Coming to terms with a dud brain?

Post Reply New Topic

If I have aspergers, I have a problem reconciling the fact that my dud brain is responsible for my artistic talents and not, as I would have liked, the god given talents in a normal brain. The talent becomes the side affect of some wonky genes. It's no longer special. Being told to celebrate your disorder doesn't help, not when it still feels like you're slightly mentally ret*d. It's a bunch of feelings you have to work through yourself. That's why I'd appreciate any links to articles and stories that show you a person's coming to terms with their differences and how they came to accept the way they were and make something of it, without all these negative thoughts. I don't know if this has been posted already, but the Infinite Mind is a good site with a weekly online radio show. There's a two part Asperger's show linked here: http://www.theinfinitemind.com/mindprgm.htm

Thanks for the link i've searched everywhere for an audio show to do with aspergers.

road warrior...talent being a side effect of wonky genes?
you are so close nearly there....for 34 years i thought my intellect was in essence the whole of me and the aspergers (undiagnosed) was soem eccentri behaviour i had on the side
when i shifted my perspective, to reveal that my intellect is a side effect of aspergers and i am autistic and maybe a little slower than i thought then i became aware of aspergers and accepted it.
i am aspergers with beneficial side effects, not the other way around...i like me this way.

Where you think you are may well depend on what map you're using.

I'm not sure I'd take bits of your map as particularly accurate. It's at least up for debate.
On how many counts...?

Well "dud brain" is prejudicial for starters. Is a a chisel a dud screwdriver because the tip is too fine and sharp? Why should we assume that "normal" as a statistical observation is something to be aimed for at all? Something halfway, normal, between chisels and screwdrivers is hardly great for either purpose.
The body that makes an Olympic shot-putter rarely going to match that of a fencing medallist, and vice-versa. Which one's the "dud"?

I suggest you need to think a little more on diversity of roles.
I'm an atheist, so I'd argue against the "god-given" bit of the map too, but taking your assumption as given, you have some definite Pauline texts to wrestle with.

If God-given, what grounds have you to complain?
"Will what is moulded say to its maker 'Why have you made me thus?' "
Romans 9:20ff

And what's this nonsense about "normal" anyway?
"If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?"
From I Cor 12: 14-23.

If all were "normal", even taking it from my secular viewpoint, where would come the perceptiveness, inventiveness and creativity of the outsider, and those few who can see and comment on the mainstream exactly because they are not part of it? Society, societies would be the poorer, even if they would be perhaps more comfortable, as might in aggregate their members.

Let's have more difference, even if it costs somewhat. Find what you are good at, revel in it. There's a place on the map. Your place.

I'd never have made any cricket team, but I did represent my university. At chess.
And I've been invited to perform internationally. At model railways!

i'm an artist too!

not sure if this will help, but i have a question for you:

are there ANY normal artists? i mean, don't all the greats have their own strife that they work through that gives them the passion and angst and soul for their art? you can't have good art without puttin a little bit of yourself into it.

if you want to be a good artist without any of the emotional baggage, i suggest you go into advertising... that for me, would have no real insentive to create, but least there's some constant cash to be had!

I don't think there are any normal artists. Because if they were normal, they'd be NTs. I've been hanging around quite a few musican/artsy people lately and I have discovered that none of them are normal. But I feel normal when I'm with them. I feel like I belong and I feel like I can be myself...even if I'm not normal in the usual sense of the term.

What's funny is that none of my artsy/music friends can look anyone in the eye when we're talking to each other. I've tested it out just to see. One of my friends and I have started saying to each other, "Hey, look me in the nose!" instead of "look me in the eye" when we're trying to be serious with each other. It's fun. This group that I've been around lately has a lot of issues (OCD, Aspergers, bi-polar...you name it, one of us has it) but they are very cool people. I'd rather be with them than with anyone else, I can tell you that much.

For coming to terms with our differences, I totally swear by "Pretending to be Normal," by Liane Holliday Willey, PhD. But then, that's because reading her book was like reading the autobiography of me on another time track.

emettman, the god stuff and most everything else were metaphors for what someone may be going through. Myself, I'm an atheist too. Personally I love people who are different. "Normal" tends to bore me. That's why I like goth girls, particularly Abby. Now I wouldn't say any of those types have anything hard wired into their brains, causing particular traits like you see with autism. You could just describe them as strong, independent. They don't care what others think of them, not because they're face-blind or deficient in some way, but because they have guts, are strong willed and make up their own minds, rather than take received knowledge as their own and act in a way so as not to raise an eyebrow. Instead they might decide to be promiscuous, cover themselves in tattoos, whatever. Our behaviour can stem from "issues", but for me I mark a difference when I act in a way I cannot control, or I am deficient in some way, such as being unable to keep a job, being completely unmotivated, depressed or the problems associated with OCD. At worst OCD is debilitating, at best it's a constant nuisance which you can learn to forget about from time to time, but will be with you for life. If it weren't for the "talents", I'd see little reason for celebrating the differences, because of the extent to which the disorder debilitates you in other areas of your life. Seeing it in that way means chisel and screwdriver metaphors are not much help (not because I can't understand the metaphor!), I have to come to terms with my loss in a different way.

