But I don't feel different

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Until I was diagnosed with classic autism at 21, I thought I was just like everyone else. I never considered that other people didn't lose the ability to speak all the time or have meltdowns in public or who knows what else. And even now that I have the diagnosis... well, I still don't really see what's so different about me. I don't think I look different than other people, or sound different, or think differently... I mean, I guess I must, right? But I don't feel different!

I have the opposite experience. It was so obvious to myself from early on that there was some difference between myself and others. I didn't know what this difference was but I just felt like a colossal failure for most of my life. This difference, that I feel very strongly, has meant living my life in an almost perpetually depressed state.

I've felt different my whole life but couldn't understand why. I just figured it was how others treated me and I had bad luck. I never thought I had something. I just thought I had to try harder and I will be normal.

I also assumed things were the same way for everyone they were for me.

I don't feel different either. Sometimes I feel stupider or slower than other people, due to poor self-esteem and lack of confidence. But I don't feel different. Even if there are certain areas what make me feel and look odd, I still don't feel entirely different. There are like a trillion NTs in this country - surely it can't be me vs them.

I get along with people. I have dreams and emotions. I discuss things. I agree on things. I share some interests. I live a generally normal life. I like most people. I work like anybody else. I look like anybody else. Sure, I may do and say things that are considered odd sometimes, and I've done a lot of things what I frown upon now, and I get stared at all the time (don't quite know why), but all that still doesn't make me different. It just makes me an awkward, quirky type of person (a person with more quirks than average people have). I've already got low self-esteem and a lot of anger and self-hatred in me (due to depression and anxiety), why should I spend the rest of my life trying to emotionally seperate myself from other people all the time, just because I have a condition that affects my social functioning a little bit? It doesn't exactly make me completely reverse from everybody. Nobody's perfect anyways.

I know I hate having AS, because of all the traits it seems to have, but I don't hate it because I think I'm different from everybody. I just hate it because I feel awkward all the time, and I struggle at things, and I can't stand the sensory issues, and I just think it's one of those things what I hate about myself. But I might just be one of those people who isn't satisfied with anything I've got, whether it's good or bad. It's all due to me being an irrational thinker.

I didn't feel different until I was 11. That feeling hasn't gone away since, although it hasn't necessarily been constant the whole time.

Up until I found out about AS, I thought of myself as different, but in a superior sort of way. I still find it hard not to believe that. Most people my age are such idiots, and they act like monkeys from a circus. I'm not one of them, and I'm proud of it. I wouldn't want to be part of that pathetic existence.

I have always felt like I was different. I could not understand how the world existed as it does if everyone felt the same as me. I could also see that other people did not behave the same as me (eg. having teachers as bestfriends, being easily overwhelmed etc).

Since telling a few people about my AS I get both "I knew that you were different" and "but you seem so normal" and that is quite confusing. So I seem clearly different but at the same time the same as everyone else? What?

Such a paradox. Perhaps what is happening is that people have many different parameters that they are using to compare you to themselves. On some of the parameters you seem wildly different from them. On other paramteres you seem pretty similar to them. And that's how you can be simultaneously similar and different from them, which makes them say that.

You and I seem to think so much alike. I always knew I was "different" and I too thought it was a difference of superiority (Except I started noticing my difference when I entered Pre-K), but the more I experienced life beyond high school, the more I realized that I wasn't like the other similarly "superior" people who were superior in the way I thought I was. And now I'm in f*****g shambles trying to figure out what exactly makes me so sabotage-welcomingly different. Maybe it's because I really am superior? Haha.

I have gotten the I seem so normal too and I take it as a compliment. It just means I have improved so much I come off as normal or they are the sort of people who don't look for flaws in people and decide what isn't normal. I can also think someone is different and still view them as normal people if that makes sense. So maybe that is what those people are doing? Are they the same people that say they always knew you were different and then say you seem normal? Or is it different people saying it?

I mean who wants to be different they are targeted for ridicule and being taken advantage of and cheated? So if you seem normal, people will leave you alone.

Last edited by League_Girl on 15 Oct 2011, 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't feel like I was different until I was 22, on the eave of my autism diagnoses.

Every NT I encounter thinks I'm weird, no doubt about that, so even if I did get a diagnosis of AS or atuism, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be saying "but you seem so normal.". You should thank your lucky stars, there.

Even one NT girl I spoke with says "Your way of thinking is sooo alien.". How appropriate I'm on wrong planet, right? >.>

I'm painfully aware that I'm different. I can see and feel that there is something NTs have that I never will, and it hurts.

I started feeling different around puberty when my female classmates got interested in fashion, boys, and popular music, rather than anything they used to enjoy. I felt different in that it felt like everyone else was choosing to actively try to conform rather than being themselves and that people were being quite silly in this. The idea that anything more than a tiny minority of these people actually had any interest actually completely passed over me, it felt like people were faking to fit in and I couldn't understand why people would do this.

I never thought of being different in any sense other than 'I'm different than them because I value being myself more than fitting in with a crowd".

I don't feel as different in the autistic world as I do in the NT world, that's for sure.

Although there are a few NTs with whom I don't feel that different, either. But I wonder if it's an illusion. I used to not be aware of the fact that I'm different. Something didn't quite add up, but I wasn't sure what it was. I thought I did fine in social situations, but somehow they have never worked out for me because I could compare the reactions of my peers to me as opposed to other peers and could see that something was lacking. Besides, my mom would always comment on me doing something wrong in social situations when I did not think that I did anything wrong.

When you don't know much, you're not really sure what is going on and you don't realize whether you really are different or not. However, you feel helpless and disoriented because you don't really know how to navigate the world and where you belong. But once you become more socially aware, the differences between you and others strike you more and more.

I feel different and I'm loving every minute of it.

I wouldn't want to be like my same sex peers, either. I love being on the spectrum which is nice, because I am.

I don't really feel different, although I know I am different from observation. Trying to locate how I am different is a sometimes difficult and frustrating process because I feel perfectly normal as far as I'm concerned. I also thought that other people were like me, and was surprised to learn that the way I think and perceive was not typical for most people.

When people say "I always knew I was different and reading the diagnostic criteria was like reading about myself" I don't relate to that at all. I had to draw explicit connections between what I do and what the criteria say, and was only really able to grasp that I was autistic by reading what other autistic people have written.