I have moderate asperger's Syndrome.
I have had it all of my life, so far.
It took decades for me to learn about what an Aspie is and how I am affected and how I affect others.
Being an Aspie is not a bad thing at all, ONCE you learn about it and how to live your life while understanding how different you are from others.
Those I find to be normal I call "normals", "the normals" of some other form to note normalcy compared to Aspies.
Everything I am and do is done by an Aspie and it took a whole heck of a lot of learning to understand the differences in me, compared to the normals I encounter daily.
I am a visual and emotional person, as all Aspies are, no matter to what degree they are dealing with.
Aspies are usually more intelligent than similar numbers of normals and Aspies can be confusing to normals as much as normals continue to confuse 'us'.
I am a very verbal person when I wish to be. The counter to that is that I, along with most other Aspies, do not easily or readily understand verbal instructions coming from normals.
Aspies can learn just about anything BUT NOT when we taught things merely through verbal transmissions.
Show and Aspie how to do something and when they have 'got it' they can usually verbally teach it to normals, but not other Aspies.
One of the biggest 'traumas' incurred between Aspies and normals is when a normal will attempt to instruct an Aspie with only verbal communication. Aspies SEE what normals are attempting to teach them and get quite confused by their own interpretation of what they SEE compared to what the normal is trying to convey.
Show and Aspie. Illustrate something to an Aspie. Draw out what you are trying to teach and Aspie, and we will 'get it' far better than just telling us AND it will lead away from on of the most troubling part of communications between a normal and an Aspie.
Since Aspies SEE, visualize and try to receive information so differently than normals, Aspies easily feel and get overloaded in attempts to translate what is stated to what Aspies can understand.
Aspies are usually hyper sensitive to EVERYTHING! No matter which sense is brought up, Aspies have a keener, more emotional, and greater offensiveness to incoming information, no matter what the source is.
"Too much input" is really a watch-phrase associated with Aspies.
When we feel overloaded, unrealized Aspies can only take in so much before they snap in some form.
Since every incoming sense or stimulus is hyper, we get overloaded more quickly than normals do.
Aspies must self-realize they are, in fact, Aspies. Nobody can 'tell' us we are. Nobody can use 'teach' us we are. Aspies must learn on their own that they are Aspies and only then can they adapt better to normals.
Aspies are usually 'wallflowers' at parties, for several reasons.
The first really huge reasons is that of constant over stimulation in the 'party' environment that Aspies get confused with. Too much noise, Too many people, The smells. The tastes. The overall considerations that 'we' can deal with what normals naturally deal with at most parties.
However, give us a stage at the party and we are off and running.
We don't interact very well with communications within groups of people. We are better off on a one-on-one situations, except for that stage thing.
Aspies SEE and FEEL everything and our memories are just as emotionally bases as is our visual memories of past events, people situations.
I can tell you exactly what I felt and viewed the instance 'Tish' entered my life. I remember what she was wearing, what I was doing at the time, who followed her in and what that person was doing.
'Tish' entered my life on the very first day of Kindergarten in September, 1960.
I can exactly reveal what I was doing and how I felt the instance I headed up the aisle and opened the lobby door and saw 'Susan' for the very first time.
Along with all visual memories, I remember the feeling of the first glance of my future wife, Lori I had, two years before we actually met. My visual, emotional, and thinking memories of our first real meeting are as fresh as memories I created, just yesterday. My first spoken words between Lori and I occurred in 1975.
Aspies do things like that. We remember feelings and thoughts and visuals for a very long time, should we choose to or should those types of memories simply remain far back in our minds.
This is both a good thing and a bad thing for Aspies. With 'Tish' I also remember the day I received a letter from one of her friends she was camping with. I mailed a letter to 'Tish' and found the reply not from her, but from someone else.
I remember when 'Susan' broke up with me and when Lori said she was done with our marriage.
Aspies have abilities to deal with the most positive and surely most negative moments in their lives and normals need to know this so they can interact better with Aspies they know and love.