No, artists aren't normal But that doesn't necessarily mean their gifts are the result of a disorder, like an autistic's ability to count cocktail sticks. Evolution throws billions of permutations out. If you're lucky, you'll have a bit of brain that's clever at certain things, like being a sports star or maths genius. Just because a disorder means a greater prevalence of clever traits, doesn't mean those successful or clever people without the disorder can't be NTs.

Saying an NT had an IQ of 100 would I think be pushing the argument too far. You can be "normal" and yet highly gifted, without having a disorder. It seems to me the concept of NT becomes the whipping boy for everything that's ordinary, unimaginative and herd-like, when this is not the case. NTs can be geniuses too, can they not? I mean, their genius is not the result of some definable disorder with predictable traits, they just got lucky when their brain was developing. They still have a "normal" brain. I think then the way we talk about NTs is a form of prejudice to make ourselves feel better. We call them muggles, which is fun. Ideally, I'd be "normal" and still gifted. Whether or not I'd want to be an NT without my gifts is more tricky, but I think given the difficulties I have I'd choose to let go of my powers, like the injection they have on the X-Men Still, whilever a cure is not possible, I'll learn to live with it my way and in the best way I can, and try and make the most of my talents.

OK. This is one area where the implications of such are very different, taken literally and metaphorically. I took you at face value. (Aspie, Me?)

A creator deity sets up a very different universe from a Darwinian one, in terms of purpose, meaning and society.



Ah, I probably would. Lots of the brain is hard-wired, and a lot of the stuff that isn't hard wired is often not challenged. There's the genes, and the memes. Some cultural exposures and assumptions are so strong they might as well be hard-wired for most people.


Now with AS it is is complicated (what else). I would maintain definite hard wired differences, but that's hardly all the story as the expression of that can be markedly influenced by the experiences of early years. (which are not, but can become effectively hard wired by many studies) Nature and Nurture again.

I could have been much better raised, and I have to live with the consequences of that, including deciding which things I can change and address. Mind you. I could have been much worse raised too.

Aspies will always be mentally "lopsided" but you just have to learn to adjust. I'm sure you will find exceptional tallent of some kind. Firure out what your weakneses are and how to minimise them.

roadwarrior, i think asperger's syndrome is a blessing in disguise. although we are often handicapped socially, our obsessive interests and attention to detail can serve us well, sometimes better than "normal" people. i don't mean to say aspies are better, they just tend to obsess over details a bit more. einstein, who most likely had AS, said that he wasn't necessarily smarter than others, he just spent more time working at problems.

I was thinking of all the things that just disinterest me, that most others seem to get excited by. That this can be explained by underlying neural issues is interesting. It made me think that if my perceptions are subtlely altered in often predictable ways, and if those perceptions are distorted or simply missing, in what ways may the NT brain be equally distorted and lacking? More than that, distortions that both NTs and autistics have, because the underlying issues are so deep and go so far back in our evolutionary history. As a Dakwin's fan, you'll probably list religion up there as one of the all time distortions, me too. Distorted as in, here is reality and here is our perception of reality: not only two different things, but demonstrably different, that is to say, we can show you the ways in which your brain is creating its own little world which is quite different from how things really are. I think autistics are more likely to reach these sorts of conclusions and dismiss a lot of culture as irrational and unimportant, because we can be so logical.

Where the exact border lies between congenital neural processing, features that become efffectively hard wired due to very early experiences, and thought and behaviour patterns that could be changed but are never critically examined (well engrained habits), that is difficult to define. Examples of each are not to difficult to find. And the feature of each overlap and interplay. A natural musician may find it difficult to understand why someone finds playing an instrument near impossible. I had to learn that there are people out there who can't read a chessboard almost instinctively.

If you haven't seen it, you might like the ISNT site. It looks at what would happen if th eAs mentality was taken as the norm, and NT taken as the "pathological" condition needing diagnosis.

http://www.autistics.org/isnt/
"NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic individual and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behavior."



That I have filled under "not as simple as that". Have you come across Levi-Strauss' concept of "necessary myths"? The useful social functioning of a myth need not be at all closely related to its truth. The idea is found in other places too, but he expresses it most fully.

In the ideal a myth should develop, or be replaced, as the truth in its particular area becomes apparent. But it's definitely not as simple as that! And there are plenty of times when a simple myth or idea serves better than a complex truth, which by its sheer detail and convolution can cause near paralysis.



Absolutely true, while perhaps at the same time missing the point that being logical is not necessarily the operant criterion for many people in many circumstances!