Did you understand the concept of ASD at first?

[On the Inside]

Another early exposure to ASD (I was diagnosed a few years ago and I'm in my 40's) that both enlightened me and confused me: I was a HUGE fan of the Talking Heads when I was a teenager (I would say they were a special interest) and I read that early on they were called The Artistics, but due to David Byrnes wild whooping and weird onstage manner they were often called The Autistics by perplexed audience members. The more I delved into their music the more I identified with themand the less weird it seemed to me.

 

[Judge]

Autism itself baffled me for years. Then again I can't say I was all that inquisitive about finding out considering I really wasn't aware of anyone around me who might be on the spectrum. Learning about ASD came in chunks for me initially. Just a little at a time. But enough for me to absorb it at my own pace and keep plugging away at it.

There's so much to learn...it strikes me neither as a simple thing to understand let alone convey to others who may know even less. There's a definite learning curve involved. But I think the most beneficial learning tool for me was to interact with fellow Aspies. The process has often helped me see my own traits and behaviors through others.

 

[garnetflower13]

I first heard of autism when my little sister was diagnosed with it, back in the 60's. Then my younger brother was suspected of having it too. At the time I heard the word "autism" it was like a bell went off in my mind, and I felt a chord of recognition which puzzled me. Years later, I heard of Asperger's and again felt a strange sense of recognition. I wasn't officially diagnosed until my forties, though.

 

[schizoidaspie]

When I was in high school, I was really obsessed with psychology. However, whenever I read about autism (maybe it was listed as asperger's, can't remember) I would get really confused. I couldn't understand why it was listed as a disorder. It just seemed like they were describing a perfectly normal person to me.


Funnily enough, it never ever crossed my mind to think that maybe I was autistic and that's why it seemed perfectly normal. In fact I just blew it off as some 'made up' disorder or something.


Did you understand ASD when you first heard about it? It seems like for some people it clicks instantly, and for others not so much.

I was confused it described me good but schizophrenia also did I thought it was just about social difficulties but then I started researching it and I also had other quirks that threw me off but I had some of the quirks like super artistic ability,I would flap my hands jump up and down and spin when I was younger and was crying all at the same time I don't remember is I understood facial expressions or not my hygiene was really bad too

 

[Slade Wilson]

When I was a young boy, I asked my mum what on earth ASD was.
My mum said to me "it means that you think and do things differently to many people you will meet."
I still didn't understand what she meant by that.
I thought, what does mama mean, different? Isn't everyone different??
It took me years to figure out what it was and more importantly, where I fit into this spectrum thingy.

So true, "different? Isen`t everyone different ?" Love it ^^

My first time I heard about ASD ,more spesefic about autisme, it was related to boy at TV who was amazing to play piano , and I thought for my self, I want to be him, he is so gifted and everyone loves him
And the first time I heard about asperger ( before 2 weeks ago that its inn the autism spectrum) was that a boy had it who lived inn the apartment above me, they told me he love to watch cartons alone for hours and often the same over and over again. Dident relay think more about it,also I guessed he had some problem since it was a "label" since it had a name of what he was, to justified that he watched a lot of cartoons and liked to be alone.

 

[tree]

When I was 10 and saw the word "autistic" I thought it was the word "artistic."
Lost interest in the article when it wasn't.

Later in school I read that 'autistic children' became those terrible inhuman acting things that they became
because their mothers were cold and unfeeling, didn't treat them right.

Eventually Uta Frith translated some of H. Asperger's material, I read some books, took a screener and
realized that 'aspie' described me.

 

[Cyrano]

I understood about autism, there having been an autistic kid in special ed. a year behind me in high school. He was about as high functioning as Rain Man, but without the idiot savant aspect. Some cruel kids in my class compared me to him, which I found insulting. I knew that I was "different," but I wasn't anything like him. From my point of view, my situation was summed up by a line of Mr. Spock's from "Where No Man Has Gone Before:" I had as little in common with them as I would with a shipload of white mice.

I didn't read about Asperger's until MUCH later, in the late 1980s when diagnostic information was starting to circulate among mental health professionals. At that point, I began to suspect I might have it. I was formally diagnosed in 1993. It did not change a great deal about my life, but it was at least emotionally satisfying to understand I was not a freak but someone who had a recognized affliction.

 

[zylon]

I was introduced to the term "Asperger syndrome" as meaning anyone who has different instincts than typical people. This was certainly me. But then I realized that a condition cannot be defined by what it is not, only be what it is. And when the specifics of what Asperger IS started to come in, it lost me. I am profoundly different from both typical people and Aspergers! But, as there is no other category which fits me at all, Asperger is still my official default category.

 

[AsheSkyler]

In short, not explicitly.

My very first introduction to autism was also one of my first introductions to webcomics. I enjoyed her story, and on a rare occasion she'd mention her autism because it'd get triggered by things like the apartment building undergoing renovation because the landlord was too cheap to ever properly fix the waterlines until it required irritating every last resident. At the time, my own symptoms were starting to hit full swing and I was mostly comforted in the knowledge that at least one person out there understood how disruptive an abnormally chaotic environment can be, and that I wasn't the only artist at my skill level who could be so fixated on getting details right in a drawing. So for a while, I thought autism was what the more sensible people had.
She also laid the groundwork for me understanding Asperger's, because she called them "cousins of autism". It made sense to me, a few years later I got to know both an Aspie and autistic in person. The autistic was an extrovert, so that was hard to adjust to, but the introverted Aspie reminded me more of my online friend. Quite like the fellow, he made a lot of sense to me, especially his confusion with social behaviours. (And yet, I never got the clue I needed to examine myself!) That's probably why I never had much trouble when I read Asperger's had been adopted into the autism family officially.

It was very confusing later being presented with the low-functioning image of autism as somebody nonverbal who stared blankly ahead and maybe rocked a bit who never did anything in their life. It didn't fit with what I had already been exposed to and it was a few years later until I started doing my own research before I really started to understand the spectrum as more than just a couple of people who liked order and frankness, one of which had a huge sense of social justice.