How bad off are we?

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How bad off are people with aspergers and HFA?

At first blush we have it quite bad. Everything that is counted as good or important is more challening and difficult for us: Doing school, having friendships, Having a good job, being organized.

One of the traditional areas of male bonding, sports, are closed to male aspies more or less because of the natural lack of fine motor skills.

Yet I think its important not to feel too sorry for ourselves, vital even, since there is much we can do to improve. Aspergers syndrome is fairly mild compared to very severe handicaps (Low functioning autism, Downs, etc), it just takes a little more intention to do it. A nice life can really be carved out wherever you are.

Even as far as bullies go, bullies aren't the end of the world. If your not being beaten/spat upon routinely, its just important to try and lay low and avoid them. I never was really severely bullied, and even when I was, I just sort of avoided them and they moved on to someone else. Idk... just my two cents

You don't have to be coordinated in order to be a sports FAN. That's how guys really bond, actually, as a fan of baseball, football, or whatever.

There are a few Aspie types, actually, who are general managers in sports. Brian Cashman of the Yankees is no athlete--trust me! Some of them look downright geeky.

And Aspies are really good in lots of things, too. Many are good with computer things. I'm not one of those people, though LOL

I was bullied, many Aspies are bullied---but so are NT's. Bullying is universal in school, as far as I'm concerned.

The social interaction part---not that's frustrating. But I've gotten better over the years through practice and through learning.

Aspertastic424, yours is an amiable and well-meaning post. When I'm reminded of more severely affected people, sometimes I even feel ashamed to complain about my own challenges. However, having said that, be careful not to invalidate how different levels of "challenge" bring their own different types of "how bad off."

To think they don't comes close to telling people they almost shouldn't complain at all depending on comparisons -- which doesn't turn out to be all that helpful to the person who is experiencing suffering, on whichever level.

For a simple analogy, it's like telling the person who just lost their leg or had it amputated, "well, buck up and stop feeling like it's a tragedy, I know a guy who lost TWO legs, so nyah, think yourself lucky you've still got one."

While obviously there are going to be more problems if you've lost both your legs than if you still have the use of one, is it any good reminding the one-legged person of that?

That person is still going to be in grief over the loss of his leg. He is still going to feel like it makes his life more difficult. He still has a lifetime of dealing with having it as a disadvantage and challenge.

Yes there are always ways to optimize the situation you've been dealt. I'm not in any way being Debbie Downer saying if someone has anything that isn't as optimal as the "norm" then they are doomed and nothing's any good anymore.

That's not what I'm saying. Everyone can try to find ways to minimize the negative impact of whatever it is in life, whether they lost a leg or two legs, or whether they have severe autism or even mild autism.

But they also have the right to feel or to say that the things they are experiencing as problems are problems to them.

You might take as an example a high functioning ASD person but they are experiencing such struggle simply in keeping going that they become suicidal.

There is also the interesting paradox that a so-called "lower functioning" person is usually surrounded by massive amounts of support. Family, friends, the government, charities, often rally around the lowest functioning -- AS THEY SHOULD -- but because of the help, assistance, funding etc, that person may actually be a more productive member of society than the so-called high functioning Asperger person who, because they are deemed capable, receive no help, no support, no understanding, no assistance, to live THEIR best life.

And even though they may need less of those things, the fact that they get none at all may mean that ironically they fumble through a life that turns out to be a complete mess, while the lower functioning person -- though they needed very much MORE help -- they turned out to have a richer life exactly because that help put them more on track to whatever they were able to achieve.

Every level of autism brings its own challenges which may need help in order for that person to overcome what holds them back, or learn the tools that will help them overcome. And the irony is that there's no help at all for the higher functioning, so that even though they seem on paper like they start the race with advantages, they can still get so lost that their life actually becomes more easily crashing in flames than the LFA with bountiful guidance.

You don't know what inner pain anyone goes through or what their set of challenges do to their lives.

Be careful telling the guy with a missing leg he has nothing to complain about, because you can call that shot to ever increasing issues -- the guy with two missing legs need to shut up around the guy with no limbs at all? No. Someone wise once told me "pain is pain."

Depends on your level of functioning. "people with aspergers and HFA" is generalising the diverse community as a whole.



No, it is not. It can be trained and some aspies are sports geeks (There is an entire subforum dedicated to it @ WP).

Myself i got better after practicing Bujinkan ninjutsu. I stood up straighter, i walked better and i became more alert. Budo has helped me a lot.

What would be a bigger issue is the social thing that isn't so prevalent in the autism community, even though there are exceptions to that too.



I agree wholeheartedly with that.



If you are young and can get away with it, you can punch bullies in the face. That's what i did. And moving on is the right thing to do, we all grow up and the bullies who cannot cope with that ends up in the gutter. I know of one who is an alcoholic now and is about to become evicted for the 825874543 time, and this time he and his also alcoholic wife will probably end up homeless, sleeping on benches.

Being bullied at school may seem like the end of the world (mostly because teachers do not give a crap about bullying), but school is just one tiny part of your life, and thinking back i do not care much about it. I've gone way past the little kid who hardly could look people in the eyes, hardly ever socialised with friends, spent countless hours at the computer, never did any homework because it was boring and had nothing to do with computers.