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| Do people expect you to act normal? |
| Absolutely. I'm blamed when I don't. |
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55% |
[ 22 ] |
| Usually they notice pretty fast that I can't. |
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17% |
[ 7 ] |
| Don't know, never thought about it... |
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15% |
[ 6 ] |
| Other |
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12% |
[ 5 ] |
| Your post is unclear to me. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
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| Total Votes : 40 |
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Greentea
Bull in China Shop par Excellence!
Joined: Jun 15, 2007
Posts: 1910
Location: Middle East
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 Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 2:41 pm Post subject: People's expectations of normalcy from you? |
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Do people generally cut you lots of slack because they know you "can't"? Or are people on the whole sure you're just too selfish? Or something in between?
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"It is the wounded oyster that mends its shell with pearl" - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Sora
Illogical, Irrational
Joined: Sep 16, 2006
Age: 20
Posts: 2425
Location: Europe
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not described as selfish, but as lazy or rebellious.
I'm usually expected to me normal. It doesn't help that I usually don't live up to that and that, for whatever reason, it is still demanded after me even after the 100th failure in 20 years. I mean, don#t people notice that I can't do stuff eventually after I frequently fail?
The usually arguments are:
I'm oh so intelligent, I must be able to do it. And that I sometimes can do things I can't at other times, which is impossible to the minds of people and must mean I'm just rebellious. (When for example I sit in front of a video recorder and though I could do it before, I can't program it now.)
2 years ago, at my school, I explained I couldn't participate on a school trip for 1 week/10 days. Because of my AS diagnosis.
I had meltdowns and shut-downs on every school trip before.
I had to talk to everybody including the headmistress.
They said stuff like, oh, it can't be so bad. And that I'm 18 now, I grew out of that. And that it's all in my head and not real. And that's it's something I must overcome to grow up.
As if autism is a fad. They expected me to tag along like every other student.
They didn't believe me. In the end, they thought I had tried to steal money by first accepting and getting sponsored for being too poor (no diagnosis back then and I was told I must have a reason to stay home by 1 teacher) and then pulling back (receiving the diagnosis, finally).
I am not sorry. I didn't want to get suspended for having a severe autistic moment on the trip.
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett |
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Age1600
Bonita-Azul
Joined: Apr 23, 2007
Age: 23
Posts: 1682
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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Nobody expects me to be normal, no way in hell haha, but they do expect me to be able to do things that I still can't seem to master.
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Dxed Classic Autism(moderate to severe as a child, now moderate to high functioning as an adult) & Dxed Tourette Syndrome... 
I'm one ticcing, stimming chica from the Jersey Shore 
Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated  |
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Greentea
Bull in China Shop par Excellence!
Joined: Jun 15, 2007
Posts: 1910
Location: Middle East
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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It's a golden dream of mine that someone would say one day "We can't demand that from her, she has AS". All my life people blow up, then storm off, then hate me forever. And they never tell me what I did that upset them, convinced as they are that I'm perfectly aware.
I'm even hated with a vengeance by someone who claims I didn't say hello once, and won't consider my prosopagnosia (can't distinguish faces in a crowd) even for a moment.
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"It is the wounded oyster that mends its shell with pearl" - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Bozewani
Sea Gull
Joined: Mar 04, 2008
Age: 18
Posts: 237
Location: Somewhere in the Universe
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, in my liberal town people are more accepting then not, but occassionally I ran into social irregularities, shall we say in our environment and people expect everyone to toe the line in those brief circumstances. |
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Social_Fantom
Maverick
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 10787
Location: Watching from the shadows
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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I honestly don't know what people expect from me, maybe they want me to act what they think is "normal." I've always been an outcast because I always did things my way. Even when I used to try to fit in, I always tried to do it in my own way. Guess it wasn't good enough.
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Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius
5th Sin: Wrath |
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Greentea
Bull in China Shop par Excellence!
Joined: Jun 15, 2007
Posts: 1910
Location: Middle East
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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I see 8 out of 10 people (so far) are often unfairly punished, like me.
