The irony of success is that they doubt you.

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Ever since childhood, I was awkward & shy, and had trouble interpreting subtleties,
like so many of you.

I carefully watched, observed, imitated, practiced, until I could cope with it,
also like many of you:

Now, at age 24, I no longer merely cope, I thrive (relatively speaking).
Consequently, some people refuse to believe that I am an Aspie.
They believe no Aspie could read and interact with them as I have
learned to do thru diligence. (Admittedly, I must consider the slight
possibility that I might not be an Aspie anyway.)

I take intense pride in being an Aspie. The irony is that my social success
is tarnished by a hint of regret that perhaps I pushed to far, and feigned the
part of being an NT too well.

Fellow Aspies, do other NTs doubt you're an Aspie?

Litmus test here is do you feel you you are able to naturally relate to others or does this 'success', this ability to 'pull it off' come at a cost to you? To achieve superficial social competence, or for your persona to be so refined that others cannot penetrate beyond the facade, is a success of a sort, but is it a success on a deeper level?

Many people with AS have developed extraordinary advanced adaptive skills, often born out of adversity and refined through psychotherapy. So much so that until they fall in love, or face intimacy full on, the mask remains very much in tact and the impression others have of you is what you have so cleverly engineered.

I cannot "naturally" relate, but I believe I can sincerely relate.

Yes, but admittedly the cost is small.
My pride as an Aspie stems from my desire to represent "our kind", to assuage
perceptions and prejudices against others that I myself struggled to overcome as a child.
My achievements help indicate what other "awkward people" like me are capable of.
I feel these intentions are undermined if people fail to find me awkward now, like they found
me awkward before. (My pride is part altruistic, part selfish, but so is most pride.)


My level of true success grows incrementally deeper, day by day.
Superficial success is affirmed by my friends' efforts to include
me in private events, and our mutual ability to confide secrets
excludes the possibility that I am merely an accessory jester/clown
to them (as was often the case as a child).

I judge my deeper success with friends on our ability to:
1. reciprocate emotional interests & security.
2. intellectually converse.
When I use insincere means (mimicking vernacular and mannerisms)
to express the emotions I sincerely DO feel, I do not feel too disingenuous.
Part 2 is less compromising: As I am instinctively meticulous and analytical,
I need not mimic others to express my observations.

thank you for your response.

We have so much in common it seems.

Wishing you well from London.

Chris

A lot of people doubt that I'm an aspie, and they say that I hide it, so well. They also say that they would have never have guessed.

Ironically, the same people in my life who have said, "why there's nothing wrong with you and you're certainly NOT autistic" are the same people who constantly lectured me about being so cold, rude, selfish, etc. They could see all the symptoms and hated every one of them, yet at the same time insisted that there was no possible way I could have Asperger's Syndrome and would I just snap out of thinking I was so special and different.

Fortunately, those people are no longer in my life (though it was very painful when each of them, in turn, gave me a string of horrid insults and said they were tired of puting up with my cr*p and never to contact them again.)

So . . . if someone says they "don't see it", that doesn't necessarily mean they *really* don't see it. It might just mean that they aren't capable of recognizing what they're seeing. (Or they really might not see it. But it can be difficult to tell the difference.)

This is kind of a double edged sword for me.

When I tell people that I recently met that I have AS, they respond that I don't act like someone on the autism spectrum.

Transversely, when I talk to people I went to school with and others from my past about the successes in my life, it is like they don't believe me that I can accomplish those things.

I have found this to be a contradictory way of thinking.

While in a behavioral health hospital in March, I met an Italian woman who has 42 and I told her I have asperger's and she said "what's that" and I said "It's a form of autism", and she went "you don't seem autistic". I told her how I get bullied and she said "you dont seem like you get bullied, just scare them, go grrrrrrhhh!".
People often think I'm not autistic and ll the problems I have I bring on myself, especially because I'm a big young black man, so therefore there can be no way I have autism. and just because I'm black, it should make it easy for me to scare people away. It's ridiculous. Luckily there was another woman there who had a son with asperger's and she had to explain what asperger's was, and how it was not like classic autism and the Italian woman finally understood.

The second time and last time I went to the hospital was in April and (most of the guys who work there are black, they purporsely hire black men to intimidate the patients; my moms ex bf used to work in a mental health facility) there was a guy who worked there who was black and I told him I had asperger's and I get mad and scream when I;m mad. He told me he didnt even know what asperger's was and he just told me I'm too handsome and smart to be acting the way I do, and all that did was cause me to have a meltdown. Now I just shut up about having asperger's, not that I tell people, but that was a mental health environment so I felt it was appropiate, but most people dont even know what it is anyways.

My old singing teacher asked me if Asperger's was something I could grow out of, she was ignorant. She also thought Saudi Arabia was in India so that explains enough.