The challenges of aspergers

For those of you who may not know, aspergers is a form of autism. It is a mild form, but it has its challenges, too.

I am speaking in somewhat broad terms in this post. I don't want to bring too much attention to my personal experience. I may later in a future post once I get more comfortable. But here are some of the things that aspies go through.

Aspergers can be a difficult thing to live with. Yes people see our creativity and our intelligence, but they do not see the inside, the true struggles we go through on a daily basis.

A word I will use quite frequently here is NT. This stands for neurotypical, or someone whose brain and processing works normally.

Aspergers can be wonderful. We tend to be very smart, I enjoyed reading the dictionary and tech manuals as a child. That was my pleasure reading. We learn very quickly if something interests us, and we can often speak in ways that aren't appropriate for our age, such as a 6 year old using a word such as "acquiesce" or trying to bery precise when identifying something. We can also tend to do advanced things for our age, and often are not interested in games of pretend. I know I didn't enjoy pretending unless the pretending went the way I wished it to go. If it was unpredictable, I did not enjoy it.

We are socially awkward. This means that we do not always understand what nt's consider "rude," or inappropriate. We can be inappropriate sometimes, but we don't realize this unless we are told as such. For me at least, when I am told something is inappropriate, if I am not told in a way that sounds at least somewhat nice, I feel hurt.

Sometimes we have no filter. This means that we tend to say things in a very frank manner, not realizing that we may have said something too honestly. Aspies are very honest. If you don't want to know the honest answer to a question, an aspie is not the best person to ask. We will be frank as anything...and sometimes it can be bothersome.

Every aspie is different, but most of us forget social pleasantries like, "how are you?" and sometimes some forget to thank someone for things, especially if it excites us.

We express emotions in a very different way to nt's as well. Sometimes our minds get overwhelmed and our processing literally shuts down. This can result in either an explosion of emotion, ora complete shutdown; this means we do not talk, we are mute for that time, and it takes awhile to calm us. A lot of aspies to calm down need to hide in a soft blanket, and stimming helps me.

Everybody taps their pen or their foot sometimes. That is a form of stimming. But for an aspie, stimming is more than that. We stim when we are overwhelmed. Some of us stim when we are happy, anything that feels strong for us, we will stim to calm ourselves. Stimming for me involves playing with small toys like magnets, fidget spinners, anything that has movable parts. It also involves touching soft fabrics, and sometimes there is vocal stimming. Vocal stimming is where we may make sounds to express ourselves.

Aspies have a lot of trouble communicating their feelings. We can communicate very well in most ways, but emotions are very difficult for us. We don't often become verbose when trying to communicate our feelings, but yet can be very verbose when we discuss a special interest.

Special interests for an aspie are everything. They can be anything from music, to computers, to trains, to planes, anything that stimulates our mind. Some have trouble in school because the topics literally do not interest us. If a topic does not interest us, our brains will not pick it up. It will just run right through if we do not feel the stimulation is intelectual enough.

Also, speaking of literally, we think in literal terms. . When you speak to an aspie, say what you mean. Try not to use too many idioms, or figures of speech, because will interpret them in a literal sense. like when someone says something is "going to the dogs," I picture something being given to a pack of dogs. Or if you say something like "you're a bull in a China shop," I picture someone turning into a bull and running around a China shop knocking things over.

Some of the social oddities can be worked on. But the literal thinking, overloads, processing difficulties and stuff are just the way of an aspie.

So in closing, we may be very creative and intelligent, but we live with difficulties that nt's do not have. They understand social cues, emotional expresssions and things. We do not.