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Fitting in

nowhereman

I have been diagnosed with aspergers and I keep hearing more and more aspects of it that I relate to. However wherever I go even to aspergers support groups I feel like an outsider and different. I have a very strong desire just to fit in as  one of the gang. 

  • I have autism and I get bullied all because people think im weird and I have been bullied since I was in year one I'm in year 12 now and I still get bullied its making me feel really sad and angry at the same time help me please.

  • Hello

    I was diagnosed with autism too but have that feeling of a strong desire to fit in, where ever I go. It real is a real feeling and sometimes I go and really feel connected and other times I go and just feel total outsider with people who i know well enough.

    I think there are times we have to learn to be kind to ourselves at the times we feel we don't fit in. It may be we are fitting in, just don't feel like that. I would think it must be much more difficult too if going to a group all who may feel that feeling becuase then no one is connecting to anyone and no fault of anything just that it something we don't feel.

    I don't go to any austim social group as was diagnosed late in life really for that and yes I do find it hard to fit in secular groups if you like to determine it as that. I put it down to hard of hearing which the Specialist Nurse told me is autism too. Even when 100% included I do not fit. Then other times it good because I do fit.

    I think it just one of the many traits of ASD spectrum and it good when people around us are aware enough and work differently to include us into the group. Problem I have had in the past is if I wait to join in, I don't get invited in and then is misunderstood as not willing to join in. Sometimes I didn't even know how to join in. But it gets viewed as not wanting to. Diagnosis been good for me because I have felt that missing piece a lot less and times when I do feel it, I am understanding it as alright then, this is autism. Yes I feel crap but it explainable enough.

    Perhaps you fair better when in secular groups? or as I am sometimes and recognise at times am a bit of a loner. I don't mean alone. Just a loner. That has helped too.

    Well before the suggestion of ASD was er, suggested to me I can remember not quite crying but as good as to the local parish priest that I don't fit in I don't feel.... I didn't know anything about all of this then but it comforting to know now, that it is a real ASD trait and I was justified in saying it to him, that I wasn't making it up it was real. He wasn't judging me at all and understood because he could see I was finding it all difficult even though I been there 30 years.  It a comfort to know it a real trait for us all.

  • I know what you mean, I have issues with this. Spent most of my youth wanting to be one of the gang, which led me into hanging out with a**holes and making some very stupid decisions. Looking back, that desire to fit in has probably caused me more problems than anything else. 

    I do think that fitting in is partly down to attitude though. If I focus on the differences with others rather than commonalities I will continue to feel separate. And that the only solution really is to reach out to others (which I find very difficult. For instance there is a local AS social group which I am thinking about attending, but keep procrastinating!)

    One of my heroes, Tim Leary, said this about fitting in:

    “Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”