sometimes i feel jealous/ left out in the aspergers category

Post Reply New Topic

sometimes i feel like people with aspergers are seen too much as "genius with a nerdy attitude" even though im sure many people with aspergers have more problems than they do advantages

i know there ARE some people with aspergers that have a special interest in Physics and have the IQ to do it well, so they get a profession in physics and they become a genius with a nerdy attitude.

but, mostly my aspergers causes me great amounts of pain; and it always has!

im not really a genius in anything, in fact i technically have a low average IQ. but im very good in art and with animals.

sometimes, i wish i had more of an Advantage than a Disadvantage, even though i can do lots of things and im not truly disabled ( i can walk,talk, and ask for help when i need it), i still struggle a lot. does anyone else feel like this?

I don't have a high IQ either and I am not a genius. But you say you're good at art and with animals so there is your special skill there. I feel I don't have anything talented or anything I could excel in like some aspies have with their interests and made it a career out of it.

It's not good to dwell on what you haven't got. Everybody is different, everybody has their good points and bad points. But I know what you mean. I'm fairly smart, as in I can pick up a lot of stuff, but if anything I wish I had more connections with people, which is something I am currently working on. In the meantime I focus on what I love to do and what I'm good at.
Maybe, you focus too much on the negatives so that you don't see all the greatness in the positives. You may even have more positives than you realise. For me, the advantages usually outweigh the disadvantages because I just don't give a crap about what others think, which means I do what's good for me, and I tend to notice what others can do so much more than what they can't.

I have a high IQ and was good at all things academic but i never finished a degree and I can't work.

I may have a high IQ for academia but I have too many problems in other areas to do anything with it. These days I spend most of my time at home messing around with all things arts and crafts (needle crafts).

So don't worry about it, even those with high IQs don't always have oodles of success. Hell, I can't even get a date and I don't cope with relationships when I do have them due to pressure to be less quirky.

My quirks don't seem to want to leave me..

Also I don't know how others manage to work with people. I get bullied too much which makes it impossible to work with them. I also tend to have to suppress my ability as people don't cope well with it.

How do you manage this? I find other people sabotage me so I have to care what they think or they have the power to destroy my entire existence (well to make my life an absolute misery anyway)>

And that sounds more paranoid than I meant it to!

I have been bullied a lot and people can make life very difficult for you when you don't fit in. So for example when I was at school I would always be the one that no one wanted to work with in a group. The one who, when the teacher assigned me to a group because I had not found one, everyone in that group would do the 'sighing' thing, a bit like they were about to take an algebra test or similar.

Ergo it is hard to do well at group projects when no one will work amicably with you.

I find this kind of attitude has followed me into my adult life.

I managed to get bullied at work by a supervisor who was later fired for bullying someone else, but it stressed me out so much I was unable to keep the job and I have been bullied online as well. Ergo it makes my life difficult when people behave like this as I am not all that well equipped to be able to deal with it.

Last edited by bumble on 26 Jan 2014, 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't really think I'm talented either. I'm not even smart like some people who come here are.

I'm not a good reader so I feel excluded from some threads, but I try not to let it get me down.

On the upside, I reckon my spelling has improved lately.

Those people are few and far between. That stereotype may occur in real life from time to time, but it's largely a myth. Some people with AS are lucky enough to stumble into a career that suits their own personal special interest (I was one of those), but that still doesn't prevent their Aspergian qualities from being a handicap.

I loved my job and was quite good at it (and it didn't require a genius level IQ), but that didn't change or prevent the fact that I still got fired every few months for not being able to function in the same way that all the neurotypicals did. Nor did it prevent me from living in poverty because I was not a confrontational negotiator and didn't have good Executive skills when it came to managing my personal affairs.

I can't imagine anyone living with AS, for whom it wouldn't cause plenty of problems, no matter what their profession was. That's why it concerns me that books like 'Look Me in the Eye' may give many people the impression that AS is no big deal and we all get on just fine and have thrilling lives working with Rock Stars. 'Cause real life ain't that way.

