Do you consider your Asperger's a blessing, curse or indifferent.

[Autistamatic]

I think you must have quoted my post in yours by mistake @RosaViolet

I'm proud of being who I am and that happens to be autistic. No self loathing present to be treated by therapy or otherwise.

 

[RosaViolet]

Sorry I misquoted you, @Autistamatic. Your autism confidence is more than obvious, I certainly wouldn't dream of ascribing any self loathing to anyone.

I was talking to DocBee. I was trying to say that his mood was a factor in how he feels now, but with treatment he might come to see autism more like you do...

Should autism awareness day / week / month be renamed in autism pride?

 

[Autistamatic]

I'm with the majority of advocates in thinking that rather than autism awareness events we should be promoting autism acceptance.

Autistic Pride is something separate which, for now at least, is something the world outside our community isn't ready for yet IMO.

 

[Bronzelincolns]

depends on how you look at it.

ASD, like any other condition or circumstance can be viewed one way or another based on your own perspective. some will believe that they could've done better in life if not for this or that certain thing while others believe they would not have become the person they did without the same.

 

[meepmeep]

It's a blessing in that my brain can do things other people's brains cannot do. It's a curse in that our society is not set up to accommodate people with brains that work like mine, at least in childhood.

Now that I'm a grownup and my days of being bullied for being "different" are far behind me, I can say "blessing" in an unqualified way. Because the advantages of having a brain that does things that other people's brains cannot do are still there, and now I can also avoid the kind of people who like to bully those who are "different".

 

[Peter Morrison]

Curse is a very harsh word, but we all get what it means here. Between blessing and curse, I have to vote "curse". I only say this because you are asking us to examine ASD as one or the other. I think it has benefits and pitfalls for everyone. The pitfalls are severe, so we would all wish them away if we could. I look at the amount of energy I have had to put into doing what others seem to do easily, naturally, without knowing I was doomed from the start. It's a real baptism by fire, but without coming out ahead. I struggle just to keep up, and I am still deficient. The fun part is my ability to see deeper and more thorough into the workings of the world. I can't change it, but I see it clearly. I feel like a know a secret that surpasses the abilities of the rest of the NT world. They say "ignorance is bliss", but I don't want to be ignorant. Bliss would be nice, though.

 

[Tony Ramirez]

100% curse as it has not done me or my family any good just bought on stress and depression. For those to say but at least you were smart in school I nearly failed High School and dropped out of College after failing worse. I can never hold on to friends or even acquaintances "dang annoying spell check I can't spell for crap either and my grammar sucks".

I rather have died when I was a baby "as I nearly did" then suffer with this horrible ASD which has gotten worse the older I am.

 

[Ylva]

That is your choice.

 

[Tom]

I think it is often more a case of what you do with the cards you are given rather then everything pre-determined in some way. One way is to make the most use of your strengths.

 

[Autistamatic]

Many a true word is spoken in adages...

"When life gives you lemons...make lemonade."

 

[Anarkitty]

I'm choosing to see it as a blessing, and yes, I think this is a CHOICE. How we view things often is. The reality is that I mostly like me, and I wouldn't be me without this particular neurology. I'm different from my family members--which is a good thing--and this is in large part because of autism. I like having a higher IQ and a different way of seeing things. I'm happy to be honest by nature.

I might wish that I could understand NTs better, and I certainly wish they understood me a bit better. And as @Autistamatic mentioned, I wish there was more acceptance for our differences. As much as people preach about "tolerance" today, it's amazing how little of it there seems to be in the world sometimes.

That said, there are certainly some things I don't like. If I had my druthers, it wouldn't have come wrapped up in a ball of anxiety, depression, and the impaired executive functioning that has me sitting here posting messages instead of completing my taxes.

 

[Crossbreed]

As a Christian, I see human nature, generally, as fallen and inclined to self-defeating behaviors for everyone, NT, autistic and every other possible neuro-type. That weighs on me. But correcting for that, I see my Asperger's ASD1 autism as a blessing of sorts.

Ostensibly, it should just be thought of as another mundane neurology that one might have, but our relative minority amplifies the effect of its novelty.

