autism: too serious or not enough

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I am confused as to how substantial having autism is, and how it effects one's life. I know this probably has no definite answer, and as such I am not looking for a definite answer so I do not want to hear how it hasn't a definite answer, but I do want to know what you (plural) think.

so, how should one think of their autism? Should I take it seriously, but if so how seriously? Is it something that effects everything and always will or is it something of only insignificant magnitude? Or is always a matter of how one personally sees it?

i get angry sometimes when people think it's just something that hinders them from having a date or fitting in. but then i think, maybe my problems in other things are exaggerated because how am I supposed to know what is normal to compare my problems to? or sometimes I belittle it, to the point I doubt I am autistic.

this is a ramble of my uncertain feelings as to where the separation of autism and a person begins, mostly in accordance to how it effects one's life. i do not know how to see myself. compared to others I do not feel any different. with a slight twist of things I'd be like anything else but there is some invisible barrier and I don't know what it is and I don't know if this twist only seems slight as most sense something is very much wrong with me. how serious is autism?

Autism should be seen as a spectrum. For some people it's serious and for other people it's very mild. It's also very important that the public can see that no matter how serious it might be for some people, that it still is not a life long prison sentence.

I have fairly mild AS, so I sometimes think it doesn't even really apply to me, because the most apparent characteristics of AS are ones that I don't have. I don't stim, for instance, nor do I have very pronounced sensory issues. But then I will read a list of symptoms like the one posted recently on another thread, and although some of the items on the list don't apply to me, and others apply only slightly, some of the ones that do apply smack me in the face, and I am struck with the realization that some of the most hurtful things that I have been through are due to my being on the spectrum.

When I've been involved in groups, I have always come to a crossroads where I found myself unable to tolerate some meanness or dishonesty that took place, even when it wasn't directed at me, and I was so intransigent and unable to let it go that it ended up with me being ostracized. Then I held onto the feeling of rejection and injustice for years, never being able to get over it. Not only that, but since those were the only groups I have even been involved in, I now find myself alone. I believe this inability to deal with setbacks is due to my being on the spectrum, and it has greatly impacted my life. I have also lost jobs due to meltdowns, and been afraid to put myself in situations because of the risk of having a meltdown, so the impact of something that happens relatively rarely for me (having a meltdown) has been significant as well.

So even having very mild AS, it has had a very significant impact on my life. Yet. like you, I find myself wondering whether it's any big deal and whether it's really that much of an issue. Sometimes I even wonder whether I have AS at all. All of these contradictory thoughts are constantly battling it out in my mind.

It should be taken seriously. It (autism) does impart significant handicaps in life.

I go from thinking of particular incidents and thinking "Oh damn that one thing that happened 25 years ago means I'm not autistic." And then I remember all the other stuff. I find it harder to take these anxieties seriously, though, after having had two professionals, my mother, some friends, and multiple people here validate this.

I am unable to tell how severe it is, I can only say "This is what my life course looks like." And I think my AS and ADHD in combination have been pretty serious, all told.

how serious is Autism? Well myself, my son and my daughter all have various forms of Autism. For my daughter it's seriously prevented her from having friends, for my son it's prevented him from talking like he should, and for me the limiting sensory issues and meltdowns are serious.

It's serious for me because it affects almost every part of my life. My life is governed by routines and feeling secure by them. My interests are my escape from the chaos that is my life. I struggle with daily activities such as changing clothes, cooking meals and keeping my house clean, though medication does make it much easier. My very slow ability to adapt to change and sudden outbursts over it do get in the way of me getting anything done. I have very little communication with people and when it happens it's more like we are communicating through radio than face to face.

So yeah, autism is very serious to me.

Double post deleted.

Interesting. (Not judging you, just comparing and being curious.)

I don't usually envy those succeeding at college or work. And when I do... it's usually because something has poisoned my mind with those common ideas that a person who does not work is worthless. Or because I'm having a conversation with one of those people who thinks that since they have a job and I'm on RSDI, then they're entitled to tell me what to do, how to live my life, or whether I deserve autonomy at all. In those instants I wish that I could do these things just so people would get off my back.