Well basically, I believe that the only person that can truly destroy you, is yourself. Also, people that sabotage you are clearly not worth the time of day, and even if they did like you, would you return the favour? I don't see the point in wasting energy trying to impress people, if they are so hard to please anyway.

You sound almost exactly like me.

I have a supposedly genius level IQ, right around 140 or 145 but it doesn't really make me a genius at anything. I was good at academics early on but as I got older it became harder and harder to perform well in school. Everyone assumed it was easy for me but it wasn't and I felt very pressured. My teachers wouldn't give me any help if I asked for it. They would just laugh at me and tell me, you're smart so you can do it on your own.

I don't know if it has ever really mattered that much outside of school. It might make me able to compensate for some of my deficits, but I'm really not sure if it does or not. I can teach myself a lot of skills if I have the opportunity and the right information, BUT my ability to execute those skills is inconsistent. Having a talent or skill or high intelligence doesn't mean you are always able to use it to the fullest.

Most people in the "real world" don't have any idea how intelligent I am. Maybe I seem too spacey or ditzy, or maybe some of those people are simply unable to recognize intelligence, or have a prejudice against recognizing intelligence in women. Many people talk down to me a lot like they think I am not smart at all. And in jobs I may not get a chance to do something I would be good at, because the way I come across to people doesn't represent what I would actually be good at or best suited for.

I do have a particular talent in music, not quite savant like but almost approaching that. I taught myself to play the piano, starting when I was around 12. At 17 I was accepted into a college as a piano major. I had very uneven abilities, compared to other people who had taken lessons for years, and no one really understood that. They would say things like, "if you could teach yourself to play this, you should be able to play this other piece with no problem" but I couldn't do what they wanted and no one really understood why. I became so frustrated with trying to meet their expectations, I lost my love of playing.

It is a real catch-22, if people think you are intelligent, talented, or just plain capable of doing something, they tend to raise the bar higher and higher, and they expect you to push yourself to do more and more. On the other hand if they see you are not capable in some way they become condescending and try to micro-manage your every move.

I envy the people too, who have a great talent and interest in something and are able to make a career out of it, but having a high IQ doesn't always ensure this will happen.

I like the way you think about people's opinions, Bernana.

I'm not a genius, but I really don't think you should worry so much about how smart you are. You could focus more on your strengths. We should try to love ourselves more and do our best with the advantages that we have.

Being good at something you're innately good at isn't anything to be proud of (or to envy).

That's something humanity needs to think about now and again, IMO.

I haven't noticed anything.

People who are naturally gifted in something still have to work verry merry berry hard to develop their gift, and go out of their comfort zones often, and deal with difficulties and stress of using their gift, and make some mistakes like eberryone else and probably more so if they are autistic, to be able to do what they want to do in life using their gift. They don't get what they have for free. They can't take credit for the gift itself, but they can for all the things that they did to develop and use it, sometimes with beneficial applications for others.

I certainly feel jealous / left out in the Aspergers category, because I don't have any real talents or passions. I failed in jobs. I do not have a significant other. I am not peacefully "alone". I need human contact, but my efforts are frustrated by the multiple rejections I receive. I get SEVERE depression, have read many books on autism/Aspergers, and can't quite get the upbeat tone of much of the literature. As if, it's only a matter of reading a book and developing a set of social skills, or joining special interest groups.

I also have the sinking feeling that I wouldn't fit in, even in a group of Aspies in real life. I imagine a bunch of intellectuals or people that don't really need other people, people who are very into their special interest and deriving happiness from it.

I do have weird, obsessive 'interests', but the interests are so narrow and don't really have a useful purpose in and of themselves. They do not involve acquisition of knowledge or a specialty of some kind. The interests themselves are fundamentally useless and morph over time.

What are they at the moment?