do you want to be cured?

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MrLoony
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06 May 2011, 12:48 pm

swbluto wrote:

Or, rather, how is it unreasonable that one is concerned with both our personal integrity AND how easy our lives are?

MrLoony wrote:

My issue comes mostly from this: I know how people treat me, and where it comes from. The reason they bully is because of the importance they place on being normal. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be so focused on social ritual that I place more emphasis on it than the person.

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06 May 2011, 2:15 pm

Not at all.

I just wish I could find some good friends and have the social skills to be a good friend.

Joe90
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06 May 2011, 4:44 pm

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I don't want to be "cured." I want to be treated. To say that my mental make-up is something that needs to be "cured" bears the suggestion that I would be happier or better off if I were "normal" and had a "normal" life.

There are "normal" people everywhere who are in abusive relationships. They get into such situations by being in too much of a hurry at too young an age to decide that someone they have a "good feeling about" is the right person to be with them for the rest of their lives. Perhaps there are "normal" people who don't get into this kind of situation, but they are still considered to be "normal" if they do. I started older and wiser, and I have avoided this pitfall. I could have also avoided this situation by being wise and mature and having good adult guidance, but AS happened to be a key factor in my individual case.

There are "normal" people everywhere who go through drug addiction. Perhaps there are "normal" people out there who are clean, but I am also clean. Some people are clean because they have good morals. Some people are clean because they are highly educated. I'm clean because I was never invited to the kinds of parties where they have drugs.

There are "normal" people who are forever estranged and disinherited from their families. Perhaps there are "normal" people out there who have healthy family lives, but I think that I and my Mom and Dad get along reasonably well also.

There are "normal" people out there who will never be talented at anything. I am reasonably virtuosic on a keyboard or piano considering my lack of training, and I am a fair hand at writing. I have more time to practice because I don't have as busy a social life as most people.

There are "normal" people who give up on their education and settle for demeaning jobs working for others. My education continues because would-be employers have taken me for a fool because I stammered and had trouble looking them properly in the eye, yet I am investigating avenues for entrepreneurship, carrying on the family tradition. Would I be giving up my serendipitous liberty to live on my own terms to "be normal" and "fit in"? Sure, I might have been an NT and continued my education out of being an excellent student and having a good bead on things, but I have been lucky in my own way.

I love this. It's exactly what I've been trying to say throughout the whole time I've been a member on WP, but each time I've mentioned it, there has been bickering and protesting that ''NTs are perfect in every way,'' - without using those exact words, but I know that that's what some people on WP are trying to get at. And the answer is, no, NTs aren't perfect in every way. Just like WilliamWDelaney has been saying - there are NT people out there who get into abusive relationships. NTs can get themselves mixed up in some scrapes. I know 2 women who are in abusive relationships, and nearly everyone I know knows at least 1 person who is or has been in an abusive relationship. I'm not going to blame all of my mistakes on having AS. We all make mistakes. Both my mum and dad are NTs, but they've made a lot of mistakes in their lives what they regret.
And my brother's friend, who is a very, very confident and outgoing NT, got married to a man (who seemed really nice and grown-up), and about 6 months later he walked out on her for no reason at all, and now he is gloating when he sees her mum and her dad - which is very immature behaviour for a 32-year-old. And it's not only this - I have seen some shocking behaviour from NTs, when I thought NTs would have known better with certain things. One of my NT cousins got so badly bullied when she got to high school that she had to be taken out of the school. She was a perfectly healthy, pretty, sociable girl, but got so badly bullied for no reason.
So - you'd be surprised with what goes on with NTs. Being NT doesn't mean ''a perfect straight-forward flawless life''.

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06 May 2011, 5:05 pm

superboyian wrote:

No, no, no, and NO definitely not for me... but one thing I would want cured is my confidence. Thats all.

Second of all, I would not want to go through pains and that and a missing part of me that has been there for nearly all my whole lifetime, and without that, I wouldn't be so multi-talented that i'am today.

This.

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07 May 2011, 8:26 am

Brandon-J wrote:

I just wanna be life a normal life with friends, family & a girlfriend and im happy.

Now I am confused, because everyone is different and unique, there is no such thing as normal that does not exist, well it could be the majority at any given time. But really we live in such a diverse world, I think we all need to accept differece and especially if we are, no one should ever hide their individuality, that is the problem!

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IceCreamGirl
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07 May 2011, 8:51 am

Yes. I feel so embarrassed about how I used to act!

Amik
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07 May 2011, 4:43 pm

No, I don't want to be cured. I wouldn't be myself anymore if my Asperger's was taken away. I like myself the way I am anyway. I just wish other people could accept me the way I am and not be so intolerant of my Asperger's.

swbluto
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07 May 2011, 7:48 pm

Burzum wrote:

swbluto wrote:

Meadow wrote:

No, I'd much rather be a social ret*d.

Amen. I'd much rather be bullied, harassed, excluded, underemployed and undereducated than to live a life of happiness, any day!

The bullying isn't a product of your aspergers, it's a product of living around NT's. I'm sure a bonobo would be bullied if it was raised in a clan of common chimps.

The same could be said of everything else you noted. Except the undereducated part, where did you pull that from? To me it seems as if people with aspergers educate themselves to a greater extent than NT's due to their obsession.