Not that I wouldn't want to work if I could -- I have a very strong work ethic that still manages to wreck my health because in the absence of a job I still drive myself into the ground trying to get other things done and never managing it. But most of the time the fact that I don't have a job doesn't bother me emotionally, so I don't end up envying people who work. Another reason is that the only thing I can imagine when I think of going to work, is like... an explosion of color, sound, texture, and smell, followed by shutdown so extreme I can't think or perceive my surroundings at all. Or the feeling of trying to function while in the midst of a migraine. Or something else along those lines. So I find it not something to envy, but something to fear the entire idea of being expected to do it.

I have a friend who is as close to having a brain like mine as anyone I've ever met, yet she manages (with a lot of struggle) to hold a job. Her daily living issues are almost as serious as mine, though. And because she has a job, people assume she doesn't need this level of help. She's lucky to have a significant other who can help with those things. I've also watched her struggle with overload, shutdown, and possibly burnout because of work. I worry about her in that regard. She doesn't have the kind of safety net I have, and if she ever burned out really hard, she might have real trouble getting disability. Yet despite the fact that she has all these various things people take as symbols of "high functioning" (job, boyfriend, speech some of the time, etc.), she really, really struggles with some really "basic" stuff among other stuff -- avoiding walking straight into traffic, communication (both on the level of words in general and on the level of speech), driving, making basic sense of her surroundings, and pretty close to all the various daily living skills in one way or another. Among other things.

People tend to look at her and see only her strengths and fill in the gaps as if she's that strong at everything, the same way people tend to look at me and see only my weaknesses and fill in the gaps as if I have that much trouble with everything. (Both of us have also experienced the reverse, it just happens less often.) When they do that, all they're doing is taking two or three skills and assuming that the skill level at those things must be the same as everything else across the board. And so her issues tend to get trivialized even though they're not that far off from mine in reality. She's not the only person I know who deals with that. I know someone else who last I heard had not only a job but a great job, that he is really good at... but he has enough trouble with speech that he uses a communication device a lot of the time, and he can't feel that he needs to go to the bathroom until he's literally crapped his pants, is frequently malnourished from inability to cook and eat food on demand, and the list goes on.

I've known so many other people who can work but only just... and it makes me very afraid for them, and is a situation I'm glad I mostly avoided. I proved unable to work so early on that getting SSI wasn't hard. People who've worked a long time and burned out have to face things like saying they have this trouble because they're autistic, and then being told "But you were always autistic and you could work before so what's the problem?" Cumulative overload isn't something they're usually familiar with. I can't envy people in that position at all.

So that's the long version of why I don't usually envy autistic people who can work. It gives them opportunities I don't have, and that I sometimes wish I had. But at the same time, quite often they're in great pain and overload the entire work day and come home exhausted (sometimes physically ill from all the strain), often so exhausted that they can't function enough to eat and drink and all the other things that they need on a basic level... only to have to repeat it the next morning until they finally can't do it anymore. Ideally society would pay for such people to be able to support themselves working part-time or not at all (depending on individual abilities), but at least in the USA it's pretty all-or-nothing.

As far as how seriously to take autism... I'm not sure I understand the question?

The more I find out about AS (I'm a little behind the bandwagon) the more I think it permeates everything about who I am, and who I am is generally not a good thing. It effects everything I do because it's a part of me, therefore informing on me as a whole if that makes any sense whatsoever. I don't know about "serious" as it's a subjective term, but I'd definitely say it's significant from my perspective.

The autistic part of aspergers isn't so bad, viewed objectively. It's just that noone views it objectively. When NT's take a dislike to you in an unacknowledged, automatic sort of a way, the outcomes aren't usually good. Especially when they run the organisation you work for and have never (like you) heard of autism, and have an automatic association from the word to something not far removed from idiocy.

It's the ignorance, the hiddenness, both of the syndrome and its effects, that render it an extraordinary injustice that's crying out for amelioration. We don't know, we're just individuals locked into our own skulls. Even when we've begun to learn about it, we still can't see how it cripples us.