I Am Not Understood...

[Mis-fit]

I think most people with depression, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other similar conditions feel the same way. It's just difficult for people who haven't had those conditions to understand what it feels like to have them.

Do you understand non-autistic people on the deepest level? If you've been autistic since you were 2 or 3 years old, it's difficult to understand people who aren't autistic.

I think I see what you mean and yes, it is true that unless someone else has been through what we have been through, it would be impossible for them to understand that aspect of our lives, what we have been through. I am referring to more of a personal understanding. Being autistic or having Asperger's does change our person, our brain is different, our perception is different, our thoughts are different, our speech is different, etc. So that makes it very hard for an NT to understand us. The thing for me was, I didn't know I had Asperger's, though I suspected it. Dr's told me I don't have it. After all, they are Dr's right, wrong, I do have it. I didn't know what I was experiencing in my perception, my thoughts, my speech, etc was that different from NT's so I couldn't even explain to them what the deal is. Then I didn't know any other people with Asperger's, so it was a real challenge for me to find people who understand me as a person, not what I have been through so much, but me as a person. I don't know this for sure, I am not a Dr, but it seems like our personal experience as people in life on this planet is different from NT's. Like we are apples and they are oranges. An orange can never understand what it would be like to be an apple and vice versa, though they could probably relate on some levels because they are both fruit. It's not like we are trees and they are deer or something. We are similar, but different enough to be very different on the deepest level.

Does that make sense? I appreciate your input. You and other's in here are helping me feel much, much... much more understood than "EVER"!!!

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Part of the way I was misunderstood was also because of some of the stuff I was and wasn’t allowed to do. My family wouldn’t let me watch Forest Gump until I was 13 and by then Titanic was the movie literally everyone was talking about. I was literally the last kid in my grade to see Forest Gump and it was even worse that I knew 6 year o,DS that got to see it before I did. So what kind of movies was I allowed to watch? Disney animated ones. Then my family wondered why I only watched cartoons and animated movies and talked about them when I was 12 and didn’t seem to want to grow up. The problem actually wasn’t me but rather them refusing to let me watch and do some stuff other kids my age were doing because they didn’t think I was “mature” enough. Yet they forced me to learn to drive at 16 even though I didn’t feel like I was ready to drive yet. I wanted to wait until I was closer to 18 and I never told them that I never wanted to drive. And when I DID get my license, I wasn’t allowed to drive myself anywhere so it was a huge waste. Everyone just assumed and expected me to know every thing and if I said or did something wrong because I didn’t know that my perception of the situation was wrong, I was just playing stupid and being inconsiderate. No one really ever asked me why I said stuff and see if maybe the issue was I just didn’t understand something.