• Replies 14 replies
  • Subscribers 81 subscribers
  • Views 4959 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

People relativising AS and telling you that you seem 'normal' to them.

Hope

I hate it with a passion when people say to me, often randomly, 'I don't think anyone would have thought that you struggle with asperger's, you seem so normal', and then they say that they themselves struggled to fit in at school for some reason and does that mean they therefore have aspergers? It is like they are questioning the diagnosis by implying I cannot possibly have AS because I am so chatty and extrovert!. They do not realise how their comments make me feel sick inside, the anguish and stess the comments make me feel, particularly when the comments come from people who should know better. My regular support worker understands me and would never relativise my AS, but a support worker who has only recently started working with Autistic adults and who does not have much experience in this field, recently came out with these comments and left me feeling hurt and upset, although in other respects I get on with him. I feel like I am a fake, that my identity is being questioned, and it makes me feel unhappy, like I will be a perpetual outsider, not fitting in anywhere. I don't wish to be defined by asperger's, but it is nevertheless such a big part of my identity and I am so proud of my achievements and successes with regard to fighting back against my anxiety and the negative side of my AS and how my experiences have shaped me as a person. I always feel like I have to justify myself and it makes me feel so tense and upset. Anyway, I felt like replying, what am I supposed to look like as a person with AS? Am I supposed to hardly talk, to be rude and non-compliant or highly distracted?.

Has anyone else with high-fuunctioning AS experienced similar issues? I do feel so unhappy at the moment, but maybe I am being too analytical and taking things too far.

Parents

  • I have been musing about this subject matter myself today. I think its not the severity of individual characteristics but the number of factors involved that's important. Hence someone can appear to have symptoms of any one kind that compare with experiences of neurotypicals. But its the range of symptoms and the collective effect they have that matters.

    I lose information if there are other people talking or there is any background noise complicating what I hear. Either I tune out everything, or sometimes someone I understand one minute seems to be talking a foreign language the next. So I spend ages trying to catch up with the dialogue which just makes matters worse, or trying to nod or mutter something appropriate where I think there's a cue, and hope the other person doesn't take offence, even though I can see they are puzzled.

    However this trait is also experience by people with dyslexia, and by people with reduced hearing. So as an individual sympton it is hard to claim it as evidence of ASD.

    The answer to people who raise these similarities may be to broaden the topic to other things the NT friend might think they have (subtly, not aggressively) - you'll soon leave them behind.

Reply

  • I have been musing about this subject matter myself today. I think its not the severity of individual characteristics but the number of factors involved that's important. Hence someone can appear to have symptoms of any one kind that compare with experiences of neurotypicals. But its the range of symptoms and the collective effect they have that matters.

    I lose information if there are other people talking or there is any background noise complicating what I hear. Either I tune out everything, or sometimes someone I understand one minute seems to be talking a foreign language the next. So I spend ages trying to catch up with the dialogue which just makes matters worse, or trying to nod or mutter something appropriate where I think there's a cue, and hope the other person doesn't take offence, even though I can see they are puzzled.

    However this trait is also experience by people with dyslexia, and by people with reduced hearing. So as an individual sympton it is hard to claim it as evidence of ASD.

    The answer to people who raise these similarities may be to broaden the topic to other things the NT friend might think they have (subtly, not aggressively) - you'll soon leave them behind.

Children
No Data