If you were honest with yourselves, how many of you hate having this condition?

[Cutesie]

Not long enough at all. They should be at least two hours.

Yes, but flexible. Sometimes that would be too much at once.

 

[Misty Avich]

Yes, but flexible. Sometimes that would be too much at once.

Not for me lol. I need a whole day really, each week, to discuss my emotional problems. The way 50 minutes flies by is just like 10 minutes.

 

[Misty Avich]

There's so much I hate about being on the spectrum though, like the way we often dangle at the bottom of the social hierarchy and so are often bullied everywhere we go, as if we deserve it or something

Autism isn't all bad, depending on how it affects you as an individual.

When I had obsessions it was over people, so I'd just come across as a weird stalker and get myself into bother with them, which was embarrassing. In fact I hated having obsessions as they overtook my mind and my life.

For me, having sensory issues doesn't make my senses sharper. I can't hear any better than anyone else, I'm just sensitive to certain sounds. It's not the same thing as being able to hear better. The only sharp senses I do have is my exaggerated startle response to sudden loud noises, which I'd rather not have. But I think that is more to do with my nerves than my ears.

Sometimes I wish my meltdowns involved going to a dark room to stim until I'm ready to start speaking to people again. Instead I'm the opposite - during a meltdown I crave human interaction, I just can't handle meltdowns on my own. My meltdowns are caused by panic, stress, frustration, annoyance, anxiety and depression, but aren't the typical autism meltdowns. They're histrionic, although I don't do it for attention, although I require attention during a meltdown but I'm not doing it as attention-seeking behaviour. When an adult is doing it for attention they're usually acting out a scene without actually feeling the emotion as intensely as how they're acting. With me I'm actually feeling the emotion very intensely and become lost in a panicky frenzy, craving support and reassurance from others. Reassurance works wonders for my anxiety, even if people lie a little.
For example, if there are threats of WW3, saying "yeah it's imminent" is going to throw me into a panic attack, or if I'm worrying about being homeless in the future and people start telling me to prepare for it. Um, no, I'd rather you told me that there's help out there if I seek it and that I won't be homeless. Hearing reassurance from other people helps a lot, even if it's not 100% true but still plausible.

Having too much self-awareness yet lacking self-validation at the same time is a very unpleasant combination, and is what makes life so depressing and hard. I'm hypersensitive to other people's moods, thoughts, emotions, actions, everything, so people being callous and snidy around me can really cause me anxiety and I can't ignore it. I had this same sensitivity as a kid too. I remember when seeing an adult being really angry, I'd have an urge to giggle as a nervous reaction, then I'd get yelled at for giggling. But I couldn't help it. I was really nervous. I don't giggle now around angry people. Instead I just become jumpy and overempathetic for them yet trying to avoid them at the same time.

I hate being like this. Why can't I just be the type of autistic person who is in my own world and has very logical thinking and is disconnected from other people's thoughts and feelings and have to consciously think before making any sort of social interaction with my colleagues? Why do I have to be NT yet Aspie at the same time?

 

[T0m]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. Having autism and/or ADHD can account for the biggest challenges people like us have in trying to live a fulfilling life.

Certainly there are times when I "hate" having autism and ADHD. But my neurology and the way I'm "wired" is apparently according to modern medicine and the biological differences in brain structures of NT vs. ND, distinctly different. In other words, the fundamental way that I perceive the "world" with my senses is quite different than how NTs would view the world.

I actually thought about this yesterday when I was listening to a podcast about ADHD and ADHD medications. If there was a pill that "cured" me of my autism/ADHD and essentially changed my neurology to be like an NT, the thought of that made me feel physically nauseous. I don't envy NTs. This is an NT dominated world and an NT dominated society. NTs have lived without the challenges that encumber autistics and still, this is the best society they can fashion? That's not enviable to me at all. It's a disappointment. Why would I want to align myself with that?

Sorry, this is off topic. I just noticed the "Another Green World" cover in your avatar. Nice album ("Sombre Reptiles"!).

 

[Steelbookcollector217]

yeah not proud of it at all but its not gonna make it go away

 

[Misty Avich]

I'd rather have ADHD than autism - yes, I am diagnosed with ADHD, but I meant if I had the choice to have at least one of the conditions I'd choose ADHD in a heartbeat.

On Facebook two people I know (a father and a son) have fallen out and are arguing with each other (for all to see). The father has autism but not ADHD and the son has ADHD but not autism. The father keeps making a fool of himself the more the argument goes on, while the son is hyperaware of his father's "faults" and is angry at him. You could see their conditions coming out in them. And I kind of felt more bad for the father for not understanding and being mistaken for an insensitive jerk, but I could relate more to the son for seeing the injustice and getting upset over it and also his stubbornness and anger.

