Embracing your aspie identity = comfort?

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Ok, I wanna embrace being an aspie. I wanna say "I am disabled". I want to be around other disabled people and around other autistics on the spectrum. I feel normal around them. If I admit that I am an aspie, I don't feel self blame about failing at things in the past or possibly in the future. I don't worry - if I am one of them (disabled people), I am allowed to fail at school and work and dating.

So am I taking the easy way out? Or am I coming to terms with being an aspie?

P.S. I am physically healthy, never been on any meds at all, just slow, always mildly depressed, no sensory problems, but have classical social aspie impairments - no friends and people tend not to like me or understand my speech.

Don't use it as an excuse to fail, L2S. Use it as a reason to be better.

AS isn't a disability.
Don't take advantage if you're good in social situations, because I am not and I want to be so you would be a selfish fool if you didn't want to make something of that, a waste.
You're just being kinda ignorant, not good.

AS isn't a disability, and it shouldn't be used as a cop-out.

However, accepting that you have AS and learning to be yourself and not a "wannabe NT" is a positive step. Also, accepting that there are things about yourself that you are unable to change helps you to deal with them better. It's a lot easier and more effective to work with and around your AS than to try to fight against it.

Also, AS gives you many positive traits that NTs don't have.

Read my signature.

As is often NOT a disability. In my case, it is. My functional IQ is 60, in the mentally ret*d range. It is 71 poiints lower than my verbal IQ. Therefore, I am significantly impaired and on SSDI solely because of Aspergers. AS is incredibly disabling for me.

However, I see it as a blessing that gives me many gifts. I have a different neurological style that isn't "wrong' in itself. Sometimes, I'm jealous of aspies who are not disabled to the degree I am.

I struggle with self-acceptance at times. I accept and embrace my AS, just not my level of disabilty. I'm working on it.

You are understanding why you sucked at some things, found social relationships difficult, and found other things difficult to complete. Surely understanding the past, and why you failed, it is a guide to succeeding in the future? There are positive benefits to being an Aspie, make the most of what you are good at. Being thus enlightened, there is no excuse for not being a success from now on.

No one is "allowed" to fail if they have the capacity to do otherwise - one is obligated to pursue success, THEIR success, to the best of their ability. You seem very self-aware, and that could be helpful to you if you chose to use it to succeed in whatever that meant for you. Yeah, it might not mean going to Harvard or having a fantastic love life. But why not at least do the best you can in those areas and others, what else is there to do than excel to the best of your ability?

However, I would say that associating with the disabled community, especially the many members who HAVE made the most of their lives and had a great time of it at some points, is very helpful. It most certainly does help so as not to feel isolated, to feel that your existence is valid and has just as much potential as everyone else's.

"Disabled" doesn't have to mean defective, stupid or doomed to failure. I fully support owning your identity as a disabled individual, but I think if you do, you also have an obligation to others who take that label to not use it as an excuse, but instead an assertion of self.

I personally feel that self awareness is a good thing. Our brains are wired differently from the majority and they will never accept an intelligent autistic person. As with most other Aspies, our social skills suck but we have above average IQs. I am reading Barack Obama's autobiography "Dreams From My Father" and he states that a white person will never understand what it is like to grow up as a black man in our society. The same train of thought can be applied to someone with AS. Most people can never understand what it is like to grow up in a society being viewed as a ret*d. No matter how much we accomplish or how intelligent we prove we are is of little relevance. Most people will still view us in a negative light. Many of the other posters have already said we can't use having AS as an excuse not to do anything. Instead we should use it as motivation to be ourselves and not to conform to societie's view of us. Say it loud, Aspie and proud.

Good luck LTS... I hope you don't get too overwhelmed with the responses to your thread.

For example

AS IS a disability!

AS is NOT a disability!

AS IS this or AS is That.

Perhaps one day the person who says with great conviction I HAVE NOT GOT A DISABILITY THANK YOU VERY MUCH...................will wake up the next day and feel totally disabled.

Perhaps one day the person who says I AM SO DISABLED WITH AS i WANT TO DIE............will wake up the next day with joy that they can see the world so uniquely.

However, I do feel that the capacity to think dialectically (to reconcile seemingly ir-reconcile-able opposites) is quite advanced for many of us folk with AS, and that the ability to hold difference or opposites is the greatest gift of all.

