Does this forum help or hurt?

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I wouldn't worry too much about people getting bad advice here, because as far as I can tell nobody ever takes the advice offered.

We have to remember that this is not a site of panels of "experts." We are just regular people talking and sharing our experiences as if we were sitting together at a cafe or something. We don't expect perfect advice from everyone or from anyone and no one is expected to take advice or follow it if they don't want to. This is not a therapy clinic, it's a social group.

Yes, and thank you.

JFH, I am understanding now after three readings! Yeah, I'm slow! It's all good though. Can you tell me what you mean by the counter productive sentiment on WP? I want to understand that part. Thank you

Oh, yes, I do understand. Thank you so much for explaining.

Here are the bad points about being on WP:-

- People here telling you that being on the spectrum means you inevitably look weird in public and that people ARE laughing at you, which can severely affect us struggling with social anxiety

- Discussions about Nazis having something against autistic people and throwing us into death camps in the future. This is the only place I ever hear this being discussed, no matter how much searching I do on Google

- Contradictions, where one thing is an Aspie trait then a few threads later it's an NT trait

- When you spend time offering support, advice and empathy to an OP, and nobody reads it or the thread dies or it turns out to be a 9-year-old thread that's been necrobumped, then in another thread people accuse you of not replying to other people's threads and not offering support, advice or empathy. What gives?

- Trolls and attackers that humiliate you in threads

- Criticism, clichés and kafkatraps
2 Kafkatrap examples: "If you get confused with sympathy and empathy then you lack empathy"
"If you think Aspies are closed-minded then you're closed-minded"
Uh, I hate these

- Know-it-alls, you just cannot win an argument with know-it-alls when you're dumb like me and can't think of really good words to explain what your point is

- Threads being turned into an off-topic discussion about a word used in the OP that is unfamiliar to other countries
"I fell down on the path and broke my ankle today."
"Path is sidewalk in the US."
"My baby's pushchair was stolen today"
"In the US we say stroller"

^^ This is a bit ironic. For most of my life, if I'd gone for a DX, someone would have had to choose between "paranoid" and a dozen other errors. Now, it seems that we are getting the overflow from some other unrecognised conditions. Many of those are probably combinations of listed conditions, which totally confuse most professionals. To avoid a DX, I learned to switch symptoms during an interview.

Re: Autism treatment in general, I think that there is far too much emphasis on training kids to be unexceptional. It didn't matter to Paul Erdos that he had to be handled like a child by his hosts, nor to them, because whenever he had an audience, he was spouting astonishing math. It is the usual expectation for a child to grow to self-sufficiency, but I know that I have only been productive when I've had some sort of friend or partner to help out with my social deficits. I think I more than make up for it, but NTs find it so easy that they don't even know I need a trade. I can build a shed for a neighbour, and I can do it in ways that most could not, but if I ask them to arrange an introduction they get offended and say to just go and do it myself.

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Thanks for sharing. I tend to agree with this sentiment. I think what you are saying in short as that what is called autism in modern days is nothing like the autism defined initially and that there really isn't much documented reason on why so many collections of symptoms are now getting lumped into an "autism" basket. Is that about correct?[/quote]

Roboto, that is essentially it, and it is very gratifying that somebody else gets this! The other important element is the apparent determination to suppress the autistic personality type. We all have our biases, and I make no apology, being most singularly autistic (from both the full industrial Chandler and Macleod test, and the once available free on-line test, the latter having been immensely popular on every site where it was posted, but now is only available in severely docked form, here on WP. Can anybody tell me if it still appears on Aspies For Freedom, which I can no longer access?) for reminding people that it exists, and that Kanner was aware of this (his autism derives from this, and not the other way around as some here are preaching; labeling anything as autism, when there is no connection with the personality aspect, is downright misleading!). Given how it imparts an unusual outlook (which was essential for scientific advancement) and different expectations (that make it difficult for us to fit in) we should be recognized as a minority, and enjoy the protections from prejudices that other minorities enjoy (even when they chose to be different; for us autistics, it is mandated by our genotype). Instead, our existence is being systematically buried, which should be viewed as sinister!

I found that this forum helped me tremendously.
You never have guessed what it is to try and live ones life being in decline with a mystery illness that one didn't know what it was and what was causing it... Where one has reached middle age with seemingly no hope for the future as one has had to sell posessions as one has no longer been able to work full time and one then finds even part time temporary low hours work too much to do and it hardly paid for ones travelling costs...
Not being able to sign off sick because one does not officially have anything, but not being able to sign on to look for work again because one is not in a position without a diagnoses to say I have to refuse a full time job and will likely fall to pieces in a part time job....And so I have spent years of being inbetween with no income... Seemingly no hope... Getting older.... Pension rights no longer applicable as I have too many gaps...(I still need to sort this out). Not knowing what to do or where to turn...

And if I had not followed a hunch and pushed myself with determination to join this site to ask a single question, I would have never known what autistic shutdowns were and what burnout was. (I knew full well from physical experience, but I did not know what was causing them as in the past doctors had said that it was some sort of allergy, so I went for most of my life trying different foods going up wrong avenues and getting no where... It was last year when I finally had a basic six point allergy test and it all came up clear when I realized that something is wrong and it HAS to be something else. (I had been asking the last doctors for 20+ years for an allergy test and they refused to give me one stating that the NHS does not do them, and then when I found they did they kept saying they did not have the budget! This was my life. I could not work and they complained about that when two years of their pay would be more then I had ever earned in my whole lifetime... And when I had saved in my 20's over a year enough money to be tested privately the doctor stopped me)).

So to come on here and find tat I am experiencing shutdowns and I now know the cause means that I can prevent some of them happening, know what they are, know why they are happening, and avoid the situations like going in crowded shops etc...
(I would previously walk in, start to have a shutdown and try to get out and spend time trying to lie down where I could find suitable... Because I had pushed myself into a shutdown because I had assumed it was allergy related and not related to the enviroment. My Mum kept saying I was stressed before shutting down. I assumed it was because my body was reacting... Never occurred that it was my mind! I thought it was my body!))).
And since joining it has been a Godsend. Knowing what I am dealing with. Knowing how to avoid a shutdown, or if I feel one coming, I can remove myself from the situation. I must have been sooo thick not to pick up on this for so many years of my life.
But just to get relief from avoiding stressful situations has vastly improved the quality of my life, and if it wasn't for this site and the autistic assessment people who I had briefly met I would not be able to have found this relief from the fragile state I was in.
And the good thing is that I am recovering. If I had known years ago, I would have avoided hitting burnout and I would never have hit the fragile stage. I probably would have been able to keep in a job and be self supporting. I used to be self supporting.
I am hoping to find a way where I can be in the future by recovering from being fragile, and finding things I can do to earn money while avoiding stress and other triggers. Not quite sure how to do this yet, as trying to fit me in a job I am not naturally gifted at really stresses me to begin with. Hence why I have always (Apart from one job) tried to work within the parameters of my two main special interests.

So if anything be told, this site has probably saved me from decline into the unknown depths as I was declining fast and I had already reached points where I didn't know how it was possible to decline any further and remain alive! The site has saved me from this by arming me with knowledge, and already from the answers I was given... I already know more about autism then one of my doctors did as the doctor I was speaking to did not seem to know what autistic shutdowns are. She only seemed to know about meltdowns, though I am very, very greatful to her as well, because she had the wisdom to pass my details to the autistic assessment team.

So for me the blessings of joining this site have come in a practical way. And I know it is right, because by stimming and avoiding triggers works. If it wasn't shutdowns I am experiencing, then no way would it work by avoiding the stressful enviroment.