Are people with Aspergers generally happy people?

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I am not a happy person. I do not know for sure if I have aspergers, but if I do, its combined with ADHD. So how about it - how many of you would describe yourself as happy?

I was unhappy for few long years. When I discovered that I fit into AS very well, It changed my life a lot! Am not unhappy anymore. If I feel sad, it is totally different from previous sadness and it's smaller. I can say am finaly happy because am learning to understand myself (what is difficult for me).

I considered myself a happy person most of my life.

I am not happy these days. I have had a very overwhelming year and think my mind and body are finally giving in. Eight months ago I insisted on a divorce even though my husband did not want it. He did some hurtful things to me (he has BPD), but I really should have handled it differently. I see now that I was more overwhelmed and needing the hurt to stop than wanting him to go away forever. I truly thought it was ALL him. Now that I know about AS I feel like I totally blew it. He remarried but he still reaches out to me. Adultery is not something I can stomach. So here I am, having to tell a man that I want, that I don't want him. This is a hard situation to live with.

Also, while the realization of AS is helpful in some ways, its also overwhelming to know that I have major problems that I can not fix, especially having children now. I'm trying very hard not to fall into a depression.

I'm not sure if there's any evidence for any type of disorder or syndrome being combined with general happiness or sadness, aside from the wide range on the depression spectrum, naturally.

I am very happy these days. I think it's completely related to the fact that since 2009 I've been in an environment where I am with people who understand me, who have the same views and who appreciate my opinion, which is university. Aside from university, 2009 was the year where I found out that I have Asperger's. That, of course, has been a huge improvement of my self-knowledge and self-esteem.

I self-harmed for six years, and I just posted a similar question in The Haven called 'On self harming' asking about people's unhappiness and experience with self-harming.

You can try to accept yourself for who you are, set goals and create an atmosphere of general comfort. The last thing has helped me tremendously. I hope you'll feel better soon, I really really do.

Difficult to generalize but I am diagnosed with AS and I have been fighting depression for over thirty years. Winston Churchill called it "the black dog" for a reason.

Vanilla_Slice

I would have to say " No "

Depends on life experiences. There is the argument that people can choose to be happy by changing their mindset, attitude and outlook on life. I don't think that's easy to achieve if you have AS.

I'm happy now. I have a husband and he works full time and I worked three times in April but got put on vacation again because I needed to get another badge. I need to finish my application and bring it back. I have an apartment too and my husband makes enough to cover the bills. He also understands me a lot. I'd say 95% of the time. My parents also understand me and accept me.

As far as I can tell--this isn't scientific; it's just based on online and real-life interactions with people--Aspies are about as happy as any minority group facing the amount of prejudice that we face.

This is similar to groups like GLBT individuals, racial minorities in areas where they are considered inferior, and religious minorities in areas where religious tolerance is not practiced. (Higher rates of depression are seen among all these groups.)

Regarding disability in general: It does not tend to have a lot of impact on quality of life. I DO actually have some data on that, here:
http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/disqual.html

I did study quality of life to some degree a while ago; and it seems to me that just being autistic probably doesn't make it any more likely that we will be unhappy. Quality of life seems to be unrelated to degree of disability--or, in some cases, is inversely related (the closer you are to typical, the lower your quality of life gets; the effect tends to be mild in the cases where it exists at all).

People who are autistic and seen by society primarily as "disabled" are probably going to have the main effect from disability-related prejudice, like the kind faced by people who are mentally ret*d; those who are autistic and seen by society primarily as "different" will be seeing more socially-oriented prejudice, like non-hereosexuals tend to get.

Either way, social groups targeted for discrimination tend to include both happy and unhappy people.

Bottom line:
Being disabled doesn't make it more likely that you'll be unhappy; but being part of an unpopular minority group can make it more likely.

I'm a happy person. I've been depressed before, sometimes for long stretches, but it's been a few years. These days I seem to see beauty the way some people hear music in their heads. Sometimes I get sad, but it doesn't stick around.

