Wonderful Asperger Poster

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But you certainly do not understand *MINE* - nor anybody else's for that matter.

I think that, when it has come to such a pass that a person has left Aghogday and myself with no alternative but concensus, thus:



...it may well be time for that person to enquire diligently of themself whether they are communicating via quite the appropriate part of their anatomy?

I'm not suggesting you don't understand your own body, but as a factual matter you don't experience the sensory issues in the same way as other individuals with sensory issues experience them; it varies with each human being. You may have a partial idea of what it's like for other people but like anyother human being there is no way you could fully understand it, unless you had the capability of walking in the same shoes as that individual. None of us have that capability.

I'm not suggesting tough love didn't work for you either or that you meant to intentionally brutalize a child. Only that it doesn't work for everyone, and indeed can make things worse for some, in cases where sensory issues are severe and are not fully understood by the person that is trying to help.

Oh yeah I'm so gifted aren't I?

It could be possible that this is the way that Gedrene's mind works, and it is his normal way of seeing issues like this, as far as understanding from a cognitive and/or affective perspective that other autistic individuals experience the world much differently than he does.

Part of the problem, is, if this is the case, it may be difficult for him to understand what I, you, or the other posters are talking about in disagreeing with his point of view here.

And to Gedrene this is an issue that some people with Autism have been identified with having well into adulthood to some degree or another.

I don't contend to understand how you think, but just throwing this out there, to try to assist with understanding why you might hold an opinion that sensory issues are not severe enough in some autistic people to warrant different approaches to adapt.

Makes me wonder if it may not be more of an issue that is rarely talked about between autistic people, and may possibly be why in general some of us tend to clash a bit with each other in areas we disagree in.

I can remember being about 24, happy in my youth, and stating back to someone that told me life wasn't fair, that had heart trouble early in their life, that life was very fair, not thinking at all about the fact that I had knowledge that this person had an early heart attack and life had obviously not been fair to that individual.

I can see now how clueless I was then, and can hardly believe I said such a thing to that individual, but what I meant was I had overcome adversity and felt like life was fair to me, because I was able to overcome a great deal of adversity. Defending my opinion, instead of focusing on why he might harbor a common opinion like this. It was like I could only see the comment specifically from my perspective.

I can understand that not many 24 year old's would state such a thing to another individual that obviously life was not fair to, but it didn't cross my mind. At that point in my life I was oblivious to it.

Just another quick example, there was a short Filipino man well respected in my work organization that I referred to as the little brown man; I had a good working relationship with the individual and in my view it was just a friendly way of describing him, endearing if you will. He accepted it for a long time, and didn't act like it bothered him, but I made a comment about how filipino women didn't seem to show there age, and he absolutely blew up over that.

One of my socially adept friends explained to me, well maybe he just got tired of hearing the little brown man comment. Up until that point I didn't have a clue how the comment must of come across to him for months.

I was full of affective empathy, but cognitively would relate things to my personal experience, without taking the full extent of what I understood of another individuals situation into account when responding or making a comment.

It took me decades later to figure out how many times in my life I had made this type of cognitive mistake, and how silly it must of sounded to the other individual.

This is my personal understanding of what it means when people state that some autistic people have problems with cognitive empathy. The person that understands this at times is not the person with a lack of cognitive empathy it is the person on the receiving end of the comment, that doesn't understand why a person would make a comment that everyone "should" know is inappropriate.

This is an area though, that can be improved with conscious effort.

I could though. I could have quite a good understanding. In fact I do have a good understanding of your body's reactions. You told me them in PMs! Also don't just tell me I would have no clue all the time when I very well could. I have every right to talk about something with which I know I have some authority on and there's no point denying that I don't because even if it were somehow 'less severe' I still have knowledge of it. Now stop trying to play the ignorance card. I am intending help. Get over your wishful attempts to make people think they can't talk about other's issues. This is a debate forum.

I am sorry Aghogday but I had similar issues so I talk from some point of authority. There is no 'special way that my mind works'. I am trying to help people. I am not just a random bum deciding he can fly an F-16 all of a sudden.


I know what you are all talking about. You're saying that I would have no clue what it's like because I have never experienced what it's like to have these problems because I am 'too autistic'. That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard and not only because it is offensively presumptuous. Does everyone who has treated someone with a heart attack have to have had heart attacks? Even more incisively, has that parent sensory problems herself? No? Then be quiet. No amount of infinite complexity ideas is going to remove the fact that I had similar issues and they were overcome by my method and that this may be helpful to the woman.

