Autism and lost potential

Post Reply New Topic

It's an interesting idea, and it's consistent with the notion that NTs tend to overtly look down on us because deep down they envy us.

My own theory is that most people feel a sense of lost potential. Here's some evidence:

1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_ef ... y_research
See statement 3: "You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage." It's one of those Barnum statements that fake mystics use to make us think they know things about us via their supposedly supernatural powers.

2.
Do an internet search for "achieve your potential" and you'll likely find a lot of hits with titles such as:

7 Ways to Rescue Lost Potential
Reaching Your Full Potential Isn't Out of Reach: 10 Tips
6 Steps to Understanding Your Potential and Achieving More
Five Ways To Actively Start Reaching Your Full Potential - Forbes
15 Quotes to Inspire You to Reach Your Greatest Potential

People are so hung up about not living up to some imaginary supercharged version of themselves that the self-styled life gurus are falling over each other to mansplain how to do it. But my own view is that it's much better to just let it go, if you can. It's an unnecessary pressure to achieve what most of us will fail to achieve.

I don't think so.
Their ways of expressing lost potential is more to do with opportunities than specific traits of neurodiversity.


If I studied/lived/raised at X, if I have/did more/less Y, if the people around me are Z, etc.

No different from 'if I have XYZ, I will be happy'.
They don't ponder 'if I were an *insert ND traits here* I'd have more happiness/success/whatever'.



I'd rather find ways to shatter the BS system of the human societies.
And I know I cannot do that alone, no matter how talented I'm and no matter how much I can do alone.

No, AS only changed the route that I traveled, not the overall direction that I was going towards. I still would have become a scientist in the end. I have much less personal relationships than my peers, so I do not have the social successes that they have. Some people look down at me sometimes because of this deficit. The difference is not all bad though. It allowed me to be much more self-sufficient in developing my skills, as I was always working without the social safety net that they used. I would not trade that away if I was given the chance to be an NT.

I actually have had people say that they envy my non-social life because I do not have all of their life complications. They have less “freedom” in their successes when they do something. Everyone in their social ladder wants a piece of their success, whether they helped them or not.

My BFF and I had no idea we were Autistic, so didn't know what was "holding us back". We both had advanced degrees at a prestigious university but worked part-time are sporadically at low-level jobs. However, in our 30s we both found careers (late bloomers?) and went on to become experts. In some ways we more than caught up. We are not typical and our career paths were not typical. Go figure. Don't count yourself as "out" yet...

You wrote, "And for those who are older than me what would you do different if you could turn back to my age?"

Well I am 50 years older than you, so I will pass on my thoughts. First of all, I didn't even know I had Asperger's Syndrome until about 5 years ago. So I lived my life like an NT.

At around age 12, humans change from children into adults. Their brain undergoes a wide variety of transformations at this time. Because I was and still am a child deep down inside, I never made that transition. The boys in school would team up and create a small mob that would attack me daily both mentally and physically. They did a lot of damage to me. But I survived my Junior High School Years. Then my mind began to advance and my intelligence began to break through. I began to learn to trust myself. I learned that I could do things that were phenomenal. I learned to be fearless.

I don't think he is. I think he's actually just a narcissistic sociopath who had an abusive childhood. He seems vaguely autistic because of symptom overlap, but the wheels turn in his head a different way than ours.

For me that would just be 3 years ago...

What I would've done differently??
Nothing. It'll be a pandemic lockdown very soon right after.



But seriously.
This also meant having those 3 years of attempting to predict myself and the knowledge I acquired recently as opposed to, say, even few months ago let alone 3 years.

I'd start going to gym if that were an option. Have a full body workout every week.
And focus on my diet...

Not to "lose weight and have a good figure".
No, it's for my nervous system.

I would try to realize sooner that "potential", at least the way you are using it here, isn't real. That's just other people's ideas of what they want you to be. Holding yourself up to a bunch of numbers and ages and very rigid ideas about what the best version of you looks like is a recipe for missing out on the best parts of life. Instead, try to think about what you want. Make that your adventure, an adventure that starts from here.

There are things you can do in life and things you can't. There are things you want to do and things you don't. Look for the overlap in what you want to do and what you can do (or can learn to do). That's a good place to start anyway.

Why not all three?

This is silly. NTs look down on NDs because we're fundamentally different from them. We are an "other" they cannot fathom.

It's not jealousy; it's basic human nature. The same mentality that causes harassment and bullying targeting all sorts of people who are "different" for all sorts of reasons, not just autism.

How does anybody know why those NTs who look down on us do so? It certainly seems plausible that it might be envy, especially if they notice us getting accommodations that they can't have. And I did offer my own alternative explanation, i.e. that most people simply feel that they're not achieving their full potential. Is it silly not to reject plausible theories until hard evidence nails the right answer? Your theory is that the looking down is due to the "us and them" effect. That's plausible too.

Sounds like a familiar topic to me. I have a 135+ IQ but didn't know I have ASD and ADHD until my 40s.

My interest in school was a steady downward spiral by the end of elementary school all the way through high school graduation. I didn't enjoy public school, not even in the Gifted program. No extracurricular activities. Few people that might be considered friends, and no close friends.

