Haven't seen this before

[conuly]

http://www.aspergerjourneys.com/2009/06/02/intense-world-syndrome/

I'm feeling inexplicably exhausted right now, so I'm not going to read it just yet, I'll do that later.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Otherwise, again, we would tell bipolar people that they are normal, and that they ought to experience everything in the same way that non-affected people do."

Actually, this happens all the time. And it happens to autistic people all the time as well. It was the constant refrain of my own youth, in fact: "you're no different from anybody else", except when I was hearing "you have such incredible potential". Never mind that these statements are contradictory, and both of them were discounting of my feelings and difficulties.

Dig this little factoid: because I've put in decades of perseverative effort, I can cope with every kind of stimulus an NT can cope with. I can drive in Seattle rush-hour traffic. I can run a chain-saw. I can attend a formal ball in a fancy dress, give a presentation to a room full of strangers in suits, keep a room full of 3-year-olds safe and happy all day, ride a Greyhound bus across country... to name just a few things that a lot of folk, autie or NT, don't cope with well. Whatever I have to do, I can do it - there is nothing I 'can't cope with'.

And along with that, I have the ability to read as fast as I can scroll; to copy-edit with machine-like speed and accuracy; to learn languages as efficiently as a person 1/5 my age; to hear frequencies far above and below the 'normal' range; to tell which string of which violin out of 20 is out of tune; to learn a poem or musical piece on one attempt and remember it for the rest of my life; to play any instrument I can get a clear tone from (i.e. anything but brass or reed) as soon as I pick it up; to scan a person and know what their health problems are at a glance; to run through forest at night without a flashlight; to move around my house almost as easily in pitch-dark as in daylight - including being able to locate any book (of about 800) on my bookshelves by touch; to recognize people by their footsteps alone; to assemble a complex electronic device correctly, without fail, every single time over hundreds of trials....

.... yes indeed, all those things and more are "integral to me", and, rather understandably, I would not want them taken away. Nor, I think, would any NT person who was lucky enough to have them. But no NT person ever will, because it's that very combination of hyper-perception, hyper-attention and hyper-memory that makes it all possible.

You find a rat who can do any of the things I can do, and then we'll examine the potential validity of the Rat Model of Autism.