Is Autism a Disability? Or a Gift?

[Suzette]

@jleeb05, I think " better understood and accomodated" is exactly what Sam meant by "humanizing" autistic traits. To see autism for within the context of "normal human".

 

[Richelle-H]

I will make this short. I voted neither for the simple reason that all that has been good in my life has come from my Asperger's and the corollary is equally true. I have to say, at my age, that the good and bad are still on equal footing.

 

[dragonfire42]

Long post ahead

For me, in the society I’m forced to live in, my autism is nothing but a disability. I’m jealous of anyone who can claim otherwise about theirs. While a large part of how screwed up I am is due to comorbids, I cannot completely separate those from my autism. I would at least not have such severe depression and anxiety if I hadn’t spent my whole life being held to NT standards I could never hope to meet and being taught that my best is never good enough. And if I were not autistic, I would at least be able to live on my own and support myself, so I at least wouldn’t have to feel like a burden on anyone but myself, which is also where a lot of my depression comes from.

One could argue that technically my selective mutism and sensory processing disorder are separate things, but only nominally, because they are at the very least greatly amplified by my autism. And these things are a significant part of why I can’t be independent. Because of the selective mutism, I can’t perform any job that relies in any way upon verbal communication, because I’m not reliably capable of that (as in, either my vocal cords will not move no matter how hard I try, or I can’t form a coherent sentence at all). But because sometimes I talk just fine, nobody who’s spoken with me in person believes that and they insist that I just don’t want to talk (my dad even interrupted me mid-sentence when I was trying to explain it to him to say exactly that). And usually in public places such as stores, my sensory issues are bad enough that I’m partially or fully shut down within ten minutes. One of my most significant sensory issues is with getting wet, which makes showering or bathing a problem. And often I don’t really feel hungry enough to have any inclination to make something to eat even when I’m clearly weak and shaky because I haven’t eaten all day.

I don’t even really get any benefits from it to make up for any of this. I have no talents to speak of, and my special interests are all things like Pokemon, or one specific movie, nothing I can actually put to any use, besides as distractions. I used to have the stereotypical Aspie memory when I was younger, but I lost that at some point near the end of high school. Now, thanks to having severe depression for over a decade and the ECT I’ve had to try to treat it (without much success), I can even forget what’s on TV during a commercial break even if I’ve been paying attention to it.