Are things JUST different?

...To anyone NEW reading (after around 22 Hours (10pm))... I should say that the original Title of this Thread was (probably) misspelled, and was "thighs" instead of "things"...

Thank You, Jan84, for correcting it. To myself that old title was really irritating. My own right thigh internally causes a lot of trouble for which my left thigh has to compensate. But I did not want to say that upon a public Forum, and so Thanks again for correcting the Title.

;-)

My thought on this is that the way society tries to make us 'conform' is where the difficulties arise.  If left to my own devices I am able to do things my way, think things in the way I want to think, and behave in an unconventional way without affecting other people.

But the near 99% of the population who are neurotypical for some reason want to make us comply with their way of thinking and behave in the way they see as appropriate, even if what we are doing is no concern of theirs.  This is the 'challenge' I have.  We are supposed to 'act' neurotypical and it to have no effect on us.  But of course it does have an effect on us, in frustration, anxiety, depression, and all points between.

I like my left thigh, we get along and we have an understanding. My left thigh is ND.

my right thigh I also like but don’t really get. My right thigh is NT. But I can either accept that my right thigh exists and try to get on with it or ask to have it amputated. 

between my two thighs is a gap. This is called the “gulf of understanding”

:)

No, I don’t think things are more difficult for an autistic person than they are for an nt person. And how could that even be quantified?

There are many aspects of myself, the autism, that give me a distinct benefit over nt people. It’s apples and oranges. It’s our attitude, our mindset and our response to life, ourselves and others, that makes the difference, not our physical or mental set up. 

A victim mindset will always think it’s life is harder than other people’s lives and will use this as a barrier to even trying, and a loving, accepting and understanding mindset, will always see life as equal, but different, and it will put its focus on, how can I do better, rather than dwell on all the ways in which the life can be seen as terrible and worse than everybody else’s. 

PS I was intrigued by the title of this thread!  I was wondering what to expect!

Auto-correct text is the culprit, I expect...

Hi Jan,

I agree with you.  A person born with one arm is 'different', too. Is life equally not more difficult for them in your wife's view?  She might argue that a physical disability is another matter.  It isn't.

Certain things are more difficult for us.  Difficulty with understanding body language and gestures, for instance.  Less than 10% of communication is verbal.  That puts us at a very big disadvantage compared to NTs.  Routines is another example.  For NTs, being asked to drop what they're doing and do something else straight away can often be a nuisance or an inconvenience.  With me, it would be very difficult and be a cause for a large degree of stress.  And because I don't look different from any other NT, it's expected that I shouldn't behave any different.  So if I say 'No, I'm sorry, I can't just stop doing this', I then get accused of being 'fussy', 'uncooperative' or 'inflexible.'  A colleague at work seemed to think that I was being selfish and unreasonable by not giving her a lift home from work one evening.  She lives less than a mile from work, but in a part of the city that takes me out of my way and makes me late getting home by about 15 minutes.  A minor inconvenience for most people.  I had to explain to her, though, that that 15 minutes makes a lot of difference to my evening routines.

So... I'm on your side!

All the best,

Tom