does anyone feel like a disappointment?

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I am constantly thinking about how my family does not seem proud of me, or the things I have done. It rattles around in my brain all the time... Always has. Just because I'm "different" and they would like me to fall in line and sort of be "normal"

I know that it is wrong for them to think this way, and YET I feel all this guilt and shame?

I don't know your parents, but try talking to them about how you feel. Also if you have AS or something like it, your probably not good at non verbal communication, so maybe you think they think of you in a way they really don't. If you talk to them about it and your still looked down upon, then you just have to tell yourself there's nothing more you can do.

About topic title:
Stop thinking who you are, rather think what you do/did/happened to you.

Ex: You're playing tennis. You don't make any points and your opponent has just won the game.
You can think: He's clearly won, that means I'm the loser. --> get depressed and can't do anything for the rest of the day
Or you can think: He's clearly won, that means I've lost, but as a person I'm still me and ok --> too bad you didn't win, but you can still try to do something more fun today

See the difference?
Just don't personalize this s**t, you're ok.

Also you don't have to agree with what your family thinks; you can't control what they think, but you can control what you think.
Meaning, you know how much you tried to act normal (or not), you know what it feels like to live with this condition, and if they want to force you to act in ways you don't understand, it should be clear to you how wrong that is. Because you know better than them.
So just let them believe what they want to believe, don't disagree, but never agree with them if you know they are wrong.

If you feel you did what you could, you can be proud for yourself, you don't need anyone's approval.
Just don't tell them that.

I feel like I should do more for those I care for (that be one short list, yo), say my mother. So, yes.

It's all on me, though. The world knows full well how disabled I am.

I'm 73. I was a terrible disappointment to my father. He was from the Greatest Generation, career military, Phd, university professor, and founding member of a now prestigious university. We never had an actual conversation. It was as if I was thinking about the wrong things... things he would NEVER be interested in. He watched me and 'corrected' me constantly. My stimming, poor posture, special interests, drove him crazy. I pained him. Even when I was his only living relative, and taking care of him (he lived to be 92), he was still correcting me... Picture this, Im visiting him at his nice old folks home (that I found for him... and moved him into), and he's in his wheelchair, and we are getting ready to go down to dinner with 150 other old folks, and he looks me over (inspects me) and says, "Can't you do something with your hair?"

Tall-P, did he say even just one positive thing about you to you during all the stages of your life? I am asking this question literally - was there one instance of this. And if there was, what was your inner reaction to hearing this perhaps totally strange event in the context of the relationship status quo.

Do you have poor self-esteem?
People who have poor self-esteem may worry that they are disappointment to family and see others' disappointment with them often.

I feel like that all the time.I look around at the rest of the world and everyone else is moving on as I'm just sitting by.

. Back in those days, just after WW2, adults weren't into being positive with kids... children had to do what they were told... they wanted obedience.[/quote]


Of this I am acutely aware from personal experience also. Being in an orphanage in the late 1940s, though relatively brief, was a terrible experience. I was an infant, and one staff member beat me up for spilling some peas on the floor, leaving open wounds and bruises. It was all covered up - when challenged by a concerned visitor, the Anglican staff who worked there lied and said that I "had arrived like that". I was more or less speedily thrown ("placed with") by the orphanage to a couple of married dreadfully damaged people, who had demanded the Orphanage find them (for money) an infant who had 1) married parents and 2) "no black blood" so that it would be 'untainted' by moral pollution in the genes.

You can imagine what life might have been like with such 'parents' like that. I do not have to imagine - I have a very acute memory.

I cannot recall hearing one single positive statement about myself either, Tall-P, in that context. Had I come home with a Nobel Prize, they would have reacted by ignoring or by sneering in this kind of way in response to a success "So I suppose you think you're clever now, do you? Well pride always goes before a fall, and when you fall, serves you right".

They were world-class experts in turning someone's success into failure. And you possibly know that that greatly influenced my choice of career later.

Yes, Tall-P, to our dying day, we will never forget, and personally, I do not want to forget. I want to retain consciousness of everything that happened to me, good, bad and evil. That is perhaps not uncommon in adults whose childhoods were 'orphan voyages'. For some of we survivor children, our memory is the single thing in our lives that we can rely upon to tell us the truth.

What happened to me - in all its wonders and all its horrors - my only personal kind of mini-holocaust childhood - was my journey; it is uniquely my story of my life and my personal journey. I have learned to live with those terrible things. It took many many years before I could intentionally recall the worst things from my childhood and adolescence in my mind while feeling a sense of calm peacefulness in my heart, soul, mind and body. And a sense of wonder as to where this journey has led my life. (I am not a serial mass killer yet, so haven't lived down to the abusers' expectations!)

There is the simple Buddhist instruction: "witness and accept". Eventually I managed to do both regarding the mini-holocaust.

Pretty strongly so, my two younger brothers had a lot of health problems growing up and had learning disabilities in areas that are strengths of mine but my own stuff caught up with me eventually before high school. I'm certainly not a winner, I don't think they're proud of me.

My dad treats me like I'm the best son ever.
But I can tell that I am a disappointment to my mom, even tho she would never say so.
But even with my dad, I wish I could be a regular son to him.

I'd say, you dont necessarily have to do or listen to every single thing your parents tell you. Many parents, especially in modern days, expect their children to reach a certain height in their lives, or "study hard, get far, get a super professional job and make a lot of money" etc., with a lack of respect towards the child's own dreams and ambitions in life. You are never a disappointment until every single thing you do in life fails. Count all the things you do in life, even things as trivial as taking the trash out or going to a supermarket, and ask yourself "do I fail or disappoint in anything I do?". If the answer is no, then you have all the hope and the potential you need to be a big accomplishment in this life. You dont have to argue with your family about it either, just say what you feel and worry about your own ambitions in life, and go where you want to go. Unless they literally tie you down, they cant stop you.