For me, a truly gifted way of seeing the world, is seeing the unity of all things, and that results in me seeing my AS as a disability and a difference. A Painful Gift if you like.

AS is all pervading, by that I mean it colours our whole experience of how we, think and feel. So embracing your AS sounds wonderful to me.

Wishing you well LTS on your journey to find your true identity (and not ours)

Chris

When someone finds a detailed guide on coming to terms with it share it with me, I'm not identifying as a disabled person.

If you know you are an aspie and that makes you more comfortable with accepting yourself as you are, rather than pretending to be someone you're not in order to fulfil social expectations, then that's great. Personally, understanding and accepting that I'm aspie stops me feeling guilty about not often wanting to socialise. Of course, ideally, it shouldn't have made me feel guilty anyway. I don't need a label to justify the fact that I like my own company. But because society places such great value on being sociable and I was often judged for not being sociable, I did feel guilty, and knowing I'm aspie has helped.

Declaring 'I am disabled' is a different matter. What would you get out of it? For myself, I have sensory difficulties which are in some situations disabling, so for me it is useful to declare it as a way of getting support (useful in theory, that is - doesn't always work out in practice, unfortunately). But the word 'disabled' is a very broad word and comes with many stereotypes. I don't go round saying 'I'm disabled' - I say 'I have a disability which causes difficulties with sensory processing - is it possible that you could adjust such-and-such to help?' So it is very specific. I don't see anything to be gained in going round randomly saying 'I am disabled'.

Also, as for being 'allowed' to fail in various things in life, well, everyone is allowed to fail, whether they have a disability or not. No one is forbidding you to fail. You have that choice. We all fail sometimes, and it is pointless beating yourself up about it - we learn through failures. However, the point to me of declaring a disability is so that adaptations can be made so that I needn't fail. The reason I declare mine is because if the environment is adapted slightly then I can perform so much better.

For those saying AS is NOT a disability....why?

It is a disability. Even if you have a high IQ, able to get and somewhat hold a job and support yourself, I am forever hampered by my inability to connect with others. It's not just personal relationships, but the ability to get a GOOD job, get a GOOD promotion, have a GOOD life seems forever beyond my grasp.

AS prevents me from doing what others can do. I consider that being disabled. Yeah, I can TRY to ADAPT and COMPENSATE, but it's work I have to do 100% of the time, and the most I can do is mimic desired behavior, I can't experience it on a personal level.

To say AS isn't a disability is like saying a person with one missing limb is not disabled if he's wearing a prosthetic limb.

I can't say embracing my AS is a matter of "comfort" but I've felt a lot better about myself now that I know and understand what's been wrong with me all these years that I never understood.

i do not really define myself with much reference to AS.
i think i do what i do because it is my will to do it, and not because i am influenced by a "condition".
i do see that i am in an extreme minority, and i know that is because i am autistic and ODD, but i do not register those ideas when i am "out and about".

i just clash with people and i think they are stupid, and i think i am always correct. it is only when i choose to settle and talk on a forum like this, that i can define how my day was affected by autism.

i am "me" first. i am "autistic/ODD" second.

Well, the way I see it, AS includes disabilities. Though there is more to it than the things we aren't able to do. There are strengths too.

It is not, though, an excuse to not try. Or at least it shouldn't be used as one.

Among aspies, you can be proud of your job as a janitor in a hospital. You can be content with otherwise shameful social skills, content with being forever single. Aspie friends will accept you almost no matter what.

Saying "I am disabled" reduces the fear of failure at school and at work, but it also masks other reasons why you might fail - procrastination, computer addiction, poor concentration, wrong priorities, and being disorganized.

To make adaptations, I need to separate which failures are due to which problem.

No friends or girlfriend - due to Aspergers.
Late homework - procrastination and computer addiction
Late to work - being disorganized and wrong priorities
Customers at work complaining that you are rude - Aspergers

So now that we're over making generalisations all around:

AS can be a disability.

I don't understand why people love to speak for others people (does speaking for themselves is not enough?) I don't know that much about other people because I can't read minds. Did I miss anything? Can others read minds and know all about other people's AS these days?

No? Didn't think so.

There's no way of denying that AS is a disability sometimes. Sometimes it's not. That's the nature of impairments which AS is defined as.

It's okay to be different. If you're not disabled by your AS, then that's ok. It's also ok to be disabled by your AS. Both's fine, we're all different and we should be happy with that really.