Question

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

It's been suggested that multiplicity might be more common in people with/whose body has Aspergers' syndrome or autism, and I'm rather curious how well that holds up.

Do you or anyone in your system have Aspergers' syndrome or autism? If so, is it a system-wide thing, or particular to a certain person or group?


We have Aspergers' syndrome, and it appears to affect everyone in our system to some extent. (None of us is all that good at understanding social situations or reading body language, for instance, and the lot of us have 'odd' interests.)

(Posted as a result of this entry.)

Comments

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... actually, that's an interesting observation. People 'born into the body' in our system actually do tend to be more stubborn about their limitations; I think that they bought the party line which was repeated to us so often, that we're 'being lazy and could really do it if you tried,' and 'capable of much more than you think you are.' (Regarding the latter one, we were about some things, but most of them were not the things others thought we should be able to do.)

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

Thought so. :) We can't actually remember a lot of times the "you're just lazy, try harder" thing was said to us, but in any case it got internalized; it's even been called "self-inflicted ABA" in here. Perhaps if you're a bit of a model student (like we were for a while - except that we never learned how to learn, so it couldn't stay that way very long) you don't need much "assistance" for buying all that **** about being (or seeming) successful, identifying with what you can do, etc.

We do remember the things people told us about the bullying: "You mustn't let it get to you", "Just ignore them", "You've got to be strong"... Which never convinced us that it would be effective to follow their advice; only that apparently most of the adults involved didn't care enough to bother, some of them blamed us, and those who did care had even less power to deal with the situation than we did (we had to be "strong", because they couldn't).

Hm. I guess maybe one thing overshadowed the other, in reality or in memory (or both).

(Regarding the latter one, we were about some things, but most of them were not the things others thought we should be able to do.)

*grin* Ain't it cool to find those?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Thought so. :) We can't actually remember a lot of times the "you're just lazy, try harder" thing was said to us, but in any case it got internalized; it's even been called "self-inflicted ABA" in here. Perhaps if you're a bit of a model student (like we were for a while - except that we never learned how to learn, so it couldn't stay that way very long) you don't need much "assistance" for buying all that **** about being (or seeming) successful, identifying with what you can do, etc.

I think we were identified as being lazy because we showed specific 'pockets' of high ability in certain subjects. People saw those and assumed we were some kind of super genius who could be brilliant at everything "if she just put her mind to it." Apparently having 'peaks and valleys' of ability is a common autistic thing, but many people around us saw the peaks as being representative of what we'd be able to do with everything if we would just buckle down and show some self-discipline. And if you can do some things very easily, you can get confused yourself when you hit something that overwhelms you and come to think that maybe you really aren't trying, especially if it's something that seems to come easily to everyone else around you.

We do remember the things people told us about the bullying: "You mustn't let it get to you", "Just ignore them", "You've got to be strong"... Which never convinced us that it would be effective to follow their advice; only that apparently most of the adults involved didn't care enough to bother, some of them blamed us, and those who did care had even less power to deal with the situation than we did (we had to be "strong", because they couldn't).

That was pretty much our experience too. The people who did actually care about us couldn't do anything about it; the school system actually encourages this kind of thing in a covert way, on the grounds that it will 'teach' children what is or is not socially acceptable behavior, and that children who act in an unusual way are 'inviting it.' The problem was that even when we turned into a meek compliant mute, the other kids still found things to harass us about, including the fact that we *stopped* talking to anyone. The best we could really do was to try to make a few friends so we didn't feel quite as lousy.

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

'peaks and valleys'

Huge factor in messing with expectations (other people's and your own). Another one: being able to learn something fine one way, but not another way. ("I thought I was good at languages/history/..., but I guess that was a mistake.") This problem isn't over for us yet; we have to be careful not to use the wrong methods for our self-education.

Plus, dammit, teachers who are supposed to understand about sensory processing problems but can't manage to talk at a speed that doesn't cause the sounds they produce to get all garbled and incomprehensible. [Um, this is turning into an "all the things that f***ed up my education" string of complaints, and we're going to stop this before the perseveration bug bites us (if it didn't do that already).]