June 2012
378 posts
I am so sick of this, I really am. All day, every day, I struggle to survive in a world where I never understand what anybody wants from me. I'm trying to improve my social skills, but my parents are constantly on my case to just "get over it" and "hurry it up already". And if I dare to criticize either one of them, they're suddenly furious and won't listen to me. And I know that I'll never be what they want me to be, but I don't care. I just don't want to be me anymore. I want it to end.
My parents are almost exactly the same. They seem to think that autism is just a phase and that I’ll get over it. The only advice I can give is that they do love you, they are just confused and have no clue as to what they should do. I think that they want to help you, but they get angry at you because everything they try fails because they are doing the wrong things.
Remember that this is exactly the situation I’m in; I have pretty severe Asperger’s often to the point where I find it hard to communicate with people. However since I spend most of my time with my family, that is, people I know very well, I am usually fairly neurotypical in my behaviour around them. This is one of the reasons that families often dispute autism diagnoses: they can’t stand to think that their little baby child (all parents think like this) who is so normal at home could be so neurologically atypical.
All I can say is that it is hard, mentally draining work to stay normal. You need to think of every rule of human behaviour and then some. I take the advice of just sucking it up, taking it and getting through it because it doesn’t last like that forever.
I was told as a child by one of the psychologists analyzing me that I had "autistic tendencies", but I don't think I ever got a real diagnosis. ASD is the only thing that makes sense in my case, so much of what I read applies to me, and explains a lot of the difficulty I've had in terms of socializing or even my emotional reactions to changes in my life.
It’s possible that you have an ASD, but it’s equally possible that you do just have autistic tendencies. There isn’t really a point at which you can definitively say, yes that is autism, since it’s a spectrum, and the diagnosis depends very much on the psychologist(s) analysing your file and your childhood. In some cases people who would have received an autism diagnosis in childhood receive an autistic tendencies diagnosis in adulthood. This has a lot to do with the genes that cause autism, and a geneticist friend of mine is currently working on the genes that cause autism spectrum disorders and how they’re affected by epigenetics.
do you think it's possible to have "autistic tendencies"? Because I can relate to this blog a lot, and I'm not autistic.
Many people who aren’t autistic still do relate because they have autistic tendencies. You can have autistic tendencies just like you can have OCD tendencies or depressive tendencies.
Seconding your recommendation of Eufloria. Some might find that it's one of those games that seems really lame when you're not the one playing it, but it's actually really cool. It's also worth noting that it and a demo are available on PSN.
Added a 'meme' tag to all the memes, so that you can browse through them quickly. Just click 'meme' on one of the memes and it'll take you right to the tab.
I believe the memes are all caught up (for now).
Thank you Anon(s) for your submissions! Keep them coming!
- Lucas
