Notions of identity

What do you feel is part of your identity other than your diagnosis? I'm asking this, because I feel I've been getting a bit bogged down by my recent diagnosis and coming on here. I've said before that I don't want to be defined by my diagnosis, so thought I would write about other parts of my identity. I feel I've always had a strong sense of identity of some particular aspects of my life, and I think these will always be with me. I feel like they are (or have been) non-neogitable elements of my life.

Growing up I was into "alternative" stuff which probably doesn't seem that alternative now but in the late ninetines /early noughties it kind of was. Music was a big part of my identity and still is. Probably up until my late twenties, if someone was into music which I saw a less quality than my tastes, then that gave me good enough reason not to like them. Thankfully that has changed now. (Also, I think the idea of "alternative" is very different now because of the internet and things are more homogeonised, but I suppose individuals could still be seen as conventional or unconventional...)

Other notions of identity I can relate to are being northern and from a working class family. This is so important to me. Having had a university education, I feel I'm somewhat "caught" in the middle of working and middle class now. I feel I'm a bit too common for some people, but too "posh" for others. This links in with my accent which is also another big part of my identity.

Another one, and I don't know if this is to do with AS, is I feel as I'm getting older, I've got a better B.S. detector. A lot of my friends are into eating out and trying new fangled places, stuff they've read on social media and hyped up nonsense. I don't have social media apart from this forum. I dont think it's that I'm getting more cynical, I just feel a lot of it is style over substance and I'm really not interested in eating a croissant crossed with a donut and drinking an expensive coffee from a cafe made out of plywood. I feel like the world is getting overly fancy just for the sake of it. Everything has to become a "thing" these days.

I'm sure there's other stuff I will think of once I've posted.

So what about you? What do you strongly identify with which is something you aren't willing to budge on?

I've edited the post to make it shorter

Parents

NAS71674 over 4 years ago

Unknown said:
I've said before that I don't want to be defined by my diagnosis

In my opinion I think you are taking the wrong view here. From reading this it tells me that you view Autism as a condition/illness which in my opinion is not the correct view, despite the technicality that in ASD, D stands for disorder, just because they don't really understand it properly yet thats the best label they can give. I do agree that there are quite alot of difficulties that come along with it due not to Autism itself but other comorbidities (depression, anxiety, sensory processing disorder, pyschosis etc) but pure autism which probably doesn't exist in isolation is in my considered opinion not a condition or illness. Its a term that refers to a set of abstracted traits that are shared amongst a group of people who do not share the same culture (culture: the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.) as the vast majority of people alive and are therefore categorized as having a condition or disorder or illness. To say that your Autism doesn't define you is in my considered opinion like trying to claim your hair colour doesn't define you as a brunette say if you have brown hair, or as a biological man if you have male genitalia. This type of attitude you have about it is just going to continue to perpetuate the negative connotations related to Autism and deny people the enlightment of realising that they are not broken or dsyfunctional because they can't live like almost everyone else but rather they are a different type of person that although has to deal with baggage that comes with it via commorbidities is still a different type of person. I feel some Autistic people have a very shallow understanding of their own nature and just regurgitate what they are fed by neurotypical people. I don't believe in separating people into groups (before anyone mentions this again for the millionth time) but I do believe a person should know and understand their true nature in order to have a more complete, fulfilling and content (not necessarily happy, who needs to be happy all the time?) life.

I am Autistic no matter where i go or what age I am. I can become any nationality I want (maybe there some I can't but you get the gist), any religious denomination, any gender, a conservative or a labour voter etc, work in almost any profession. I can even learn to like Marmite. These are not intrinsic traits that define who and what I am they can be completely changed on a whim. I can also never become neurotypical. Therefore at the most fundamental level of my existence, I am an Autistic person. Not only that I also feel much more of a connection to other Autistic people than I do for my own countrymen, others of my religion or other men. I am what I am and thats all that I am and thats all that I ever will be.

