what is the one myth about asperger/autism that bothers you

Post Reply New Topic

1. That we're incapable of feeling empathy.

2. That we're all savants and geniuses.

3. That we all suffer from severe intellectual disabilities

4. That we don't want friends or social connections.

5. That vaccines cause autism and that a range of pseudo-scientific therapies can cure it.

I think the lack of empathy one really bothers me the most. I actually have too much empathy. I work at a nursing home, and some elderly people there get distressed at small things. One of the residents don't like it when I clean her room because she doesn't like me moving her stuff. And I then find it hard to go in there, because somebody moving your stuff may not be as distressing to us younger people as it is to some of these ill, elderly people, and so I try to imagine how distressing it must feel to this resident, which then makes me feel distressed because I can kind of feel her emotions about it. But my NT colleagues are able to ignore it, and just tell her that they have to clean, and don't seem as affected by the resident's feelings as I do.

Sometimes too much empathy can get me down.

I like Fnord's list (though he missed homeopathy and acupuncture). Whilst the quackery probably annoys me the most, the "treatment" of autism via active abuse is more horrifying than neglect treatments, and would probably have to be my least favourite myth.

I also dislike "every one's a little bit autistic".

The "no empathy" one is the worst, for me. It is interesting that I have heard that comment (about me or other autistic people) off-hand from some people who are not idiots and have some knowledge about autism, and should logically know better. It looks like it is especially difficult for NT people to accept that autistic people have empathy even if they can't feel it ; even if they factually know about that they can't help behaving in a different way.

There is another thing I am tired of, even if it is not technically a "myth". NT people tend to assume that if I manage to do some social thing once, I just can do it (because I learnt) and it will be okay for me to do it again at any time. They don't assimilate that not only my social cognition is different, slower and in many ways inferior, but that using it is always something tiresome and demanding. As a result, people often think I don't want to socialize or to talk about social topics because I either don't care or can't understand, but often the truth is that I am simply tired, fed up and need to rest. How can I make them get it that trying to understand people's emotions and reactions and trying to analyse them in an intelligent way is the mental equivalent of writing a composition on a difficult topic for me ?

"No empathy".

A) Its not exactly true.

B) Empathy is confused with 'sympathy' which is different.

We dont lack sympathy (concern for others). And we dont really even lack empathy ( which is used in this context to be another word for 'theory of mind'-projecting yourself onto others). Just like NTs we project ourselves onto others, but unlike NTs most others arent like us in their thought processes, so our empathy is there-but its just inaccurate.

That we're all a bunch of paranoid wanderers who mumble to ourselves and need to be ordered around and yelled at by our siblings like in the movie, Rain Man. That we have no empathy or theory of mind for other people. That we're all a bunch of soilers who ruin life for our families. That we as children should silenced from talking about our special interests and if we don't obey, we're sent to our rooms for our own happiness. The last time I really talked to my mum about any of my special interests was when I was 10. Nineteen years is a pretty long time for my parents to not really know who I am.

I also hate the stereotype that we all have subnormal intelligence and we need the obvious stated to us on a very regular basis.