Telling me that I am not right also raises the same question about yourself if you haven't noticed. Do you have the exact same sensory issues the boy? Does zeraeph? I doubt it. So quit trying to think you somehow speak from some position of authority that I am unable to 'empathize' with when you're doing the exact same thing as me. I understand very well that he may have actual problems compared to me. Does that preclude me from suggesting what I might be right? No.

Futhermore since I wasn't telling this woman that I must be right then you don't have any reason to claim I somehow believe my way is the only right way. If anything you aghogday have failed to actually engage with what I was saying and took everything out of its true context, turning suggestion in to concrete and unbending belief, which only reflects back on your own perceptive qualities, not mine. You two should stop trying to think you're a pair of moral guardians. You're on ground level with me and I am the one who is actually looking up at the problem.



It's hypocritical that you should first tell me that I don't know how another person works and then you start speculating yourself on my mental health.


Well if you don't then why did you suggest it? Saying that somehow people are defunct in some faculty is a great way to muzzle them rather than anything else. Also another hypocrisy: I suggested another approach. You're the one trying to defend the old way without acceding to the possibility of new ideas. So how can you complain about me talking about a new idea?

Good lord, you left THAT statement wide open to misinterpretation!

...speaking of which, it wasn't exactly "my body's reactions" I was trying to explain in any general sense (as you should know) just a few mental reactions in situations where I have to deal with people, and however much I tried to explain you insisted on ignoring what I said and re-interpreting what I said into something quite different, to suit yourself and your pet theories.

So, I feel that I can say with absolute confidence that, not only do you have no understanding of how my body works, but also that you could not obtain an understanding of how anybody's body works if they tried to explain, in concise and accurate detail, until the cows come home.

Very simply, because you do not pay the slightest attention to what people are trying to tell you about themselves but rather pick up key points to distort and re-interpret, then try to *inform* others of who they really are, and what they really think in a form that suits you but bears no resemblance to their present, or future, reality.

I sincerely hope you will eventually grow out of this and listen to, and learn from, other people instead, but until you do you have no way to even make a respectable guess how anyone else works in any way.

Actually, in all seriousness, that is a pretty good analogy for what you *are* trying to do, if you had the sense to realise it.

You can only "help people" if you open your mind, see and hear who they really are, not who *you* want them to be, and what they really need, not what it suits your pet theories to impose upon them.

So instead of interpreting the reactions you had I actually twisted what you said in to being about the reactions you had. Sorry, but how did I twist anything? I didn't reinterprate anything and I am getting tired of these unfounded claims of twisting things.

Great, so just claiming that I have no idea when in fact all you have done is restated what I said and then said that I twisted it.

I sincerely hope you will eventually grow out of this and listen to, and learn from, other people instead of trying to superimpose what you want to see upon them, even over and above their constant objections and statements to the contrary, but until you do you will know nothing to speak of.

Please could you not patronise me? Could you actuall prove why I embody any of these things rather than just say them? Are these Argumentum ad Hominem attacks really needed?

No, partly because this thread is not about you (though it seems you would have it so, unless you could have it about me which I think you would prefer), and partly because you are doing a far better job of proving them yourself than I ever could.

Apart from that, it seems to me that almost every time you post you are trying to turn the the thread you post in away from it's orginal topic into some kind of personal, gladiatorial bout with specific person/s.

You are certainly not the only person doing this, in fact, there seem to be people actually opening threads with a similar objective in mind, but that does not make it right or relevant, and I personally refused to be bulldozed into participating.

If you wish to discuss yourself I suggest you open a thread specifically to do so in a relevant category. If you wish to discuss me I forbid it, and feel certain the moderators will agree.

That sort of statement doesn't actually prove anything about me. All it feels like is that you can insult me and not prove yourself. I feel hurt actually. I don't see I should keep being on the receiving end of these cracks against me. You say that this thread isn't about me but for the rest of the post you keep talking about me and in fact if you didn't want to talk about me then why did you start in the first place?

I see it as a gift. The amount of time it takes a person who's brain is wired normally to grasp a concept, extrapolate it to possible conclusions and determine the ramifications... It's like watching them wade through mental treacle.