 

[AuAL]

There's so much I hate about being on the spectrum though, like the way we often dangle at the bottom of the social hierarchy and so are often bullied everywhere we go, as if we deserve it or something

Autism isn't all bad, depending on how it affects you as an individual.

When I had obsessions it was over people, so I'd just come across as a weird stalker and get myself into bother with them, which was embarrassing. In fact I hated having obsessions as they overtook my mind and my life.

Having too much self-awareness yet lacking self-validation at the same time is a very unpleasant combination, and is what makes life so depressing and hard. I'm hypersensitive to other people's moods, thoughts, emotions, actions, everything, so people being callous and snidy around me can really cause me anxiety and I can't ignore it.

I hate being like this. Why can't I just be the type of autistic person who is in my own world and has very logical thinking and is disconnected from other people's thoughts and feelings and have to consciously think before making any sort of social interaction with my colleagues? Why do I have to be NT yet Aspie at the same time?

Hi @Misty Avich, I can relate to so much of what you feel, with a BIG difference. For me, finding I was on the spectrum saved my life. I was suicidal and in therapy, convinced I was “broken”. The intense interest in others - been there and it got me into trouble. Low self-esteem, “imposter syndrome” - despite external validation of my achievements. (Constantly seeking external validation…) Try to imagine this for over 60 years of your life!

I didn’t hope to be an autistic person “in my own world”, logically thinking (I am a professional scientist/engineer), disconnected from other people (I am an introvert - I need other people to energise me), consciously thinking before social interactions - I wish. I just wanted to be a “normal” person, I didn’t know I was “autistic”. I didn’t know why all of this was so hard. I just thought I had to “suck it up” and get on with life. Until that got too hard.

Now I try to count my blessings - that I found a wonderful person who was prepared to look past all the rest and stay with me (for 44 years, so far), managed to raise three wonderful young people who are making their own way in the world, find and keep some friends (not a lot, I will admit, but that is on me - it is a very high bar for me to accept people to the “inner circle.”) By dint of frugality, hard, unremitting effort, and the complete unawareness I was “disabled”, I am now very comfortably retired. I don’t pretend this is a path open to all - I was 2e - but I am still curious about the life experiences of others in my “pre-autism” cohort.

For you - I hesitate to offer advice. Yours is a different life to what mine has been. But I am sure the unique person you are has a lot to contribute and achieve.

 

[Boogs]

I don't really know how to separate any part of what's me as being autistic, in the sense of autism being an actual 'thing' and separate from my intrinsic being. Take away or significantly modify any part of what comprises me, and you've got someone else, not me at all (for better or worse).

So I couldn't even imagine the idea of hating my autism and in fact don't think that phrase actually means anything beyond personal and specific contexts of their situations. But there's no difference to that than saying I hate having in-grown toenails (ouchie! ) or I hate that I was born unable to walk properly, or that I ended up unemployed and living in poverty, and so on and so on ...

Autism is just a label for identifiable outliers in a certain cognitive/social/w.h.y. context. And the wish-fulfilment of wanting to be someone other is hardly the confines of autistic people, but to me that's all it is, just given an autistic flavour because that's the phenomena it relates to in this case.

e.g. Would I prefer to have born born as allistic (not autistic) but in return was awarded a merely average IQ, would I trade that off willingly without the hindsight to experience the difference? (something that's impossible in every way, but for sake of discussion ...) is simply to ask would I prefer to be someone else and hope that the concept of thinking the grass always being greener in the other field is not applicable here?

Take wealth as a more abstract argument, most who struggle to ration their income adequately to provide a comfortable level of living would covet the exceptionally wealthy for whom these things are meaningless.
But to become one of these people requires losing most of your connections to the rest of society and entering a whole new world and often comes with negative outcomes for them and those in their sphere of influence.
Imagining that because you can conceptually isolate a certain aspect of your life you can also simply (or not so simply) remove it or modify it as desired makes no sense to me beyond comforting fantasy, which is fine as long as it's recognised as being such.

(I speak only for myself, not judging others in their situation. This is just how I view it, can only view it - more my limitation than anything? Hard to judge).

 

[ASDtropic]

How do you not hate having autism? I barely had any positive social experience since I was born 32 years ago and countless negative ones. I'm running out of reasons to get out of bed because everything involves people and that's just physically painful to me. We need to mechanically think to speak, but then I get overwhelmed within minutes of the start of any social situation and it's just over. How do I think when I'm overstimulated? I don't and people start to dislike me and get all sorts of negative which I then need to deal with

I would literally rather not have my hands or legs than have autism. I feel like I haven't gotten a chance to live

 

[Boogs]

I can't see any other way to view it. After all, I spent about 60 years not being aware I had conditions to not want, and to think of suddenly going all "woe is me, I want to be something else" simply because I can rationalise my state far better, doesn't really compute.