I don't think people who spend their time thinking about their diagnosis and should look at it as a confirmation that they need to start really discovering who they really are as an Autistic individual. They don't have to go around and say to everyone they meet "Hey, I'm Autistic", rather they should just start to find out who they really are as a person without the mask of neurotypicaldom. They don't have to pretend to be neurotypical anymore or feel that, "Some day, I'll be normal, just got to keep trying". They are not broken, they just have to suffer unfortunately from comorbidities and being forced to live in a neurotypical world design for neurotypical people.

Lastly here a big news flash about the professionals who can only recently accurately diagnose people. They don't really know what it is. They don't understand what it is in girls and they don't know how it happens. The best they can do is say "well they don't do what everyone else does, so it must be a disorder!". Mark my words at some point in the not too distant future when they properly understand what it actually is beyond the abstraction they use now thats only good for clincial diagnosis (like when a child sees an animal with wings they know it must be a bird, or bat, or something that flys. It has wings so its definitely not a dog) and how it actually works, it will eventually be recognized that we are just a variation of the good old homo sapiens. I am going to coin our classification right here, right now. We are the subspecies

Homo Sapien Autisticus

Reply

NAS71674 over 4 years ago

Unknown said:
I've said before that I don't want to be defined by my diagnosis

In my opinion I think you are taking the wrong view here. From reading this it tells me that you view Autism as a condition/illness which in my opinion is not the correct view, despite the technicality that in ASD, D stands for disorder, just because they don't really understand it properly yet thats the best label they can give. I do agree that there are quite alot of difficulties that come along with it due not to Autism itself but other comorbidities (depression, anxiety, sensory processing disorder, pyschosis etc) but pure autism which probably doesn't exist in isolation is in my considered opinion not a condition or illness. Its a term that refers to a set of abstracted traits that are shared amongst a group of people who do not share the same culture (culture: the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.) as the vast majority of people alive and are therefore categorized as having a condition or disorder or illness. To say that your Autism doesn't define you is in my considered opinion like trying to claim your hair colour doesn't define you as a brunette say if you have brown hair, or as a biological man if you have male genitalia. This type of attitude you have about it is just going to continue to perpetuate the negative connotations related to Autism and deny people the enlightment of realising that they are not broken or dsyfunctional because they can't live like almost everyone else but rather they are a different type of person that although has to deal with baggage that comes with it via commorbidities is still a different type of person. I feel some Autistic people have a very shallow understanding of their own nature and just regurgitate what they are fed by neurotypical people. I don't believe in separating people into groups (before anyone mentions this again for the millionth time) but I do believe a person should know and understand their true nature in order to have a more complete, fulfilling and content (not necessarily happy, who needs to be happy all the time?) life.

I am Autistic no matter where i go or what age I am. I can become any nationality I want (maybe there some I can't but you get the gist), any religious denomination, any gender, a conservative or a labour voter etc, work in almost any profession. I can even learn to like Marmite. These are not intrinsic traits that define who and what I am they can be completely changed on a whim. I can also never become neurotypical. Therefore at the most fundamental level of my existence, I am an Autistic person. Not only that I also feel much more of a connection to other Autistic people than I do for my own countrymen, others of my religion or other men. I am what I am and thats all that I am and thats all that I ever will be.

I don't think people who spend their time thinking about their diagnosis and should look at it as a confirmation that they need to start really discovering who they really are as an Autistic individual. They don't have to go around and say to everyone they meet "Hey, I'm Autistic", rather they should just start to find out who they really are as a person without the mask of neurotypicaldom. They don't have to pretend to be neurotypical anymore or feel that, "Some day, I'll be normal, just got to keep trying". They are not broken, they just have to suffer unfortunately from comorbidities and being forced to live in a neurotypical world design for neurotypical people.

Lastly here a big news flash about the professionals who can only recently accurately diagnose people. They don't really know what it is. They don't understand what it is in girls and they don't know how it happens. The best they can do is say "well they don't do what everyone else does, so it must be a disorder!". Mark my words at some point in the not too distant future when they properly understand what it actually is beyond the abstraction they use now thats only good for clincial diagnosis (like when a child sees an animal with wings they know it must be a bird, or bat, or something that flys. It has wings so its definitely not a dog) and how it actually works, it will eventually be recognized that we are just a variation of the good old homo sapiens. I am going to coin our classification right here, right now. We are the subspecies

Homo Sapien Autisticus

Children

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