Ever considered surrounding yourself with other aspies?

[Tigerlily]

:skeptical:Sometimes I wish I could have a commune or city where everyone had aspergers. Then all my friends and potential significant others could be aspie too. Would it be a relief? Would I have to unlearn some of the NT behavior I had forced myself to learn? Would there be less misunderstandings and problems, or just all new ones?

This post isn't me hating on NTs. I just wonder if others have thought of something like this and what they think it would be like.

 

[Spinning Compass]

My suspicion is that we would still have trouble getting along with each other; maybe even to a greater extent than with NT's. That's because of the nature of the problem. I have heard Aspergers described as being a form of mind-blindness. If that is so, many of us will not have the ability to be aware that problems are even cropping up due to our Asperger's. Whereas the Neurotypical does not have that problem.

I have difficulty getting along with Neurotypicals but I can at least pass. When I have been around fellow Aspies, or people that have similar issues, it seems all too often that I am the more "normal" of the two, and I feel held back by people who are not as high functioning. I find that frustrating because what happens next is that the Neurotypicals will happily let us two misfits be together and I have to go down to the other person's level, never up to mine. And I really do not know how to deal with that in a tactful way.

 

[IContainMultitudes]

I have difficulty getting along with Neurotypicals but I can at least pass. When I have been around fellow Aspies, or people that have similar issues, it seems all too often that I am the more "normal" of the two, and I feel held back by people who are not as high functioning. I find that frustrating because what happens next is that the Neurotypicals will happily let us two misfits be together and I have to go down to the other person's level, never up to mine. And I really do not know how to deal with that in a tactful way.

I worry about having that feeling if I ever have an opportunity to go to any kind of aspie gathering. In the relatively small town I live in, there's very little in the way of AS support other than a couple of support groups for parents of aspie children. I've looked up information about AS resources in a couple of nearby bigger cities (one of them is Austin, TX, a famously "weird" enclave in a conservative state), and there are some regular aspie meetups geared toward adults I would be interested in going to (particularly since they're intended to be social gatherings rather than support groups, and I think at least one or two that I read about have policies stating that they strongly prefer for people to come alone rather than for a parent or someone else to bring them). I would worry a little bit that if any NT people I knew who tolerated me knew that I went to something like that I could forget about ever being accepted as "normal" (I would worry about those attitudes even in more "tolerant," "liberal" places which, according to the psychiatrist who gave me my AS diagnosis, tend to be better places for aspies to live in than in more conservative areas).

 

[EricD]

Check out my post in Offtopic Discussions about our own planet, you'll love it! Seriously, though, Aspies are people, & people can get on people's nerves! We Aspires will have to learn to get along with each other, just like with NT's. We're all people, we're all equal.

 

[EricD]

I HATE SPELL-CHECKERS!!!!! I put a "r" where one isn't supposed to be!!!!

 

[EricD]

Does that constitute a digital meltdown?

 

[EricD]

It happened again! How do I turn it off?