What if we're just ret*d?

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How can you accept this and live a normal life knowing that you're at disadvantage? What's the point of living then if you can never catch up to others?

Last edited by Dizzee on 22 Aug 2012, 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

i have surpassed others in some areas, just as they surpass me in others.

so who is really to say what is worth what?

Can you run as fast as Usain Bolt? Are you as intelligent as Einstein?

It is not logical to be unhappy about some disability or lack of talent in something. No one can be omnipotent.

How could you have spelled the word wrong? Was that your way of being politically correct?

Think to yourself, "What if I didn't know I had AS?"
You wouldn't think you had a disability if you didn't think you had AS, would you? You would think you're perfectly normal if you didn't think you had AS. So don't think a piece of knowledge can really change your life to make it worthless.

My life has plenty of potential and worth despite the drawbacks. I can live a happy life knowing I have a disability. No one can be perfect.

No, we're brilliant. Revered in some cultures, and rightly so, I reckon. Just because the decadent Western mainstream sometimes thinks we're inferior doesn't mean you have to go along with it. What have they got that's so ruddy marvellous?

Everyone has to accept their own strengths and weaknesses, and do what they can to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.



If you compare yourself to others, you'll always lose. There's always someone out there who is better/fitter/smarter/harder working/richer/etc than you are, especially if you keep looking long enough.

This one, to a limited extent.

I don't suppose we're particularly brilliant-- other than in our areas of expertise and/or when our special interests happen to coincide with something society needs, which they do often enough. For example, I don't know about society, but my interests in self-reliance and mental health have served my family well enough on more than one occasion.

It is not without gifts, if you can but appreciate them (easier said than done, as no one ever said those gifts weren't more than a little backhanded). I have found that the ability to laugh at oneself goes a long way toward making this more palatable-- though by no means all the distance, as you will constantly run into individuals whose own pathologies do not allow them to have a sense of humor.

Western-- or anyway American-- culture is a pathology in its own right. How healthy is it to have the luxury of marginalizing somewhere between 1 and 3 percent of your population simply because their strenghts and weaknesses differ from those of the sanctified majority (sanctified, of course, by their own consensus)-- and to do this for so many different demographics that a sizable chunk of the functioning population is viewed as somehow defective??? If you add up all those 1 to 3 percents, you come up with tens of millions of people in the States alone.

How healthy is the Culture of Can't that has surrounded autism/Asperger's and lots of other "disabilities" in this country as recently as five minutes ago???

I wrestle with the same questions. What is my life worth??? Should I even be trying to live it??? I did it as well as many and better than some before diagnosis, before self-diagnosis; I am reminded of my stepmother, who lived a very full life (and was quite a bit smarter in many ways than some sanctified "neurotypicals" I can think of) with only half a brain-- simply because it never occurred to her or to anyone else that something was wrong or that there was a reason to tell her it couldn't be done.

Keep trying.

Autism is a disability but it is not a disability that prevents you from doing what you're good at. You may be horrible at socializing, but your talents are probably very strong.

A normal life is not something to aspire to if you're autistic; because if you're autistic, you're not a normal person. What you have to do is find a life that lets you use your skills to pursue your goals in your own way.

Do we mourn because we're not Olympic runners, world-famous scientists, or superfamous movie stars? Does it bother us that some people are better than others? No? It shouldn't. And we shouldn't be sad that we're below average in some things, any more than we regret not having won an Olympic medal. Comparing ourselves to others is natural for us, but it's not something we should focus on doing. We are better off comparing ourselves to that mental image of our ideal selves--the things we know we want to be and do, the thing we're working toward. It's an image we'll never reach because it's an ideal of perfection--a star to steer by rather than a destination to arrive at. But the journey has been worth it for me.

I think that we're at a disadvantage in many ways in the West, because of the extreme and growing emphasis on "coolness" and "social intelligence". Even though human rights are better in the West than in many parts of the world, culturally at least, we are definitely not revered or respected for the strengths that we do have. And some days, that makes me really angry.

One thing that makes me really sad about being Aspie is that I can NEVER tell what another person's intentions are. I am polite, well spoken, considerate and gentle towards others. I never seek to hurt others. When I share things, I do so honestly, from the heart... without some kind of plan to trick the other person.

However, I have many times found out, embarrassingly long, long after the fact, that the person who I was honest to was never honest with me, or was just looking for information (which I naively gave out, out of a sense of wanting to "help" them, or at least not make their lives hard...)

To me, this particular disability - this inability to see behind people's masks into their true intentions - is the biggest thing I suffer from day to day.

Have you tried explaining the problem to your friends--i.e., "I often can't tell what you're feeling; you have to tell me in words"? That helps sometimes because then they know you care, but just have no idea how to read them. Just explain it to a few close friends at first; tell them you would like them to tell you if you are being annoying or offensive, so that you can correct yourself. Correcting others is often considered socially inappropriate; they are afraid of hurting or offending you, so they don't do it. You have to give them "permission" for them to feel a little better about cluing you in. I've learned a lot from friends who were willing to do this. Nowadays, with people I've known for a year or more, they often don't have to do it anymore because I've learned how to interact with them specifically. I'll have to re-learn for new people, but that's not such a burden if they are also willing to tell me when I need to fix something.

Well, with the people who I consider friends, it's not an issue. The people I've known the longest and with whom I am still friends, I've known long enough to know how to talk with them, and vice versa.

The tricky part is deciphering new people: there just hasn't been enough time to learn their patterns. Also, some of them are devastatingly good at putting on a convincing mask.

It would be great if people never deceived one another. I guess we live on the wrong planet . . .

I can accept the autism since its genetic and therefore was a random occurance....I am more bothered by some of the issues I have that were largely contributed to by other people since the feeling of knowing 'this was done to me.' is worse than 'oh I was born this way.' As for a normal life keep it the hell away from me as I want nothing to do with it.

Unless ''retaded'' is some word I never heard of (excuse my lack of knowledge), please correct it's spelling.

The problem with the Einstein example is that A LOT of people expect people with Asperger's to like Einstein since it's often believed he had Asperger's.

So yeah...society's piss-poor view of people with AS doesn't help much with the overall problem here.