It took a couple of years of having the crap beaten out of me by kids at school to stop saying, "I'm sorry, you're not smart enough for me to be able to explain this to you" and develop the social skills I sorely needed. Now, few people know I even have an issue. NLP modelling techniques gave me the tools I needed to appear neurotypical to most.

When I look at the prolific writer, John Michael Greer, who has AS, see the amount of material he produces while pursuing a lot of other non-writing projects (learning the organ, gardening, teaching Tai Chi, Running a Druidic order) I cannot help but think that many neurotypical individuals would love to be able to handle that level of mental functioning and never burn out.

If you wish to discuss yourself I suggest you open a thread specifically to do so in a relevant category. If you wish to discuss me I forbid it, and feel certain the moderators will agree

One woman suggested many Aspies didn't like their hair being cut. Your response was:



She didn't state any people have long hair other than her son, only that many Aspie's didn't like getting their hair cut because of sensory issues.

Then in response to another woman's statement that getting a hair cut was uncomfortable and even painful for some Aspies because of sensory difficulties:



Then in response to the first woman's defense she clarified what she said that she only stated that many didn't like getting their hair cut because of sensory issues, not that they all had long hair, this was your response:



You clearly stated back to the woman you have never had any such weird issues, and now you are telling me you had similar issues. I have no idea what you experience, can only judge it from what you say, and when you clearly indicate you have never had any such weird issues, I'm not sure how I'm suppose to interpret that as meaning you have had similar issues and understand what the child is going through. You clarify now that you have had similar problems. Thank you, it makes more sense to me now.

You suggested the problems could only be because of additional adversive phobia, or paranoia. This is a real, clearly identified problem for people born with sensory integration problems, which are common among some children with aspergers.

There are probably one hundred internet sites, out there with helpful advice to assist children with sensory integration problems in getting over their problems with getting a haircut.

You are the only person suggesting tough love, that I have seen, as an answer for whatever it is that you have experienced with haircuts, in relationship to the parents of children that have sensory integration issues, and I don't mean just here, anywhere that I have seen.

When a parent describes what their child is going through, and you tell them No, No, No, none of this happens to people like you, if you don't believe it I suggest you don't take everyone's word for it here; I suggest you research it elsewhere, if you don't think it happens to people other than yourself.

Tough love means telling the child they are going to have to do it, whether they like it or not. While it worked for you and might work in some cases, it's not the best method for all children with sensory integration problems.

No problem to suggest it to others because it worked for you. But, problem, when you tell a parent that their children's issues with getting a hair cut, No No No, can't be the result of sensory integration problems they describe, instead additional adverse phobia, and paranoia. While you might not realize it, it could be seen as a bit insulting to indicate to parents that what they describe of their children's experiences can't possibly be correct.

I personally think you are trying to help because this is the way you are seeing it for yourself, but if everyone else is seeing it the other way, it is worth, pause, to consider whether or not you might be overstating your opinion.

I'm not questioning your intelligence here, just the comments you are making. I made the comment when I was young to the man about life being very fair because it was fair to me, at age 24, shortly after receiving 3 college degrees, so it's not an issue related to book learning.

Anyway, the haircut issue, sensory integration problems, and Aspergers is a commonly known issue. There must be one hundred internet sites, set up to help parents and children with this issue.

Here is just one example:

http://www.comeunity.com/disability/sensory_integration/sensory-integration-haircuts.html



Desensitization for a neurological system that works differently than other children's neurological systems, is best done as a gradual process. That's proven science for any type of desensitization process. Desensitization is not mollycoddling, it's a proven scientific technique that has been used for decades.

As far as your method of tough love for sensory integration problems and haircuts, if you can find anyone else that suggests this as an answer to help this problem, I would be interested in seeing that opinion.

No doubt that people use tough love, when they don't understand their children have Aspergers or sensory integration problems. When their children throw tantrums they probably think they are being bad instead of having any idea that their children have sensory integration problems. Another reason why awareness is important.

You asked another poster to provide specific examples of what we are trying to explain, and I have taken the time and effort to try to do what you have asked, in a sincere manner.

This example of communication misunderstanding, can be the most crippling of issues in Aspergers, because it's not like a broken leg; one often can't see it in theirselves, and I still catch myself doing it; and probably still do it when it is not brought to my attention. I have observed it in me, so I know it is part of my nature, I have to try to adapt to.

Some people think some with Aspergers do it on purpose to be mean or rude, and often it is not the case at all.