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AS people, please can you help me?

classic codger

I am trying, with great difficulty, to understand something. I could really use your help with this, it's literaly taken me over (you know the one) and I need the thinking of others. Call it an intervention!

Before I begin, please can I ask you to look over the following article?;

nymag.com/.../

I have seen many posts from NT parents about 'treatment' for AS.

The question I have asked myself is, 'if I could go back and be changed into an NT by 'treatment', would I choose it?'

My firm answer is 'No'. I am the sum total of a life spent as an AS person. I can't change my past, so my best option is to use the learning that is  'the sum of who I am' to help others if I can, and especially for the next generation. If any of you think that I can be helpful and supportive, understanding and insightful, fine. If you think the opposite, also fine and I am sorry that I wasn't helpful. I do what everyone does - the best I can.

I'm an egalitarian by instinct. I will state my thoughts and opinions, but they are mine alone. When I read other people's posts, I assume the right to agree or disagree, and simply expect the same fairness back.

Thank you for listening this far, and now I've come to my taxing absorption.

I read this post under the title Stem cell treatment for autism: 'Has anyone undergone stem cell treatment for autism?'

I responded with '

This is my personal opinion. I don't argue my personal opinions, just for them.

How about 'tretament' for being NT? Their capacity for being the most illogical, spiteful, self-destructive creature on this planet leaves me staggered. I pity the poor creatures and their lack of insight, but what can you do? No-one is researching 'treatment' for them, because they collectively agree that their unsanity is 'normal'.

The inmates are running the asylum.

Now, I thought that I was humourously disparaging the idea of 'treating' people just because they are different. It is my belief that most people will be able to see that I have reiterated the concepts of the same thing as the poster, with our roles reversed. Here's your mirror, as it were.
I just discovered that I got moderated for this post . Apparently, I should watch my language. A particular word picked out is asylum because it is derrogatory towards past attitudes to mental health (?).
I am totaly confused. I don't know why 'mental health' is being brought into it. Given the various current uses of the word 'asylum' I don't know how it becomes offensive, even in context, 'the inmates are running the asylum' is a common concept and has been the root idea behind several award winning books, plays and films, yet it appears that some ignoramus doesn't like it. And apparently, I'm supposed to know this and understand it in their particular case. Que?
Please, any insights will do. Sooner or later one of you will say something that will help me get a grip on this. You know the one where the more you try, the more you're shaking your head, you're laughing bleakly, you don't know whether to be angry, offended, confused, puch drunk, weakened, disempowered, desperate to understand, shocked, fed up with mods public messages yet again, privacy invaded, and a whole bunch more, and because you can't choose one, you have them all at once instead. That's where I am right now.
Phew! Bit of a maze. Ariadne, the thread!
Parents
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Technophobe23 said:

    I've been looking at some Youtube videos by and about people with AS. One of the more interesting contributors expressed the hope that people who obtain an AS diagnosis resist any urge to use it as an excuse for bad behaviour. I can understand what she meant.  As far as I know (which isn't much - I am very much at the beginning of my learning about AS), unreasonable behaviour by intelligent adults at the high functioning end of the spectrum isn't regarded as a 'trait'.  We're surely as capable of being reasonable or unreasonable as the rest of the population?  

    The rest of the population don't seem to behave uniformly and consistently reasonably. There is a lot of arbitrary and random behaviour out there. This is one of the things that bugs people on the forum.

    Having said that, I wasn't aware of Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Pathological Demand Avoidance until I came on this forum. It seems to me that we are frequently distrusting and defiant of authority and can be wilful and badly behaved - I think that it takes extraordinary patience and calmness to get autistic people to co-operate. Some of this behaviour is learnt or conditioned by failing to to engage productively in society, some of it may be intrinsic to our difficulties with seeing and accepting the realities of a world in which things aren't straightforward and consistent. We react to the way the world seems to us and then the world reacts against our reactions and so it goes round.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Technophobe23 said:

    I've been looking at some Youtube videos by and about people with AS. One of the more interesting contributors expressed the hope that people who obtain an AS diagnosis resist any urge to use it as an excuse for bad behaviour. I can understand what she meant.  As far as I know (which isn't much - I am very much at the beginning of my learning about AS), unreasonable behaviour by intelligent adults at the high functioning end of the spectrum isn't regarded as a 'trait'.  We're surely as capable of being reasonable or unreasonable as the rest of the population?  

    The rest of the population don't seem to behave uniformly and consistently reasonably. There is a lot of arbitrary and random behaviour out there. This is one of the things that bugs people on the forum.

    Having said that, I wasn't aware of Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Pathological Demand Avoidance until I came on this forum. It seems to me that we are frequently distrusting and defiant of authority and can be wilful and badly behaved - I think that it takes extraordinary patience and calmness to get autistic people to co-operate. Some of this behaviour is learnt or conditioned by failing to to engage productively in society, some of it may be intrinsic to our difficulties with seeing and accepting the realities of a world in which things aren't straightforward and consistent. We react to the way the world seems to us and then the world reacts against our reactions and so it goes round.

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