How Has Autism Blessed You?

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I forgot to mention creative qualities and a larger brain.

I can see through societal BS very clearly.

Well the best thing about not being an NT is probably the money saved. As a woman I saved so much by not doing hair, nails, the spa, fancy makeup, the shoes, handbags, current fashion...etc. My dudes don't do sports or outdoor activities which save a lot, too. And we don't tend to host parties or drink. Being social and keeping up with others can really add up. We live simply and dress in clean, comfortable clothes, and don't feel like we're missing out.

Personally, I see my preference for a life of solitude, my love for my special interests, and my honesty and straightforwardness and wanting others to be the same as strengths and not weaknesses. Too bad only some autistic adults seem to see it that way, and the rest of society sure doesn't.

Until Covid I had unusual memory abilities. It made schooling and my academic studies much easier - an advantage I sometimes felt guilty about (although I knew nothing then about autism).

I think autism has made me more creative, and also given a slightly unusual twist to my creativity.

I believe my Autism has blessed me with my creative problem solving skills and deep logical thinking.

Not one bit.

^^^i can grok that.

It hasn’t. Still, it’s not something I would change about myself.

I don't need toxic positivity.

I try not to dismiss or invalidate anyone's experience. I know we all struggle with things on a daily basis. I was just trying to get people to see if their autism or any of their autistic traits have been helpful to them or blessed them in any way. Besides, "How has autism cursed you" sounds really bad.

What if I asked, "How has your autism blessed others around you?" I know some people don't see their autism as a blessing to themselves, but maybe it has blessed others?

I don't know. I try to be positive in an otherwise negative world, but I'm definitely not trying to be toxic about it. We all have different experiences. Some are good, some are bad. I just don't want to let the bad experiences bring me down all the time.

Questions like these seem to be used to state that autism is not a disability (it very much is), but to answer the question I do so happen to fit the stereotype of strong (factual) memory, pattern recognition and detail-orientation. All of those traits seem to be a lot more prominent in me than anyone else in my family and it helped me in some academic/work settings in the past. Probably my brain's attempt at compensating for some severe deficits in other areas. I also think the mechanism behind why I struggled with interpreting non-literal language as a kid (I don't know the extent to which I still do, but i do constantly miss sarcasm/humor in real life to this day) is also the mechanism behind why I picked up programming skills so fast.

Regardless, I'm still disabled just like almost everyone else on this forum despite having some cognitive strengths. Also, not all autistic people have these strengths, I just happen to have them.

It's only toxic positivity if you're ignoring the negative things. Simply acknowledging the positive things (while recognizing they're not the whole story) isn't toxic.

It has given me a new perspective on the world.

Wow.

Ahem.

Autism blessed me in the mid 1990s when I met my now-husband. I was with my friend and he was with his friend. Our friends knew each other and stopped to talk. All of us were 17. I thought to myself, my goodness, that fellow is wearing the strangest outfit I have ever seen. Every single thing was mismatched in the most odd way. The four of us ended up hanging out all day. He knew about all the weird things I knew, but when he'd open his mouth it was like an encyclopedia came out. I was fascinated. He was funny and rude and would deliver the things he said with deadpan seriousness. At that point, I had never heard of Asperger's and neither had he. Meeting him was the most significant turning point in my life. It would not have been more significant to me if Jesus himself had walked down on a rainbow and told me the secret of life. We had a couple bumps in the road, but have been together in one way or another for 30 years now.

I can't tell you guys how devastating it was to both of us to find out that his superpowers were actually a disability and that I was not a person who needed help from him but normal. It rewrote our entire lives. We had to shake that off and learn that it's up to each of us to determine what we are.