Quality of autistic people's lives!

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I was talking to this man who works for the autistic society last week. I was saying how I want to live a long time and he said something roughly along the lines of "that's a good thing but sometimes the quality of your life is more important than the longetivity of it"


I am 26 and have Asperger's syndrome and he's aware I have it too.


Do you think the man from the autistic society made a good point from the comment he made to me? We were discussing about autistic people in society in the session we had.

I definitely think that this is true of everyone.

There have been times when my life has been so terrible that I wouldn't have cared about it ending ASAP.

There have been times when I've felt unfulfilled - where life is going well, but there's still more I want from it and so I've wanted to live for much longer to meet the goals that I have for myself.

And there have been times when I've felt fulfilled. Moments when, if my life had been about to end, I know that I would have died happy and content with what I'd achieved. And I think that's by far the best situation to be in - wanting to continue living, but being happy that you'd have no major regrets and would feel like you'd done what you wanted with your life if it ended.

Children put a spanner in the system, I've found, in that I'm now happier and more content than ever since becoming a parent, but also have a reason to want to continue living for as long as possible. However, that's a different situation from most, I think.

What I'm getting at is that I think that if your life is truly happy, if you've achieved all of your goals and dreams and you feel fulfilled, then the length of it doesn't much matter any more. A long life is great, but if you've reached that point of happiness and quality of life then you won't feel the need to keep going for as long.

He definitely was right. There's no point in living a long life if you haven't been living the life you wanted to live. It's goos that you want to live a long life just make sure it has quality to it and it was the life that you wanted to live. You went out and did the stuff you always wanted to or at least tried to making it a reality. Don't live a life of regret.

I am autistic my quality of life is s**t

You can definitely change it. You just have to work on it. It's what I did during high school and now i'm glad where my life is going right now. I'm not where I would like to be but I sure am working on it. Figure out what it is you don't like about your life and try to find solutions - start asking questions on how you can fix it or make it better. It's pretty much up to you improve your quality of life and no one else. You can sure ask for advice though but it's still ultimately up to you whether you do it or not.

Have you tried seeking counseling or therapy to learn ways to better cope with life and to improve yours the best you know how?

Stop hanging out in bars so much.

Bars tend to promote a negative view of life.

The quality of my life improved once I accepted that I will NEVER be normal and have normal things like a house, wife, kids, mortgage, career I like, tickets to San Juan Capistrano or a 24' sailboat out on the Puget Sound.

I just see it as the basic quality over quantity equation, which can be applied to many things.

My dad has a friend who has most of that and he is absolutely miserable with it. His only escape is being a workaholic.

Yes, I've encountered that too. There are definitely quite a few people who don't really seem to gain much pleasure or happiness from those things. Seems to be more about conforming to what everyone else does and expects very often.

I've even had some people tell me that they're jealous that I don't stress about those things - but it isn't because I'm some sort of guru that has reached a "higher plane" or anything, I just never really saw the appeal since as long as I can remember. The constant expectation from other people that I "should" want them usually stresses me out more than the fact of not having them.

i'm concentrating on learning the things i'm supposed to learn in this lifetime so I don't have to retake any classes in the next.