It's a product of both elements, just as it takes two to tango. Assigning fault to either group is silly as nobody in either group chose to be of that group, so they're effectively arbitrary, and basic animal nature is to be exclusionary of 'outsiders'(Whether behaviorally, cognitively or species-wise).

Also, the term "undereducation" refers to the average level of educational attainment (measured in "degrees" and other forms of "certification", not unquantifiable "information") for a person with a given set of relevant characteristics (Such as IQ, memory, age, etc.), so to be undereducated means to have education under what's average for your particular demographic, so for the group of people with aspergers to be under-educated means the educational attainment, on average, is lower.

johnny77
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07 May 2011, 8:11 pm

yes and no I would love to understand nt's logic.
Im stuck in a dead end spot where I work not because Im not able, but because I don't inspire confidence in them. I.E. reduced eye contact, low monotone voice patterns and high stress when my schedule is interrupted. Is seen as mentally slow by many nt thinkers.

fleurdelily
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07 May 2011, 8:17 pm

If you were surrounded by people who speak a foreign language, and they're all laughing and chatting among themselves, wouldn't you feel lonely? not able to join in, not able to understand? and it hurts when they are clearly talking about you, but you still don't understand. Wouldn't you want to have either a translater or else the ability to understand? YES! At 43, I have spent my whole entire life, just trying harder, just trying a little bit harder, just trying... and trying and trying.... and if I haven't learned at 43 what comes naturally to little children, then I have to admit that I am never going to. But yes, I would give anything to be "normal"... and I have spent years and years knowing there is "something wrong with me"... it really doesn't help that I'm an adoptee either.
When I was younger, I was more arrogant, I thought it was everyone else's fault, or problem. I just thought everyone else was stuck up and rude. I expect to be treated rudely... and I know that I'm smart... so it had to be "their problem", right? I would not have wanted to change myself when I was younger. Now that I'm older, and I have finally realized, --because of the internet, and finding my biological relatives-- that it really IS me, I see things differently. When I finally accepted that I have AS, I cried. For about a week. Because I finally realized it isn't THEM.... it really is ME. And there was never anything I could have done about it, except that knowing has helped me to stop fighting it, and cut myself some slack, and also the people around me some slack. Not all things can be overcome. Some things must simply be accepted, and it's a relief sometimes to finally stop fighting it. And it's depressing to think of all the wasted time, if I'd have only known, if I'd have had some support in school.... if ... if .... if ... if.....sigh. But at least I know. I am certain my biological mother was AS, and that she never knew. And I can imagine how hard that must have been for her.

Last edited by fleurdelily on 07 May 2011, 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Verdandi
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07 May 2011, 8:27 pm

swbluto wrote:

No, it does not "take two to tango," and targets of bullying do not typically provoke the bullying. Just "being different" is not justifiable provocation. There's no excuse for it.

swbluto
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07 May 2011, 8:42 pm

Verdandi wrote:

swbluto wrote:

No, it does not "take two to tango," and targets of bullying do not typically provoke the bullying. Just "being different" is not justifiable provocation. There's no excuse for it.

I agree, I personally wish people were more tolerant and accepting and that bullying didn't exist and people transcended their basic animal nature.

The "two to tango" metaphor wasn't a way of saying both are at fault (As both are faultless of their intrinsic animalian natures and which group they happen to belong as I already stated), but rather, it's a mixture of both elements. Ultimately, the deciding factor for who does the bullying and who doesn't is "Which group is larger?" and that's beyond anybody's control. If NTs comprised 1% of the population and aspies the other 99%, you can bet there'd be aspie bullies. That's just basic animal nature.

MrLoony
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07 May 2011, 11:08 pm

I don't think it's within a person's nature to bully (look at the actual percentage of people that are bullies... you will interact with bullies more than non-bullies, simply because bullies seek out victims, but that doesn't make bullying the norm), and it's certainly not within an autistic's nature.

However, I do think that there would be bullying in the example you put forth.

I cannot understand, for the life of me, why people who hold to victim blame are allowed in any sort of position of authority. School officials, teachers, school security... these are all people who should, ideally, want bullies out of schools. The same goes for people in positions of authority in the workplace.

Speaking in the area of schools specifically, I think it would be nice if HS education was not considered compulsory. I like that the government pays for it, but it would also be nice if it wasn't a given that you could attend a school (any particular school or any school at all). As it is, there are no real consequences for standard-level bullying. A student has to do something seriously messed up (not that bullying isn't messed up, but there are worse things) to get expelled from a school (putting aside disproportionate response to, for example, students having aspirin).

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bergie
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07 May 2011, 11:11 pm

I am 30 years old. I think it is too late to "cure" me. But if I could invent a time machine and "cure" the 6-year-old me, I think I would. I use "cure" in quotations since I believe autism to be purely genetic and the only "cure" would involve wiping out the gene(s) that cause it, so I don't see that as likely.

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08 May 2011, 12:02 am

MrLoony wrote:

It's not within an "average person's" nature to bully, sure. But, it is within *someone's* nature to bully to ensure the conformity of the herd, and you can bet that if 99% of the population were autistic, there'd definitely be an autistic bully out there. Variation in the population ensures it.

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08 May 2011, 12:23 am

There are definitely autistic bullies out there. They just need the right environment to support their bullying - which has actually happened online.

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