 

[tlc]

I say both. Maybe the first 20 years of my life, I would have said total curse. Being in school and college, getting along with others was what life was all about. There were things I was great at, like math, spelling, technical drawings, and was undeniably the best TI-85 programmer in my town. But for the most part it was a living hell. There was also no world wide web back then, you communicated face to face, phone, or not at all. I couldn't be alone, I always had to report to somebody.

Once getting older, I was able to make my own choices, so I chose a life that didn't require a lot of social interaction. The internet came of age, which allowed me to communicate better and have access to a world of information that helped me make the best of custom projects. I could find and buy things that nobody else around here seemed to know or care about. I got a job in engineering which suited me best. I enjoyed being different.

 

[Lysander]

For me it's a mixture of both since I'm lucky enough be on the high functioning end. It's impossible to say exactly what my life would have been like without autism. Perhaps without it, I would have been more accepted. Perhaps in order to be more accepted, I would have done things I shouldn't have. Who knows?

 

[Clueless in Canada]

As an academic exercise I can usually list the pros and cons of just about anything I have some knowledge of or experience with. In some cases I can imagine them. I doubt anything is all good or all bad, all wonderful or all horrible. Before I knew I was autistic I was accustomed to living with a diagnosis of chronic illness. Many bad things, many frustrating things occur because I have a chronic illness, but I prefer not to be miserable. I prefer to look for positives in life so that is what I do. I focus on those. Autism is essentially a disability because of the environment an autistic person must function in but autism itself doesn't necessarily make a person miserable. If I could cure the anxiety and the sensory processing issues I would but much of what is autism just feels like the only me I know so I'm fine with it.

 

[tducey]

Option 4, it is what it is for me. Still I have things I'd like to be able to do but can't because of Autism.Still with my support group I'm living a pretty good life.

 

[DocBee]

Hi, thank you for the welcome and sharing your perspectives. I thought about this a lot on the drive home. Maybe it's because I had a diagnosis so late in life is why I feel the way I do. I'm fairly fresh to the diagnosis (3 years) and maybe I'll feel differently in time. Having Asperger's has caused a lot of pain in my life. Maybe as I learn to manage I'll feel more of the joy from it.

 

[Aspychata]

Okay, tough question, l had to deal with the feelings it brought up. l truly feel that l live in a void, a black worm hole, a jellyfish existence that can replicate and duplicate all that is around me, yet l swim in black squid ink, and joyfully, l swim, my planet spins in it's nothingness, but it's my nothingness, l claim it, l staked my flag in it, it's me. l have decided to accept me, and not apologize to anybody, because who on the planet can truly claim they are a perfect human being.........

 

[Anarkitty]

Hi, thank you for the welcome and sharing your perspectives. I thought about this a lot on the drive home. Maybe it's because I had a diagnosis so late in life is why I feel the way I do. I'm fairly fresh to the diagnosis (3 years) and maybe I'll feel differently in time. Having Asperger's has caused a lot of pain in my life. Maybe as I learn to manage I'll feel more of the joy from it.

Yes and no. I'm 48 and just figured it out within the last 6 months or so, so I'm both late in life and even more recent. But I've been pretty lucky--I know that, and if I didn't, hearing other people's stories here would bring it home. For instance, I didn't have to try to keep a job because I stayed home with the children, and my husband and I have managed to stay married in spite of the fact that sometimes his undiagnosed ADHD and my undiagnosed autism made us figuratively go for each other's throats like Homer after Bart.

Honestly, I think my good attitude about it has a lot to do with RELIEF. I know why now that so many things in my past never quite worked out like I'd hoped they would, and I've given up wanting things that I'm unlikely to ever have. I feel free to be me in a way that I didn't before. After feeling for years that there was something wrong with me, it's such a relief to know that I'm just legitimately different. It doesn't make a bit of sense that understanding that I have a "disorder" makes me feel like I'm not defective after all, but there it is.

I'm sorry for the pain you've suffered and hope you are able to find the joy.

 

[Weezer]

I voted both. It is a curse more often than not. When I have an electrical issue to diagnose, it is a blessing.