what new things have you learned on this forum?

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I was just interested as ive found ive learned quite a few things so far, for example i have points where i get really angry and upset for no reason, every week or so, I learned that this can be explained as some sort of meltdown which i guess makes me feel more human.

I've learned that ...

... most members don't know the taxonomical differences between a website, a forum, a sub-forum, and a thread.

... no matter what the facts are, people will harass you for expressing them.

... everybody has an opinion, and most of those opinions are wrong.

... people prefer pleasant lies over unpleasant truths.

... speculation and fantasy are preferred over fact-finding and knowledge.

... you can get in trouble for saying the right thing just as fast and just as often as you can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing.

... some "special" members can get away with breaking the rules against advertising without permission, as long as someone on the moderator ill staff admires them.

I've learned quite a bit on autism-related topics here.

I've learned that I'm a lot different than "typical" aspies. I'm definitely not NT, but I seem to view life a lot differently than most people on here. I have a feeling I may have fit in here better if I had joined when I was younger. Then again, maybe not.

I've also learned that people are still trying to argue the "difference" between Asperger Syndrome and autism. There is no real difference, AS is just a label that used to be used in less severe cases of autism, and continues to be used in countries that go by the ICD 10 instead of the DSM V.

That I'm not truly alone in this.

That most of my oh-so-coincidental past "Coping Mechanisms" have explicit explanations.

That organizations such as "Autism Speaks" exists.

That regardless the culture's advancements, that doesn't mean advantage.

More explicitly explained terms that I originally have no idea what it was called, debated or not.

And...

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How varied people on the Autism spectrum are

Autistic people can also discriminate and treat me different than they do for other members

Autistic people can be just as judgmental as NTs and also not take everything literally they read

I am not the only one who feels in between worlds

That I relate WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more to NTs and that most people with aspergers I have come across have a positive view of big government.

Autistic people won't always understand me and will still judge me like kids did when I was little and assume I am doing things I am not even doing like my school did when I was a kid and what other kids thought of me such as thinking I was a show off

Autistic people will still think I am ret*d or slow or stupid

Autistic people are capable of bullying others

That I was far from alone in my aversion to talking on the phone.

That the dominant narrative of ASD in psychology is so immensely different, in so many ways, from the lived experience of ASD that a huge gulf in knowledge and understanding exists

That the impact of the second is far more widespread as a form of internalised oppression than I could ever have imagined before my time here

That everyone on the AS has experienced emotional and psychological violence in one way or another, during their lives, for which there is currently no specific healing paradigm for the emotional wounds AS people receive during the course of their life experience. (Which is a gap I think about increasingly lately)

That while AS is usually presented as solely "neurological", possibly it would be more accurate to expand this concept to "neurobiological"..

That WP is the biggest resource existing on the planet as a catalogue of direct information about the lived experience of AS

Several things that I don't want to list here- mostly positive.

I've learnt that I'm not alone and there are other people like me all over the world.

I've Learnt that it wasn't my fault that I was so "Weird" when I was at school and there was a name for it only I didn't know at the time.

- That Aspergers is much more complicated than I thought. I still don't "get it".

- That there are people who have experienced very similar things I thought I was alone in experiencing

That a large number of people with ASD are articulate, have empathy for others, are interested in making friends, are interested in things beyond their special interest and are able to see things in shades of grey.

I apologise for ever doubting this, previous to joining this forum I only understood autism from Rain man and similar popular media portrayals.