I think no. Generally we aren't.

Personally, I'm kind of up and down and all over. But there's a reason for it right now. Maybe when I come out the other end I'll be more happy, who knows.

I would say I'm a pretty happy person, yes

However sometimes, just little things, really pathetic things, can put me in a really bad mood, and then if i realise I'm in a bad mood, that makes me more annoyed, because I realise its so pathetic, and so on...

Other than that, Id like to think I'm fairly cheery

I'm a happy person, most of the time. I'm happy with myself and my life. I'm also happy with the choices that I've made, over the past 12 months. I've gotten out a funk, 8 months ago, and went back to my Mod roots. I also find that the NT world, around my area is more accepting towards the real me, than they were, towards the green haired punk, who used to walk the sidewalks. I'm a very happy person, these days.

I believe i'm the most unhappy person who has ever existed and I have offered reasons for that countless times in this group. If others wish to dispute this seemingly presumptuous claim of mine, that is their affair. I gave up caring what other humans think about anything a long time ago.

As for other people with Aspeger's being generally happy people....take a look at the posts in the Haven sometime and come to your own conclusions.

While my observations are certainly unscientific, subjective and perhaps even quite bias, I tend to believe people with AS are generally the most unhappy group of people i've ever encountered.

Many professionals now consider NVLD and Asperger's to be the same disorder. I don't think anyone would claim these two disorders are remarkably similar at least. The following is from Dr. Byron Rourke's book, "Nonverbal Learning Disabilites....the syndrome and the model":


"Adaptability is the raison d' etre of brain-behavior development. Deficiencies in adaptability are, essentially, deficiencies in learning. In this sense, the rather devastating set of learning problems experienced by the person who exhibits NLD/NVLD are among the very worst that can be imagined from a psychological perspective. The social and vocational incompetence, the withdrawl, and the psychic pain are terminal adaptive manifestions of the fact that "talk is very cheap" when it compared to the richness of adaptive learning"


Risk For Depression and Suicide


"We begin to the illustrations of the clinical dimensions of the NLD syndrome with a discussion of a particular set of socioemotional/adaptional difficulties that is, unfortunately, faced by many adolescents and adults who exhibit this syndrome (This presentation is adapted from a fuller account that is published in Rourke, Young & Leenaars, 1989.) My colleagues and I have found that NLD adolescents and adults are very much at risk for progressively worsening forms of internalized psychopathology that often have suicidal behavior as one of their correlates. Of course, this is not meant to imply that other subtypes of learning-disabled children may not exhibit this type of psychopathology; however, our own research and that of others would suggest strongly that learning-disabled children whose problems in learning appear to stem from deficits in psycholinguistic skill development are less likely, on average, to exhibit this particular type of socioemotional difficulty"

Rourke and countless others have written much more about this....but I think you get the point.

So based upon both my own years of observation and that of others, (professionals or otherwise) I feel fairly confident in issuing a resounding NO...people with AS/NVLD are not generally happy people.

I was a very unhappy adolescent (happy young kid though, before I realized I was "weird" for preferring reading and lone-play like Legos and LincolnLogs to interactive play )

Once I got to be about 8 or 9 I finally realized that not having friends was not "normal" and others kids really picked up on it too. They teased me mercilessly. It wasn't until about 8th grade that I was able to find a couple other "weird" people and we bonded. Then I went to an intellectually-minded HS and found a lot of like-minded people. Had a great HS experience.

But then college was like grade school all over again. I knew no one. I went to a commuter school so if you didn't try REALLY hard to make friends it was really difficult. I would go to class and then leave. I forced myself to join a sorority to make friends. That was a NIGHTMARE. Most thought I was strange, but one eventually did extend me a bid. Found out later it was because of my grades and they thought I was "cute" (whatever THAT means ). So on paper and to outsiders I made the sorority look good. But inside they treated me like crap. So I stopped going. All of this made me horribly depressed and I had trouble focusing on my studies. changed my major a bunch, failed classes because I had serious trouble paying attention and making classes I was not obsessed with a priority (got A's in English, History, Religious studies, Evo Bio...failed Math, Chem....several times ) Didn't have anyone to share my interests with. Had a couple bad BFs who totally didn't understand me (just wanted me for arm candy).

