Published on 12, July, 2020
I was just scrolling through and reading some of the older posts on here when I began to realise that even though I love reading, when I come on here and read posts, it's so much more than just reading.
I was off the forum for several months, mostly while I was having intensive one to one autism support. And even though I missed the people on here, I didn't realise just how important coming on here is to me.
It's like I get that feedback, that I think nt's get on a daily basis. It doesn't come from somebody agreeing with you or you with agreeing with them. It's more like a deeper sense of identification and I think it's a necessary part of our human make up, whether we're nt or nd. We're social creatures but a tiger, for example, isn't going to do as well with a group of sheep as he is with a group of tigers.
My friends at my autism group are so different to me in every single way, apart from having autism, yet we get on so well. There are none of the arguments that happen when I'm with nt's. You know how I talk on here ~ few can understand me ~ well I talk like that with them also (because this is how I talk!) and it doesn't cause arguments and even though they haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter, the conversations continue. It's like there's a deeper level of understanding, that surpasses what we say. Our conversations are so random and I've said it before, they're also almost childlike, but they feel real and natural and enjoyable. More so than even when I'm talking about my special subject, because that's really just me talking.
It's like when I communicate with nt's, it's almost like I want to treat them like my teddies. I want to line them up and have them simply listen to me and when I've finished, I just want to put them away again. But when I'm with my autistic friends, it's different. I'm actually learning about them and getting to know them. I'm actually doing that thing they call 'building friendships'.
I feel so honoured that one of my friends (I sit with 3 guys) who has been going to the group way longer than me and lives in the area where the group is, and they all know each other anyway, has opened up to me in a way that he hasn't to anybody else. He always gets images in his head that make him laugh, but he never tells anybody what he's laughing about. He always says nothing. But he's started telling me. In fact, I now know when he wants to tell me. I can tell from his facial expressions and body language (I've never been able to do this before!) that he wants to tell me, so I ask him, and he doesn't hesitate, he gets right in there and tells me straight away. This means that I am able to successfully read his body language.
I also learn a lot from my autistic friends because even though I'm older than them (in years on this planet), they've all been autistic longer than me, meaning they've had their diagnosis longer, so they have a lot to teach me.
Financially, there's a huge gap between them and me but that doesn't even come into it. It doesn't matter that we don't share the same interests or have any similarities in our life styles because we get on regardless of all those outer, superficial things.
I guess if I ever have doubts about being autistic (even though I have an official diagnosis), I should just look around at who I am most comfortable being around. Even my 'deficiencies' i.e. my inability to read body language, is not true when I'm with autistic people. Ok this is only one time when I've been good at reading body language but I did do it.
I guess we're all just like animals really. We are most comfortable in our own pack. The difference is, human beings have something animals don't have, even though most humans don't make use of this faculty at this current time in our history, and even different kinds of animals live peacefully side by side.
Anyway, my point was (before I go off on a tangent, whatever a tangent is!) ~ would an nt person even suspect they're autistic (if they're not), and if they did, would they obsess about it as much as many of us did and still do sometimes and would they relate to us as well as we relate to each other and would they feel like they had found home, their people, their tribe, their pack, if they weren't?
I've met quite a few sad attention seekers who claim to be autistic (or whatever else is fashionable) because they are so cringingly 'average' and their lives are so dull that they crave the attention of being 'different'. Anything will do - they can claim to have any health problem mentioned in the media until they either forget or don't get what they want from those around them.
My sister in law is a classic case of dumb, bored housewife with nothing else in her life. Every time I see her she's suffering from some new self-diagnosed problem. And she claims to have Asperger's too. Clueless and very irritating.
They find sites like this to assimilate the underlying feelings so they can try to fake better. They look to collect identifying symptoms that they can wrap around themselves for sympathy.
They eventually get bored and move on to something easier to fake.
Whoa, that’s interesting. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to be autistic if they’re not, or wanting to be different but I guess that comes from a lifetime of trying to be like everybody else!
I worked at a doctors surgery years ago and a doctor told me that they call people who go to the doctors a lot with fake illnesses, ‘fat envelopes’, in the days when things were hand written, as their little files just got fatter and fatter! I guess your sister in law’s a fat envelope!