Aspies don't appear to be "Type A" folks. This is illustrated by the fact that Aspies can be quite comfortable spending time completely alone. Sometimes normals confuse our ability to be alone as something like a rejection. It is not any rejection of anyone when an Aspie has a wonderful time just being alone and even doing absolutely nothing but pondering.
Rage is a real problem for Aspies. Until each Aspie self-learns what enrages them, only then can they alter their internal mechanisms to avoid or lessen the rages that always come up.
I feel the best an Aspie can learn is that there are real reasons we feel rage and there are many ways to learn how to control the rage that usually comes because of over stimulation.
Aspies, even though it might not seem so, are more sequentially-tasking than multi-tasking.
All through this blog are references to my inability to multi-task. On the other hand, when sequentially tasking, Aspies are about the best that can come around.
Multi-tasking in environmental, social and by other means goes directly against Aspies' hyper sensitivity and rage issues.
Normals can't really TEACH Aspies anything. Aspies must individually learn, on their own, what normals wish to teach them. This is also a region where rage and over stimulation become factors. Too many normals seem unable to understand that Aspies learn differently than they learn. Normals too, get frustrated with this.
It is up to the Aspie to teach the normal about the differences, once the Aspie learns that for himself or herself.
One of the best things to learn about Aspies is that they tend to see EVERYTHING as at least somewhat comical or humorous.
One example of Aspie humor that gives many of us glee revolves around the following innocent sentience: "I haven't seen her yet."
To most normals, the sentence is a statement that the talker has not seen the female, for a certain period of time.
To most Aspies, the sentence comes out as the talker has not seen a part of that a particular body part.
Because Aspies visualize EVERYTHING, we tend to confuse things at first. This is another reason why only-verbal instruction does not work well for Aspies.
Since 'we' see everything differently, we sometimes make comments that normals would never consider or regard. Aspies have a greater ability to translate into normal than normals are attempting to translate into Aspie.
Another recent case in point. In a recent Forbes magazine there appeared an article titles; "America's Fastest Roads"
Most normals would see the title and consider roadways that have fast vehicles racing along them.
To an Aspie who has knowledge of other facts, the title means to us something completely different.
I live on a peninsula where there is a .8 mile stretch of Palos Verdes Drive South that is in constant movement due to land slippage in the Portuguese Bend area.
In fact, that portion of the roadbed physically moves faster than any other road, roadway or roadbed in the Western Hemisphere.
So to me, and Aspie, "America's Fastest Road" is the .8 mile stretch of Palos Verdes Drive South and that is what I visualized when I read the title of the article and not anything about vehicles traveling over any road.
The vast majority of writers don't wish to understand that titles and other wording can be taken in very differently than they intended their words to reflect. This is also why so many Aspies find humor where normals just don't see it.
If I had the money to bet, I bet many of the funniest comics today and for so many yesterdays are or were Aspies. To other Aspies who have good self-knowledge about being an Aspie, we can see these folks particularly funny because we can follow their humor to other levels and almost know what they will say next.
Normals seem to marvel at the 'quick wit' they enjoy from many comics. Normals may not enjoy improvisation as Aspies do better with.
There is a true negative condition Aspies appear to have and it is something that does not look good at all or is taken well by normals.
Aspies appear to have a lack of compassion for events or happenings in the lives of others. It has been tested and demonstrated in brain function that Aspies tend to lack some ability to empathise towards conditions of others. We just don't have the brain connections many normals have with this issue.
It's not that we just don't care. Studies have shown that many Aspies don't have the ability to care about SOME things many normals care about.
This is probably an over stimulation issue that Aspies have. It is probably also the most negative thing Aspies 'suffer' that is so difficult for normals to understand.
Many Aspies also have difficulty feeling remorse and/or gratefulness and/or guilt.
It is likely that Aspies' somewhat lack of the ability to have or feel guilt that is one of the toughest things to deal with, with normals.
Our brains seem to 'not get' many feelings associated with guilt, remorse and/or empathy or sympathy. I'll use this as my one 'brain chemical' excuse, in this post.
In the end, Aspies need to self-learn about life as an Aspie. Aspies need to 'own' how they are different than what is considered 'normal' and that Aspies are not bad folks at all.
