Something about me
Hello guildmates,
You all know I always talk about my disability and I thought it might a good idea to describe a little bit what the Asperger's Syndrome really is about. Maybe a better understanding of this disability helps you and also me to better understand each other.
I would like to thank jolene for helping me with this
Asperger's Syndrome
What is it?
It is a developmental disorder related to autism but with a lower severity. People with autism are not able to be part of the common life,
people with Asperger are able to do so, they can study, get degrees etc. but still they are different than common people.
The most noticeable weaknesses are:
Weakness in any social interaction, communication, understanding of complex feelings, understanding of metaphors or weasel words, understanding of
others facial impressions and body language. Vise versa common people also do not understand their impressions and words.
They often focus on one thing to a degree which also makes other people look at them and wonder about it.
There can be two forms of this special interests.
a. repeating of things that are either senseless or useless (like special body moves, clapping hands after each sentence, repeating special words two time, etc.),
or
b. putting all focus into one thing that makes sense and is useful but to a degree that makes them "High Specialists" on something and sometimes they repeat their knowledge
or talk about it with no end, no matter if others are interested in it or not. They just cannot understand why others do not care or they are simply not able to feel that others are already
annoyed and most important, they cannot stop. e.g.: learning all about green apples and doing monologues about them and that on a daily basis.
Because of that other people think they are weird, idiots or just unfriendly, but that is never the case.
They are as intelligent as other people and they also want to be part of a social community.
Another special thing about Autism and Asperger is the so called Savant Syndrome. That is nothing you can learn on the university and it is not the same as just memorizing the telephone book, or
knowing all about green apples.
It is the ability to remember or calculate things that common people never would be able to, sometimes similar to a computer. People with high severe Autism have this more often than people with Asperger.
Savants can tell you what day of the week it was on the 12th of March 1267, or they can calculate difficult mathematic problems without a calculator within some seconds, or they have the ability to understand
things common people never would understand
One famous example:
Temple Grendin a female autistic professor in the US who understands cattle's like no one else in the world.
she got the US cattle farming societies to change everything regarding cattle farming during the last 20 years.
Her knowledge about cattle's is so big, that she is even able to interpret the sounds they are making and to tell the farmers that they are scared because the fence is painted in red colour.
And this is not a joke !!!
Often people with Asperger seems to be not interested in others only in their selves, but that is not what they feel inside.
Many of them have the desire to be with other people, but the weaknesses listed above makes this often a huge problem. People without any knowledge about this disorder fool them,
ignore them, bully them......
Often they have to learn what to say and how to react in special situations like common people memorize a poem, so they do not offend others.
The way they feel is often more simple than other people feelings. They know straight feelings like: Love, Hate, Fear and Anger.
But the more complex feelings common people have are hard to understand for them. e.g.: people start to cry because something beautiful happened. Those things normally can
not get along.
All in all it is a little bit like they are living on a different planet with very weird people and they try to be a part of it.
The more common people know about Asperger the easier it might be for both, the ones living on planet A and the ones that live on plant B to get along.
kind regards
Tehetlax