High school I became consciously aware I was really lagging behind socially, and pushed myself to get better in that field with very mixed results. I gained a sense of belonging but came to realize I was mostly tolerated rather than liked.

Academically, I was massively underachieving in high school and very apathetic. I graduated with a GPA below a B, despite scoring over 1300 (out of 1600) the first time I took the SATs and an something like 89 out of 100 on the ASVAB. I was probably took checked out to care at the time, but in retrospect I'm really annoyed about how almost nobody seemed to notice or care at the time. If I had been in danger of failing, if I was skipping classes, if I started abusing drugs or alcohol, or something like that it probably would have gotten some attention and intervention.

I don't think it was until near the end of college that I started getting the "wasting my potential" talk, and it continued for years after I left college, sans degree. I found it really, really annoying at the time. I had been going through the motions for years; I was sick and tired of school, unhappy, and directionless.

In retrospect, besides all the difficulties from undiagnosed ASD and ADHD, I felt I had no control over my life. No agency, as someone would describe it nowadays. I was simply being pulled along in a preordained direction and my actions would have little or no bearing out the direction or outcome or quality of the journey.

I changed jobs somewhat involuntarily, stumbled into a new job at a small business that helped with my personal growth. I still didn't have much direction. It took the death of a parent to provide opportunity and resources that led to a series of events culminating in a return to university to pursue the degree I should have pursued in the first place but wasn't allowed to. I graduated with a degree exactly 10 years after I was supposed to. Wasted potential? More like wasted a decade of my life.

I'd like to say that while my career was a decade behind at least it was a good decade for other things, but in the long term it wasn't. All my attempted relationships failed. All the friends I made in my early 20s moved away for work by the time I was in my early 30s, and I struggled a lot trying to find new local friends. All my passionate hobbies from my 20s had, for various reasons, pretty much failed or faded away. The only thing I had was my lifelong special interest and the career I was able to build around it.

I manage my ASD and ADHD relatively well compared to most people with those conditions. In particularly, I've never used drugs, only casually dabbled in alcohol and long since quit it entirely, and never engaged in promiscuous or otherwise risky behaviors. Not long after my official diagnosis, it occurred to me how much of my brainpower I must have to waste that most people don't. People frequently remark on my brilliant ability in my career field, but despite that I'm an underachiever primarily due to the focus issues associated with the conditions. It's been a long time since anybody told me I'm wasting my potential (though occasionally people ask me about going back for a Masters or PhD), but I'm uncomfortably aware of it anyway.

Yes autism prevented me from coming anywhere close to occupational potential

Self actualization

However plenty of neurotypicals don't reach potential either:

Health
Luck (economy, discrimination)
Poverty
Personality

Life goes on and on and on

Besides you can't measure "potential" anyways

Furthermore the k-12 schools that I went to were not academically that great. My parents were did not have that much education and I didn't even have any regular interaction with anyone with a bachelor's degree, besides schoolteachers

If it weren't for autism, I'd have gone back to uni for my Masters and PhD and would be a practicing psychologist by now. I can't even look people in the eyes so how would this have ever come about?

After witnessing the performance of one shrink, it became clear to me that ineptitude is no bar to a a lasting career in psychiatry. I presume the same may be true of the psychology profession. But I take your point. Once you know you can't do a particular job properly, honour dictates you shouldn't do it. That shrink presumably had the advantage of not knowing he wasn't very good, or he just didn't care as long as they still paid him.

Throughout my life, I've been told that I'm intelligent and I have potential.

I'm a retail worker. I've worked at the same level for 14 years. People ask if I ever want to move up. I tell them no. It seems like a lot of pressure is put on management by corporate. I'd like the money, though .

I was once ambitious, but all my ambitions were to do with my creative special interests. As a child, I wanted to own a large entertainment company that made films, theme parks, video games, etc. If I were NT, I'd probably have different ambitions, so who knows what I'd be now. Probably something practical that makes lots of money. Something ND me would find completely boring .

Also, if I were more NT, I may have had an easier time getting an "entry level" job when I was young. Struggling to get and keep the most basic level of employment for years made any loftier goals seem less likely. Also, my stepfather and others looking at my lack of employment as a shameful moral failing didn't do much for my self esteem.

I have an Associate's Degree in English from the local community college, which has basically been useless to me. Some of my professors were very encouraging. But I hate math. I went to the guidance councilors several times, trying to find out of I needed math classes to transfer to a four year school. Somehow, I never got an answer. The only thing the councilors ever seemed to do was take a printed list of classes and circle which ones I needed to get my Associate's Degree. Once, I asked one of them to recommend a college that was good for English majors. She got very annoyed and said that I had to research that myself.

I once did freelance writing for local newspapers. My first editor told me they were "desperate" for people like me. However, while they ran my work for years, none of them ever wanted to hire me on staff. And I think having professional writing on my resume just confused regular employers and made getting a "day job" even harder.

Even my "dream jobs," such as doing concept art for animated movies, sound like they would be too much pressure now.

I still have some ambitions. I'm still trying to finish my children's picture book. I have poor time management skills and am easily distracted, so it's taking a very long time.