that. I'm just surprised he's closed-minded about something like this, that's all. And what you said is what makes most people useless to be with, because the only people I feel are worth it are those who you can explore new concepts and learn together. Otherwise, you learn from them initially, but then the relationship becomes dead-end because you've learned everything you could about them.

Yes but a lot has to do with the way people communicate information. Some people don't like the bother of reading long posts or overly-academic or stat-filled posts - it's all about the style of posting that a person takes to - it's all to do with individual
preferences

I could post the solution to all the world's problems but if I did it in a style people didn't relate to they wouldn't bother to read it.

So he's not closed-minded, he just picks and chooses which posts he can be bothered to read - as I suspect most people on WP do.

"I could post the solution to all the world's problems but if I did it in a style people didn't relate to they wouldn't bother to read it."

You write extremely interesting and insightful stuff sometimes. Here is a 'further' possibility: The solution to all the world's problems can only be given in a style which is difficult for (most) people to read, as only people who are able to deeply focus and comprehensively process data will be able to have the depth of understanding to solve the world's problems.

People have all different kinds of capacities to process data and generally pick and choose what is easy for them. Alll kinds of buffering of emotional pain is built into approaching this way, as people naturally want to feel good, but different things feel good to different people, and many of these good feeling things that people do are destroying the world. What I would do is encourage anybody and everybody to process data in a way which is more comprehensive in order to build up muscle at doing that, as this will affect people around one to some degree, but there are so many people and it makes more sense to try to influence people in this direction who are already inclined to go in this direction.

Anyway, if people skip steps in their thinking processes, all kinds of confusion and deflection is bound to result. Apparently it is very important to most people that they are listened to, but do these same people really try to listen?.