I'm getting ****ing sick of asperger's syndrome. You go on the forums and most of these people are self-diagnosed and full of themselves. I've seen people who were bummed when their doctor revoked their diagnosis. They think a label alone makes them unique or different. They just don't value themselves.
I was diagnosed by a team consisting of a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a medical doctor. All of which were doctorates in their respective fields.
All of a sudden people with exceptional abilities or gifted intelligence with deep "unusual" interests accompanying social ineptitude are labeled defective. Missing something. All that is needed is to ****ing learn. Take it from someone who's received anonymous emails from my college for autism conferences because I'm practically a mute in class.
"Not everything that steps out of line--and thus is 'abnormal'--must necessarily be inferior" -- Hans Asperger.
These labels perpetuate the symptoms they describe. It's a dangerous slope. An excuse not to try changing. An excuse to give up, no matter how much you wish you could connect with others or how much you don't like making them so uncomfortable.
I've done a lot to change and I've come along way. A medical diagnosis isn't there to make you feel special, but to help you improve.
Reading up on the autism spectrum you'll find it reaches nearly the entire spectrum of humanity. Be weird, be quirky, whatever you do be your ****ing self.
Intense and narrow interests, sensory issues and mild impairments in the hand-to-eye coordination combined with (most importantly) a severe lack of social intuition doesn't describe the entire humanity.
Most autistics and aspergerians are in a place of cold comfort. Due to generally higher intelligence, they feel things more deeply, they remember pain more vividly, so change is scarier.
The inability to adapt to change (and thus a strict addiction to routines) is a combination of two things: A brain hardwired for systemizing and the fact that people with Asperger's can't increase their cortisol production due to stress.
One final note:
With a higher level of intelligence and creativity comes the enhanced ability to lie to yourself, and to others.
I can't lie convincingly and often I don't know when to tell a white lie and when to be honest. I've hurt people's feelings with my extreme bluntness, not knowing what I said wrong unless I've been confronted with it. Some people think this is cool, though--until I say something brutally honest that offends them.