Like I say, I would be a different person, and frankly, whatever my life has been I've never wished to be someone else. How could I even know that different person I'd become would be happier? I think we can't change such a fundamental thing and still be able to see what we were and what we've become. What we were would no longer exist, at all. Isn't that not so different from death? I would no longer be, someone else would in my place.

 

[Misty Avich]

I find it easy to imagine what I would be like if I were NT, being so I do have a lot of NT traits, but still enough Aspie traits to feel fed up and different a longing to be like everyone else. For a start AS makes me weak, and I say that because I'm a target of social bullying in the workplace. I seem timid and nervous and scared to stand my ground because of my irritatingly uncontrollable tears that I just cannot help, so if I did stand up to bullies I'd just end up bursting out crying without wanting to, and then that would just make them laugh at me or look like I'm an attention-seeker or that I'm being histrionic. Ugh, I hate it. I hate being me. I wish I could pick the damaged parts of my brain about a bit until I connect the right cells to the right vessels and then I'd be normal. If only.

 

[Boogs]

But, hypothetical here, what if you became NT, and turned into one of those people who bully you?
Don't forget, you'd now be a different person, but not one you can know, only imagine. Who is to say what you'd be like, and whether you'd be happy with it? Maybe you would, but maybe you wouldn't. Better the devil you know?
Just another view point though. Nothing more.

I suppose part of my problem with this is that I have no real idea what autism actually is beyond a set of a range of symptoms at a certain intensity. I don't even know what parts of me would change if I became allistic (and who knows, maybe even normal too! ) so how could I even make a wild guess at what it would be like, and more to point whether I'd be happy with that change.

If I think on a co-morbidity instead, take the aphantasia, if I could suddenly internally perceive experiences - sensations, who knows, I may have a constant nightmare of PTSD recalls of traumatic moments, and I'd have no practice in handling that, no idea what it's impact could be, no idea if I'd be grateful to have that or maybe even driven mad by it? And that's taking a simple case of one element and it's already highly contentious - hmmm...

 

[Misty Avich]

My ASD is like dyslexia - it's only a part of me. I bet people with dyslexia can imagine what their lives might be like if they could read better or spell better, probably not much change but still an improvement to them. That's how I feel about AS.

That's not to say autism means the same for everyone though. Some may view their autism as an improvement to how they would be if they weren't autistic. So there is no right or wrong answers here. If someone says they can't imagine themselves as NT or that they'd be someone completely different if they were NT then I take that as a fact. To most autistic folk, autism is all they know themselves as. But not me. In fact I was NT right up until 4 years and 5 months when my brain drastically changed overnight before starting my first day of school, and I can remember being an NT. In fact I was more NT than my sister, who went from autistic-like behaviours to an NT when she started school. Maybe a mad scientist swapped our brains over while we were sleeping?

 

[velociraptor]

How do you not hate having autism?

Because I have figured out how to work around the bits I have trouble with and to leverage the areas where it gives me an advantage. I'm in my fifties and living a decent enough life. Married, kid, own property, good career, fun hobbies, things are okay. It can work out, but it took effort to get here. I put a lot of money/energy into learning to read body language, understanding social cues, understanding NT humour, etc. I still don't connect with a lot of NT humour but now I can recognize it and respond somewhat adequately. I know masking skills aren't loved around here, but you need them if you're going to thrive in a world that is mostly NTs.

My 2 cents.

 

[NB79]

Sometimes is very painful to 'socialize', thats not healthy. People were made to interact with others.
I think i heard lots of autistics who don't want to deal with people much anymore, that can only hurt your 'socializing skills' even more. But i get why.

 

[AprilR]

I don't hate autism but i hate living in a place where people are ignorant about it and there is no social support. Because of that many social problems occur

 

[Boogs]

I think that in many cases it's a very normal human thing to wish to be something other, and not an autistic thing in itself.
But in the end it's a fantasy of wish fulfilment no different to wishing one had won a lottery or similar when living in relative poverty. That's not a criticism, that can be a positive thing as it can engender motivation to change (reaching for our dreams - in fact it fits in with the brains exceptional predictive abilities, seeing an alternative future through proactive change), but it needs to be kept in perspective to prevent it becoming a toxic factor that diminishes one's life instead.

