What does "Trying to be Asperger's" means?

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League_Girl
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05 Jun 2016, 3:37 pm

Has anyone ever gotten this accusation? What do you think it means?

To me it means exaggerating your symptoms, faking it, not being your best self, using it as an excuse, pathologizing yourself to make it fit and blaming your past failures and problems on it when it had nothing to do with it. It also means getting worse after you discover it so you drop your skills you have learned and also means not trying to get better.


My mom believes I tried to be Asperger's in high school. I don't disagree there because I did use it as en excuse and did expect special treatment because I had a disability so I thought not everything should apply to me. I also expected to get my way all the time and have everything revolve around me and instead of trying to control myself and being my best self, I let myself get out of control. I didn't know what it meant anymore to be myself. My mom even says my school counselor treated me like the label so he was teaching me to be Asperger's. I told her he wasn't telling me how to act and it's not like I was sitting in his office and he is writing on the board telling me this is how I am supposed to be acting and this is how people with Asperger's would act. She said she knows he wasn't doing that, what she means is he was telling me "That's because you have Asperger's" and "Of course you couldn't figure that one out, you have Asperger's" "of course that happened, you have Asperger's" and my husband said he understands what my mom is saying, she means he was just giving me excuses, I was supposed to get better and he wasn't teaching me to get better. But my mom has accused me of trying to be Asperger's in 6th grade and middle school but I told her "How can that be possible if I didn't even know what it was then?" So she changed her answer to "When did you first meet Frankie?" I said "When I was 15" and she said "That's when you got worse." She also said I got worse when I was 13. I am like what? If I was worse in middle school, it was because of my anxiety. So she would mind as well say I was trying to be anxiety. Also at 14 I just started to accept I am different and I quit trying to fit in and be normal but I stayed my best self. That had nothing to do with trying to be Asperger's. But only thing I tried to copy from Frankie was his ODD because I saw how he treated his mother and it got him what he wanted so I had found a short cut to my problem so I was trying to be ODD. My mom calls it trying to be Asperger's. I was 16 when I did that and it was the last resort because I got desperate. Plus I thought ODD was a choice kids did and doctors only made it a label because it's a inconvenience to other people and they want to fix it so they make labels. Plus I believed we can all be anything we want to be, you can't fake it. I didn't copy anything else from Frankie. Only his ODD. But my mom is convinced I did and I have no idea what she is talking about. in fact when I was 15, I was trying to not be Asperger's so I was reading about it and trying to do what i think an NT would do and I felt I couldn't even be myself because since it says aspies do the same things all the time, it meant I couldn't play video games all the time or do the computer every day after school, it drove me bonkers. Then one day I decided aw screw it, I just want to be myself, to hell with Asperger's. Even my therapist I saw when I was 16-18 agreed I was wasting all my energy worrying about Asperger's and trying to avoid being it. Besides I noticed when I was 16 my brothers did computer and watched TV all the time and no way in hell do they have it. So if they are allowed their interests all the time, I should be allowed to do mine without it being Asperger's. But it was sure a relief to read online how it's common for autistic people to get worse in puberty and has any of them ever been accused of trying to be autistic or Asperger's? That meant I wasn't going crazy or doing any of it on purpose. I sometimes feel my mom used Asperger's against me when she could have used anxiety against me by saying I was trying to be anxiety or trying to be tactile defense issues when I was in 6th grade when they got worse.

Like I say, I did try using it as an excuse in high school because I took it too literal and I stopped trying to control my behavior during anxiety. So that was me trying to be Asperger's right there. The rest is all bogus. If I hand't read about it, I wonder what excuse my mom would have then? I wonder if she would still think that because she thinks I tried to be that in 6th grade and 7th grade and 8th grade and I am like "what?" This is why I don't like sharing my diagnoses because I am afraid people might think I am trying to be Asperger's if I show a sign and they could start pathologizing me and accuse me of it. They might use it against me.


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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed and ASD lv 1.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses. Possibly OCD. Is very private about herself.


Kuraudo777
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05 Jun 2016, 4:02 pm

I sort of use it as an excuse to get out of sensory overload situations at school, but I don't exactly mention Asperger's directly.


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Edenthiel
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05 Jun 2016, 10:10 pm

I was told something like that by my sister a few years after I told my family of origin. It was a loud gathering & needed some downtime. Previously I would have just pushed through and been a real mess the next day, emotionally and physically. But since I found out, I've learned how to better care of myself and that means "being more asperger" from my sister's point of view. And since at one time I could obviously not have to do things like that, I must now be taking advantage of being an Aspie (again, according to her).


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League_Girl
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05 Jun 2016, 10:14 pm

Edenthiel wrote:
I was told something like that by my sister a few years after I told my family of origin. It was a loud gathering & needed some downtime. Previously I would have just pushed through and been a real mess the next day, emotionally and physically. But since I found out, I've learned how to better care of myself and that means "being more asperger" from my sister's point of view. And since at one time I could obviously not have to do things like that, I must now be taking advantage of being an Aspie (again, according to her).



A good justification to not tell people about your diagnoses. If they don't know about it, they can't accuse you of getting worse and "trying to be Asperger's", only the fact you have changed.


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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed and ASD lv 1.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses. Possibly OCD. Is very private about herself.