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"It is the wounded oyster that mends its shell with pearl" - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Brandon-J
Deinonychus
Joined: Mar 12, 2008
Age: 19
Posts: 352
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes people do expect me to be normal. They see that I have 2 arms, 2 legs, I can walk, speak, & I look like an average normal person. Therefore I must be normal, WRONG... |
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Kauf039
Snowy Owl
Joined: May 17, 2008
Age: 23
Posts: 153
Location: ON, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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People, for the most part, have given up on changing my behaviour. Most people just give me a weird look, then smile, roll thier eyes and try not to giggle. People who can't stand me, or try to change me I don't bother wasting my time with.
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Humm, guess I should put something witty here, huh? |
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poopylungstuffing
Bohemian Cave dweller
Joined: Mar 09, 2007
Age: 33
Posts: 3612
Location: not otherwise specified
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Amik
Snowy Owl
Joined: Feb 07, 2008
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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People expect me to be "normal". They don't understand that I am not able to do some things and that some things that are easy for them might be really difficult or overwhelming for me. They also don't understand that I have different needs than them. They keep trying to tell me what to do, claiming it'll be good for me.
I get blamed for not doing what is expected of me. They think I'm just making excuses, not trying hard enough, being rebellious or careless or not polite and decent enough.
The most recent example of this was today. My family and many people from my extended family went camping together. It's a yearly event. Lately my family has been trying to pressure me into going there too, saying it'll do me good to socialize, meet my relatives and have some fun. They don't understand that social situations, crowded places, yelling kids and loud adults are not at all enjoyable to me and can be quite overwhelming for me. So when today I gave them my last "no, I'm not coming" they sounded very disappointed with me not being "normal" and just doing as is expected of me. They probably feel like I've offended the whole family and they refuse to understand that I just can't take circumstances like these.
And, like Sora mentioned, people see me do something one day and don't understand why I can't do the same thing on another day. They don't understand that a slight difference in circumstances can have large effects on my ability to do things. |
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No_YOU_get_over_it
Toucan
Joined: Jun 29, 2008
Posts: 253
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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This is SO hard for me - even therapists etc expect me to be normal. Yesterday a social worker - I told her on the phone before the first meeting that I have AS, b/c I'm tired of getting told I don't need help - told me that I have more in common with other people than I am different, and that AS is basically non-symptomal Autism. Yeah right. She can try living my non-symptomal life and get back to me on how much she feels she has in common with the rest of the world. Kumbaya!
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- NYGOI
NB: contents of above post represent my opinion at time of post only. YMMV, NAYY, and most importantly, IALBTC! |
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chocoholic
Deinonychus
Joined: May 22, 2008
Posts: 360
Location: Chocolate Truffle Town
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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I picked other because for me it can vary depending on not only where I am (home vs. work), but also if the same people I see every day are in certain moods.
For example sometimes my bosses at work can be understanding, but on other days if we're shorthanded or they need people to multitask, I'm expected to do it as well as everyone else, and this multitasking involves helping customers. After 3 years of coming up short every so often, you would think they'd figure it out by now.
At home my family is understanding for the most part, but times have come up where we've had misunderstandings, "supposedly" due to me misconstruing what was said or taking something "too literally", which I do sometimes due to my visual thinking style and just trying to mentally process what someone's saying to me, and they sometimes get mad at me for it. 
So it really all depends on a lot of factors, at least for me.
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chocoholic
Deinonychus
Joined: May 22, 2008
Posts: 360
Location: Chocolate Truffle Town
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Amik wrote: | | And, like Sora mentioned, people see me do something one day and don't understand why I can't do the same thing on another day. They don't understand that a slight difference in circumstances can have large effects on my ability to do things. |
This is a problem for me as well. At work, I have no problem doing a task when the store isn't too busy OR helping customers if I can interact with them in a set way. But change the circumstances of the two (i.e. having to multitask the two, or telling me at the last minute to change my "sales pitch" without giving me time to come up with the exact language to do so, subtle things like that) and it's absolutely overwhelming. And because I've had some good days where I've been able to just get by, as far as change is concerned, they don't understand that I was performing at maximum capacity then, so on my bad days when my maximum capacity isn't good enough, it comes across as substandard performance. If only people could just understand what that's like for some of us, even for just a day. 
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Please help end animal cruelty:
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WC
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Jul 04, 2008
Age: 38
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, all my ex-friends did. But my immediate family cuts me slack now, thankfully. |
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