Throughout my life, I've always felt that other people were incredibly irrational and unethical. I felt like a completely different species, in a way. This is an interesting dynamic, since in a way spectrum individuals are that different from the average person, and the result is that there is a mutual bewilderment about each other. We have an impossible time trying to imagine that someone can be so enormously different than ourselves.
This may well be the best card to have up your sleeve in those types of conversations with people in your life that you want to involve in knowing the real you. That though it may be difficult to understand, we are very different to the core, and that this isn't a bad thing. Then follow it up with 'the discovery criteria for aspie' as a way to illustrate all the great positive elements.
I was realizing today with these thoughts, that though I've sensed being different throughout life, I based it on will. That's where I was missing some of the big picture. I felt I was choosing to be different from others, with their self-oblivious non-identities. I felt I was living the examined life.. In a way, I was, but I've so far transcended the micro-focus on components of myself with this new perspective and access to network of people so much more similar to me than I ever felt another person could be.
I was realizing today with these thoughts, that though I've sensed being different throughout life, I based it on will. That's where I was missing some of the big picture. I felt I was choosing to be different from others, with their self-oblivious non-identities. I felt I was living the examined life.. In a way, I was, but I've so far transcended the micro-focus on components of myself with this new perspective and access to network of people so much more similar to me than I ever felt another person could be.
"[It's] not wrong to like being by yourself... I think the main treatment is self-understanding and self-acceptance... You don't suffer from asperger's, you suffer from other people." - Dr. Tony Attwood, Autism Spectrum expert
I think I've fully assembled the pieces of myself and reached the starting point on the path to self-understanding and self-acceptance. I realized that the reason I've coped quite well so far is because of my literal obtuseness. I rejected the idea of attempting to fit in or be accepted by conventional society from VERY early. In kindergarten I refused to do the projects assigned and demanded to make my own versions my own way. I always felt boxed in and minimized. This compounded in high school years when I felt like I was just being put on an assembly line on the path to being a work-drone for the bureaucracy...
My resilience was my protective layer of shutting out the criticism of others. Although I recognize now the disadvantages of shunning social thinking through these stages of development, it was also my only resilience. I really was suffering merely from other people, as Attwood put it. I simply didn't allow the fact that I was different to weaken any of my resolve to follow what I wanted to do and be. I felt I was walking my own path due to my own strength of will. My rebellion was to do what felt valuable for myself, in spite of all the discouragement and hassle that came to me from everyone in my life. But up till now, I never properly gave myself genuine permission to be different and to understand and harness the vastness of the talents of my mind.