 

[Boogs]

Sometimes is very painful to 'socialize', thats not healthy. People were made to interact with others.
I think i heard lots of autistics who don't want to deal with people much anymore, that can only hurt your 'socializing skills' even more. But i get why.

Quite agree but it's very context sensitive.
e.g. if I've spent most of a relatively long life finding the attempts to socialise end up more negative that allowing the much rarely random encounters to provide companionship, then I could see it as rational (correct or not) that the pain of no or few contacts is less than the pain of bad contacts or those resulting in a generally negative outcome, especially as the less of something you have, the more you may get out of those fewer occasions through sensitisation (sometimes).

A complex equation with many hidden variables?
I'm fairly sure I find this is a delicate balance, and some people suffer more from isolation that others, and the nature of that isolation can be very different from person to person.

I've found methods of artificially simulating the social processes (to best of ability) but even if it appeared to work from a cursory examination (that person remained in contact in some generally positive way), it didn't really, because there was a lack of something genuine but undefinable (for me) in the formation and thus the underlying foundation of that new friendship. Instead I've merely found an acquaintance.

But that's probably my own biases as much as anything, I form very few friendships, preferring to go for quality over quantity (as I perceive those factors - quantity is also a quality too, of course!), and can be awful in my treatment of friends in my intolerance of dishonesty, which is a completely unreasonable and unsociable attitude for me to have, making me a pretty intolerant and thus unpleasant person, in person. I'm sure this also comes across in my writing to a lesser degree.

I've rejected long-time real friends over what looks like an individual, sometimes apparently minor incident of being lied to by them, which after knowing someone for a decade maybe and more important considering them a real friend rather than a pleasant acquaintance, is extremely intolerant of me. Even though I can rationalise that lie, and understand why they felt they couldn't be honest, and appreciate they just did what most people would do, and often because they fear damaging the friendship or upsetting me (i.e. best of motives on their part), I can't escape the fact I will never trust them completely again. I can't help it, I don't see them as a bad person as such, more that they are no longer completely trustworthy (hence my labelling myself as intolerant: because perfection is an ideal abstraction, not reality).

So I know full well I'm the unreasonable and unsociable and unfriendly one of the two ('fault' or 'blame' doesn't really come into this)... I'm the one at fault, I'm the one who should be forgiving them and blaming myself, but even if I do, that trust was so long and hard gained, and meant so much in a world of mistrust, the breaking of it is a fundamental damage to the relationship due to my dysfunction, but I can't imagine being any other way and am very much unsure I want to be now.

So, to get to a long-winded point, I've ended up, for better or worse, preferring to avoid the majority of encounters because I've become biased to thinking they are all mostly negative even though I'm cutting my nose off to spite my face, or so it would appear.

I've also learned to be very reactive (or have always been so anyway?) rather than proactive, because I've learned that the first few seconds of a new interaction with someone when (allistics at least) tend to form their overall opinion of someone, if they genuinely like me (no other motive to be involved with me, plenty others to engage with, they tick the first box of a possible future friend, but more to the point, if they don't immediately cotton to me, the chances they will in future appear to be very low indeed. If they do seem to want to engage, for the pleasure of it rather than ulterior motive, I get the impression they are able (intuitively or not) to not fixate or trigger on my 'weirdness' or even enjoy the variety maybe?

Either way, they seem to have a rare foundation that a real friendship could build on. Rare but satisfying on those uncommon occasions, and maybe has lead to more unusual friends with more interesting and outlying attitudes and ideas, and maybe more longevity to that friendship? (or at least one of the factors allowing that).

 

[thejuice]

Sometimes is very painful to 'socialize', thats not healthy. People were made to interact with others.
I think i heard lots of autistics who don't want to deal with people much anymore, that can only hurt your 'socializing skills' even more. But i get why.

I've had a personal experiment of not interacting with anyone for 10 years now. In hindsight I would say, keeping one foot in and one foot out of society is the ideal solution. Not everyone has that luxury though. Some are forced to interact full time, others cannot stand NT society at all.

. I'm slowly re-engaging, as I have enough data from a life in and a life out to be able to come up with a prediction of how my life will end up with each path I choose.

 

[thejuice]

In fact it fits in with the brains exceptional predictive abilities, seeing an alternative future through proactive change), but it needs to be kept in perspective to prevent it becoming a toxic factor that diminishes one's life instead.

I know what you mean but wishing you weren't autistic is an impossible dream, seems to fit in with the toxic factor you described. Unless keeping it in perspective means 'masking' better. . I understand such frustrations and personaly don't mind the venting about such things. Sometimes I enjoy reading others frustrations as I have the same.