How to be a "first-rate" Aspie

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Some of you will have heard Tony Attwood's advice: Don't be a second-rate NT when you can be a first rate Aspie. Pragmatically, what does that mean to you? How do we live this advice out? I'd like some help understanding this. Thank you.

Use your energy to do what you're good at, instead of trying to reach barely average at what you're bad at.

For me, it means studying science instead of going out and trying to enjoy overwhelming social events.

I agree with Callista.

Negatively put: Just as an art gallery won't do the blind much good, or a music show won't do the deaf much good, social settings won't do us much good. We need to understand our limitations.

Positively put: Something else Attwood wrote that I found interesting is that AS isn't so much high abilities as an uneven profile of abilities. So, we need to find out what it is we are good at, and concentrate on it.

As our resident logician/priest, would you disagree?

and the idea of engagement, not conformity

Ah, another old person. The young Turks--or is that turkeys?--are trying to depose us on another current thread. Beware!

(Oh my, you all know about me... )

My main struggle is that my profession requires me to act very NT with people. (The pastor I work with is the poster child for the NT brain. I like him, but his is very presence sends me into overload.)

However, librarian, I think see your point. I mean, I did a funeral today, I preached (I love preaching), but I hardly spoke to anyone afterwards except to say, "I'm so sorry; she was a good woman." Then I avoided the funeral luncheon. Then I went into my room and closed the blinds. Then I went to the office and did some research on Hebraic idioms.

So, maybe this is what you mean? How am I doing? I'm not good at self-awareness. Do you think I'm on track?

To me it means, stop trying to make yourself into something you're not. I think that I came to a turning point about this recently. People often use phrases like "all humans are social creatures," but in my heart I always felt that I was NOT a social person. So was I not human? Was I heartless? What was wrong with me that I couldn't just enjoy normal things like everyone else?

I don't think or feel that way anymore. I have discovered and decided that I am NOT like everyone else, but that doesn't make me not human. It just makes me different. I was like a square peg that others, and myself, were trying to fit into a round hole. It was making me and the people around me miserable. Nobody was getting what they wanted. Now I've decided that I don't care about fitting into the round hole, and in fact I don't care about fitting into anything. Others may always expect me to be like them, but I don't care about their expectations anymore. I want to be myself, do what I know in my gut is right, and embrace my differences and innate abilities. I have much to offer this world, it just won't be what others expect or in the way they want me to do it. It will be the Aspie way! And that will benefit everyone, me included.

The way I see things, in addition to the eschatological, the penultimate role of Christianity is as a cultural/social locus. I would say that both are beyond my comprehension, though both are very important. Thus, my definition of the aspie's existential dilemma: We can't deal with people, but we can't not deal with them either. Our success begins with understanding this dilemma and dealing with it as best we can.

As far as logic goes, it serves to organize and clarify our thought with the aspie's dilemma as a postulate. It is easy to let our thinking make us miserable, especially in light of our difficult circumstances. But if our thinking can make us miserable, can it not also make us happy? Might not Nietzsche be right that our adversity can make us stronger if we work with it?

The question is how. The only answer I have is to live life on life's terms--or what the Stoics referred to as living according to nature--our own natures, my philosophical hybridity notwithstanding.

The image I get is of Epicurus in his garden: turning away some; allowing others to enter.

My admiration for Epictetus is such that had he been a Christian, I would petition the Church to make him patron saint of Aspies. He handled the most horrific adversity with a grace and aplomb that is incredibly inspirational. Since I was never able to warm up to the Epicureans, I must admit I'm not familiar with the story. Could you elaborate?

Epicurus? A stoic. An atomist. Believed in minimizing suffering by carefully controlling sensory input and the appetites. Participation in society minimal and pragmatic merely. The ideal life to live in a walled compound and garden to contemplate truth, maintain a few close associates, and to safeguard happiness.

Epicurus could be another patron saint of Aspies, too.

Actually, that sounds a bit like the way I live. I live way out in the sticks on a ranch a mile from my nearest neighbors. It is a great place to contemplate truth and to control who comes into my presence. I will have to take a closer look.

Are you a fan of Merton by chance?

Oh, tell us some Hebraic idioms!!

I envy your living situation! That would be a dream for me!

Merton? I was into him for a while. I think I prefer the Zen stuff better.

When you dodge stuff like funeral lunches, do the people think you are odd?

I guess since none of them are around you all the time, they can't really know how often you do it. I'd be doing the same thing by the way, not insulting you or anything. Do your bosses get on your case about it? If they know you are Aspie and nobody minds that you do it, then probably there's no need to try to force yourself to do it.

So then you just have to figure what you want to accomplish and try to do that.

Last edited by Thelibrarian on 05 Nov 2013, 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.