diagnosis and "permission to injure"

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thinking honestly -- how many people here have worse social lives after being diagnosed? or have regressed?

i know a psychiatrist who self diagnosed with aspergers traits. he's become extremely difficult to be around in the last few years and i'm wondering if this self diagnosis is the cause of his change for the worse.

it feels like some of the messages from the psychiatry profession gives us "permission to injure" (in an emotional sense). we don't have to be careful around others anymore because we have aspergers and since they are NT's they just have to learn to accept us.

Good point. I think it gives us permission to be crazy or weird, but injure? Why injure if you can avoid it? Empathy isn't hard to learn, we know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of harm. It's just learning what causes the harm that's the trouble.

Discovering this about myself has helped me greatly, to an extent yes, because I feel less completely awkward and don't find myself thinking "what am I doing wrong" anymore. I'm not doing anything wrong. The only problem is miscommunication. I don't intend to harm with the way I do things and if I realize I did I try to explain my reasoning and intention. This usually works I've found.....

I do not think it is an intention to "injure" when w have a diagnosis, but merely acceptance that we do not have to conform to a rigid set of rules that make absolutely no sense.

It is somewhat like the old army hoax that happened years back when someone decided to manufacture documents demanding that people spend 30 minutes a week updating the system with their flypaper reports; to determine which flypaper would be more efficient for the army to adopt.

An NT would go along with it because it is the social norm, an aspie would likely go tell the General to get his head tested if he tried to enforce it.

Brutal honesty is so rarely found in NTs and therefore they are not used to it.

Do not kid yourself for a second to think that so called normal people wouldn't tke the opportunity to be rude with everyone they met if they could get away with it, unlike some aspies they actually intend to cause distress whereas with us it is simply a by-product of everyday living.

Maybe this doctor just got sick and tired of putting up a front, as I know I often do?

I'm not sure permission to injure is a useful construct. Permission to behave more naturally, perhaps, with the incumbent risk that others will find you less "nice". But I'm not convinced there is any right to be injurious in the name of behaving as one's most natural inclinations would allow.

Eh, I may be the odd one out here but...

My diagnosis stripped me/my autistic behaviour of a "permission to injure" physically or emotionally entirely.

My social relationships have improved a lot because I got my diagnosis.

Because people know I have an ASD their feelings get hurt much less. It's weird, but it works for them.

1. They do not have to worry about reading non-existent messages into my behaviour. (Doesn't mean they won't do it anyway.)

2. They can ask me if they're unsure or confused about something I said or something I did.

3. If they're about to get upset or annoyed at my behaviour, they can tell me.

4. They can act more natural around me and don't have to worry about being ridiculed for their "out-of-the-norm"-ness.

I do worry a bit that my diagnosis makes me and my family less concerned about my meltdowns, even though I can be verbally abusive during them. But then I remember that treating me like I was normal only made the meltdowns worse.

It's possible that a person with AS could happen to have the kind of personality that likes to make excuses for bad behavior, and such a person would probably use AS as an excuse if they were diagnosed. But those same traits, in an NT, would result in a guy who whines about missing an eye whenever his behavior is criticized (anyone know the comedian who's father did this?) or claims his wife's behavior drives him to drinking, or whatever. Some people like to make excuses, I don't think AS has anything to do with it besides being a handy excuse to make. (Note that I'm not trying to claim that self-diagnosed AS are faking it to have an excuse - if you're going to fake a disability there's a lot better pospects than AS to fake.)

It's also possible that he's finally let his hair down, figuratively speaking, and decided to be himself, and some people don't like the real him or are misunderstanding him and reading stuff into his behavior that isn't there. Or that he's in the process of having a stress-related breakdown and losing his ability to fake NT, and this has made his autistic traits more visible to him.

better to injure those that deserve it than yerself

accuracy yeah I wish
am catching shrapnel still... but no longer throw meself on the frag grenades

If anything, my diagnosis has allowed me to figure out more about how I might accidentally hurt people, and how to prevent that from happening. If you are oblivious to the fact that you commit regular social faux pas, how in the world are you supposed to detect them, make mental notes, and change them?

OP, you seem to be posting a lot of stuff about how you think this psychiatrist self-diagnosed with AS is being a jerk. What's going on with you two? What specifically about his behavior is bothering you so much?

Personally, my social life improved a lot after diagnosis, but only incidentally.

I'll make two points:
1) I have avoided social situations of late as I know I'm likely to dislike them rather than forcing myself to "make friends"
2) I actively reigned in my pursuit of a girl as I realised I couldn't accurately judge the subtleties of her behaviour, and knew attempting to make her my girlfriend had a high likelihood of damaging our friendship and causing me stress.

Point 1 is neutral at worst- I've accepted every invitation to be social (both of them) since I made that decision, so I haven't hurt anyone, but I've avoided receiving invitations or actively seeking social activity. As I've made many social faux pases in the past, I've probably added to the happiness of others by avoiding them.

Point 2 is definitely positive. I've certainly improved the life of the girl in question, and probably other people too.

So I don't think it is an excuse to cause injury. If anything, it makes me aware of the risk of causing injury, and consequently led to me avoiding injuring others as far as possible.

thanks for the posts guys.

as i see people self diagnose with aspergers, i get the feeling in many ways it is to gain this "permission to injure". they no longer have to make extra effort in social interactions because there is a built in excuse.

if you're self diagnosed -- or even professionally diagnosed (like i was), i'd encourage you to be careful about how you handle this. just because they say we don't have empathy doesn't mean we have to act that way.