I want to be cured.

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Thinking about specific aspie/autistic traits I have, now in the present, rather than the whole bag of traits, I'm thinking, the one thing that I would perhaps like a cure for, if such was available, is my sometimes not noticing people. As in, in a social situation, not really being aware of everyone, having I guess a narrow focus on what I'm doing. Also, even interacting one on one, I work at a public service desk, and often, it's like, I'm focused on the task and I don't notice the person. I notice this when I have to go in the back room and come back, and the person moves and I don't know which person I was dealing with.

Although, I wonder if cure is even the right word when I'm talking about being better at something that I'm sometimes not so good at. It's not even so much about developing an ability -- I do have the ability to notice people just fine -- but a matter of when I apply it. Can I learn to apply it better? Can I do so without losing some of who I am?

This is something, I don't see a good side. Well, unless I see it as a flip side of hyperfocus. As in, losing that because I'm gaining something else that's sometimes good.

And that's just what you can see from your AS perspective.

What about the panoply of other things you'd be able to see you were incapable of, once you became NT ?

Would you WANT to return to being AS once you'd seen all that ?

This is utter, utter garbage.
The biggest pile of steaming garbage since time began.
Your tastes, interests and relationships would be enhanced.
They are not a function of your disability - they are a function of YOU ... just as they're a function of an NT individual.
No, don't tell me - NT's don't have memories, preferences or relationships.


What would be the point of that ?

No, not by magic.
You'd get them just like NT's do, because you wouldn't be handicapped in the way that you are.

And who's told you all this ?

So optimism and making the best of life are now mutually exclusive, are they ?

Defeated pessimism ?
So if I defeat my pessimism, I'm not going to be left optimistic ?
You are so full of the bravado and the sour grapes (I didn't want it anyway) of defeatism, it's painful to watch.

Your whole view is polluted by it.
But then, the void of ignorance isn't necessarily always guaranteed to be filled with objectivity, hope or enlightenment under such circumstances.

You're trying to cast me as someone who wallows in their disability and pessimism.

A rather puerile attempt to make me look like someone lacking in moral fibre.

But it's YOU who refuses to fight the fight - but worse still, you want to bring those who refuse to take it lying down, down to your level too.

... and you're calling ME the defeatist ?

I'M the pessimist for not giving in to Autism ?

I'll fight my affliction until the day I day.
And the last person I'd ever take advice from is someone with such a simplistic notion and lack of conceptual imagination as to what the cure for Autism would look like.

You change who you are : when you look from the other side ,will you not want your old life back?



Valueman

Of course you would.

Except ... you're not changing WHO you are.
You're liberating who you are - freeing it from the confinement of AS.

You are the defeatist because you continue to wait for the cure instead of trying to learn to cope with your Autism. Isn't this obvious?



Yes, and continue to dream about the magic cure, and not doing your coping-home-work because the magic pill will do it all for you with no effort from your part?



The way you described the traits that should be cured (most having nothing to do with Autism at all), I wouldn't take any advice from you related to Autism either.

I don't really care about being normal or not, I'd just like to get rid of the executive dysfunction, SID, social awkwardness and weird sleep patterns.

I'm curious of the feeling of comfort that NTs get out of being a part of a group.

I'm sorry, but as explained earlier - I don't do talking to rdos (even at the risk of being banned by sinsboldly, for refusing to).

No, it is a pretty educated guess. For example, I'm right-brained and have to "fill-up" scenarios for fast responses in my left-brain. So, if somebody cured me of being right-brained, and turned me into a left-brained individual, all I would remember would be utter social BS I've acquired by rote-learing.



No.

1. Superior taste (and other senses) is an ASD-trait, and would have to go with the cure.
2. The interests are "woven" into a large network in my right brain, and would get lost with the cure as NTs are left brained
3. My children, wife and friends are autistic, and as an NT, I wouldn't be able to live with any of them.

ThisIsNotMyRealName, you know that you'd probably need a diagnosis to get a specific cure? Unless that's going to be a cure that's freely buy able in every chemist's shop or easily got by illegally (which is never a good idea with medication).

You can't do the 10th step before the first (=you can't expect to be cured from the label if you do not have the label down your record yet), so when treatment becomes available that does what you want it to do, you should make sure that you will receive it when it's available.

Also from what you say, you should be receiving services until then. That of course poses the question if there any where you live. If not, you might want to try to find a therapist who has some experience or is willing to get into AS - if you haven't done so already.

You already did in another thread. Feel you cannot confront the arguments?

I can't help seeing truth in everything that both Callista and Thisisnotmyrealname have written on page 4 of this thread, except when Thisis_ _ called Callista's argument bull

I think there's a reason why those who accept their autism tend to be older than those who challenge it - The older you get, the less you're in a position to work on your core self. It's to do with declining brain plasticity; same as how only kids can become fluently multilingual.

Before I even found out what my 'problem' was (I was diagnosed with mild AS aged 20) I never sat around waiting for someone to fix me, but I didn't go to the other extreme and try to develop a photographic memory or anything like that either. I rooted around in the foundations of my mind for gaps, and used my imagination to find the feeling-tones and so on that other people felt to make them act the way they did, matching this with whatever genuine simulation I could generate within myself. Where I went wrong - morally wrong - was in getting too emotionally involved and in refusing to develop my autistic talents, so that the effects of still having poor social skills when I went to college were that I was too distraught with nerves for most people to approach me as they otherwise do. My only excuse is that my natural focus has always been on people and feelings (hence my musical ability for example); such focus would obviously never be combined with autism in an ideal world!

So my advice to most younger aspies would be fairly simple - Work deep-down on your social persona rather than learning it by rote if you can, but only in moderation, and know when to move on. Those aspies like me who have little interest in the physical world really need to feel a duty to it, since that's where they'll need to bend their other interests towards.

I somehow agree, but it probably is more than lack of plasticity in us older folks. It probably has to do with the fact that most of us weren't diagosed as children, and that we had to try to adapt to society. It is probably also a factor that most older autistics have developed far better coping abilities than the youngsters have, regardless of other things like diagnosis. We therefore see the possibilities to cope with autism much clearer.

Well you come across to me as a kind of 'Terminator'-style robot, a quality usually associated with the left brain. {I'm right-brained in the better-known sense}



So how come I love prog rock?



My main interests have always been in feelings, different people, and in connecting with them. Now I'm confused

You don't know me. Plus, you apply your own perspective to me, without knowing me.

See, I'm not stuck being AS. I do have NT traits too. And sometimes I fall more one way, sometimes more the other way. So, it's not a matter of "becoming NT", but rather, becoming more NT. From where I sit, a black and white AS or NT perspective doesn't make sense. I like who I am, and have no desire to either be more AS or more NT. But if there are specific personal traits I can work on improving and want to change, I'll work on those.