Are you proud of being on the spectrum?

Post Reply New Topic

Proud of my AS? Not really. It's not my accomplishment, so I don't see how I could be proud of it. I'm kinda proud of my intelligence, but not of having AS.

I can't be proud of something I had no control over. It's like people being proud about your gender, race or national origin. Be proud of accomplishments and the like (but make sure to remain humble with a nice dose of self-deprication). I was actually ashamed of it for many years but mainly because it was ingrained in my mind that it was wrong and something I needed to conceal or risk embarrassing the family, tarnishing their name.

Being proud can also mean "having or showing self-respect or self-esteem." So by that definition I think you could still be proud of who you are as a whole with AS being part of who you are.

yep, i am. perhaps it's because i consider it to be a founding facet of my personality. i must admit i'm proud that i'm intelligent. i'm also proud that i'm compassionate and conscientious.

i suppose i didn't have to work for my intelligence but i did have to find ways to apply it. i might have born with my compassion but i'm pleased with the ways i've expressed it. likewise it seems my conscientious nature has been with me just as long but i make a daily effort to consider how my actions affect those around me.

most of the traits that being autistic has imbued me with are ones which i'm proud of, and i try to find ways to incorporate them into my life. some of them are negative, or at least leave me with uncomfortable experiences, and so instead i'm proud of the ways i've learned to deal with my struggles.

i guess it's more that i'm happy that i'm autistic. sure, sometimes when things are tough i wish that i were different. on occasion i also wish that my brown eyes were green but my eye color doesn't make me who i am. even with green eyes, i'd still be me but if i weren't autistic i don't know who i'd be. i think i can say, without any considerable hubris, that i'm a fairly good person with a lot to offer the world. so i'm glad this is who i happen to be, autism and all.

Me? Having 14 cousins who all happen to be neurotypicals, who are all more able than me to go out and mix and meet people and make new friends and be socially included and be kissed by men (or girls, if they are male), and me trying hard to include myself with them and go out with them but knowing I'm too quiet to fit in but being afraid to get drunk at the same time?

I don't think so!

And having people going out of their way to stare at me and having nasty girls laughing at me, no matter how hard I try to wear clothes that make me blend in and walking up straight in a way that does not signifficantly attract negative attention and not doing anything unusual or freaky or anything else that would make people look and not being able to work on anything because I am around average in every way and so having to put up with being ridiculed all my life when I don't want to be? (Who likes being ridiculed? Nobody!)

I don't think so!

And having this condition being discriminated against when it comes to employment, due to people overestimating what AS and Autism is and assuming that just because I have a few learning disabilities it means I will be useless at everything, and also having the dilemma when completing an application form when I get to the disability box or feeling too ashamed to tell the employer face to face about this awful thing I happen to be cursed with?

I don't think so!

And being distracted to every noise and having to always keep a pair of earplugs handy because of normal household noises outside my room and getting unsettled when people leave doors open in the house because open doors make noises more heard from other rooms, and just becoming hard work at home for everybody but being unable to move out because of the stress of the big change and also because of being unable to get into employment because of this f****d up s**t I am cursed with?

I don't think so!

I'm not going to say some s**t like ''Asperger's makes me who I am'' because it doesn't with me. I HATE being who I am, always left out, always feeling isolated, always mysteriously getting people noting everything about me in public, and et cetera. f**k my life, f**k Asperger's, f**k it right to hell I hate it I hate it I hate it!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

I am proud to be! Just as much as my Irish,Italian and possibly american indian heritage.
I love being more open minded and accepting of others than NT's seem to be.

I'm not proud of being Autistic, I am proud of being me. And if autism is part of that, so be it. I love who I am. I am so proud of what I have achieved in my life because only I truly know how hard it was to get here. Only I know the unseen tears I've shed, the pain of surviving the indifference and insensitivity of others.

As I had other disabilities, throughout my childhood, I regularly had several bouts of surgery every year. This culminated in a facial reconstruction when I was 18 years old. During several months of surgery, intensive care wards, and recovery, I was clinically dead at least twice. (Once with the whole Out-Of-Body experience but that is another story)

Towards the end of it all, early one morning I took one of my numerous escape routes out of the Children's ward (although legally an adult, they kept me in the same wards I had spent much of my childhood). I sat in a nearby park, alone under the trees and early morning sunshine. Everything was so intense, the colours of the sky and grass, the smells of the leaves.

I heard a loud rushing of air and realised it was my breathing. I heard a powerful regular thumping and realised it was my heart beating. Being alive felt pretty damn good. I looked out over the city from that hillside park and thought about the thousands of people out there getting ready for work.

None of them knew I was there, sitting in a park watching their city. None of them knew that I had put my life on the line, had died twice, had gone through months of pain. Not so I could be a better person, but so they would feel more comfortable around me. So they wouldn't shirk back in involuntary distaste when they saw me. I had put everything I was at risk for them, and they didn't even know it. Probably wouldn't care if they did.

In that park, early in the morning of the first day of the rest of my life, I made a choice. Never again would I risk my life just for the approval of others. If they wanted to hate me for who I was, so be it. I was done running, done hiding.

This is me and I love who I am. If you can't see the beautiful warm compassionate caring person that I am, then that is your disability, not mine. I may have 'face blindness' (Prosopagnosia) but I am not 'heart blind'

Am I proud of who I am? Hell Yeah!!

I'm not proud and I'm not ashamed. I don't really care either way on what people think of it. I wish I wasn't autistic because to me there seems to be more cons than pros but as I said I'm not ashamed to be or anything.

Proud definitely not.

For me it might have been avoided, since when i was born i had the birth cord around my neck and almost died.

So not only did i get brain damage as in Aspergers and Autism im not to bright either. it sucks being stupid lol. and living on disability pension.

So proud is definitely not the word i would use.

Not proud of it, proud of surviving it.

Meh I am what I am Thats all there is too it I am neither proud nor ashamed.