My home life was bad too, my mom (most likely with Borderline Personality) was ALWAYS in my face with crazy demands for attention (why won't you do the dishes? It's because you HATE me isn't it?! No, it's because right now is quiet time and dishes time is right before bed, after dinner. It has nothing to do with you. You know, I love you because you are my kid, but I really don't LIKE you.) It was pretty dark. I felt like...well, like an alien really. Like I was surrounded by totally confusing beings that I had NOTHING in common with- hell, even my own mother didn't like me. This totally depressed me.

To top everything off my recent Ex-BF had decided to get all psycho stalker on me. Followed me to classes, the library, home, work. Called my parents and threatened them for "keeping me from him" (right like I couldn't possibly have wanted to dump him of my own free will). I only dated this guy for a couple months. He obviously had something going on, most likely Narcississtic Personality (he LOVED to tell me what a weird. piece of crap I was and how he had all these other great girls Well, I didn't love him so I let him go since he didn't want me). My "friends" (the "sisters" who introduced me to him) took his side. Decided there was something wrong on MY end. It was insanity.

Finally, one day I realized I HAD to change everything. So I dropped out of school, cut all ties with the psycho and his friends, Left home and went to stay with the one real friend I had managed to make over the years, and posted a (very honest) profile on a social site. I had no clue I was an Aspie at this point. I think I might had been happier if I had had some clue about why I was different. i would have stopped trying to be "normal" and would have sought out people more like me (Instead of trying harder to release the "normal" person I THOUGHT I had inside me). I would have embraced my "geekiness" more Anyway, turns out my profile might as well have said I was an Aspie (I like RPGs, want someone who will respect my alone time, I prefer intellectual activities to social- stuff like museums and art galleries, sipping coffee and reading at a coffee house, video games- yes I think a lot of games can be intellectually stimulating, I wanted someone who was intelligent and wasn't intimidated by an intelligent female...my dream is to move somewhere far into the boonies and have a ranch. It was basically an ad for an Aspie LOL). Had to block some people, met some who were nice but not my type, and THEN this great guy pm'd me. We met a couple months later (after a lot of great emails) and we've been together since! We both found out later we are both Aspies. I was like, "What are the odds?" But I realized considering how we met is wasn't really a surprise.

So, now I am happy. Why? because
-I stopped trying to fit in with "normal" people by doing "normal" things
-I stopped trying to make other people happy (like my crazy mom, or trying to make guys who were NOT my type happy with me by changing who I was)
-I focused on things that made me happy (I was happy playing RPGs and reading, so I did more of that)
-I surrounded myself with people who shared my interests (or at least I try to)
-I've accepted who I am

I still have some issues that cause some slight unhappiness (touch sensitivity, problems communicating verbally- I RAMBLE and repeat, can you tell? LOL) finding out I have AS has made me realize that I am not NOT lovable (I just have issues with touching when overloaded- when relaxed I can be quite cuddly) and I am actually not thinking verbally (even though I talk a lot- it's just me tryng desperately to explain what's going on in my head and I have no clue if I am making sense. I am now trying to communicate in a way that makes more sense for my thinking style and I am trying to teach myself to take the time to process before speaking).

All these things have made me happier in the last 2 years than I have ever been. But this is just my experience.

Last edited by Gigi830 on 01 May 2010, 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have a hard time quantifying any kind of emotion. Actually, I have a hard time identifying most emotions, period. I can't tell you if I'm happy most of the time, because I'd have to know what exactly 'happy' means. It's not really a static state.

However, I will say that a lot of the time I'm mistaken as being negative, or unhappy by others, because I almost never show any outward expressions of joy, or excitement, even when I feel it, or think that I am.

The older that I get, and now knowing about AS the more comfortable, and content that I feel.