Aspies For Freedom

There are so many other factors that are involved. Questions like this shouldn't even be asked.

As a 7 years old child I was really serious and barely interacted with my peers. Around that age I started to smile and discovered that other children treated me better, so I just kept smiling. Now I tend to overact it without intention. I just smile when i interact with people and they tend to say that I get along with everybody. And everybody says that I am very calm, quiet, easygoing, etc, etc.

My problem is that the whole chit chat is a mystery to me. And sometimes i don't know what to say.... Anyway, somehow it is very common that people bully me and I just let them be... It is a way to interact.

regarding Violence I can remember four times in my life when I have lost control and did bad things.

When I was in the kinder garden, i remember that a peer was bulling me and ruined my hair (my mom combed my hair everyday, and I was a very neat child) so I attacked him and made a fuss. It should have been very bad as the teacher was somewhat  afraid and couldnt understand how a child could have such a strong grudge against anyone.

Also mom tells me that once my older brother was bulling me and that some hours later I got so upset that i took him by the hair and pulled him through the living room. We where like five or so.

And when I was in highschool a friend* was bulling me hitting my head with his firnger while we where attending a class. After several "jokes" I got angered and told him to stop it. He wouldnt listen so at the end, after a lot of bothering from his part i lost my temper. I standed up. And watched him, I was so mad that just saw black and his face. But he got frightened and calmed down... So things settled down (thanks god, as I wasnt thinking, I just wanted to jump over him and beat him).

And that's it. I can not remember some other time when I went mad.
So I would say that I tend to be very calm. Very easy going and it is extremely difficult to upset me. But when i get upset, i lost control and may be dangerous. Although as this just has happened to me three/four times in all my life, i dont think I represent any danger to society.

Does anybody have any similar experiences?

(*friend: The people I hang out in school. Just that. It is very rare for me to invite anybody to my home)

^ I agree with you.

Those who actually take the time to read the article will realize that violence is not an Aspie characteristic.

I think that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard- autism causing violence- that's stupid!!!!! I know I have been violent but only when provoked. People have even punched me from behind, the cowards!

I guess I am an impaitient person and possible even very violent is because people who were much older and larger than me used to bully me when I was younger. Even other aspies did (but only the emo ones that were self centered and moaped and moaned constantly about being so different that they took it out on a nine year old girl).  Now, Iwasn't abused to a life thretening point, but you could imagine that this frustration is going to build up in me and because my elders would tell me to cage up my feelings rather than express them in a healthy way, I became a very angry child and the odd little murderous thought came to mind (however I never acted on it- I'm aloud to think, right?)

I don't think this has anything to do with autism- many children suffer from problems like this and I hear that childhood anger problems and depression are very common. I feel that the government needs to fund in an educational program that teaches people how to express their emotions in a healthy way and learn to understand and cope with their emotions (aspies aren't the only ones with these problems).

Also, I hear the boy was on anti-depressants- those can really *** up your mind, like seroxat.

We need to be the ones who manage our public image, not these sensationalist crap papers.  They print whatever headlines it takes to sell the most papers, and someone else gets to deal with the consequences.

In my junior year of high school, I visited the front office to get some paperwork in preparation for the PSAT.  While I was there, they brought in this guy who had just been stabbed, and laid him out on the floor moaning.  A few feet away, the principal was standing over the guy who stabbed him asking where the knife was.  I believe this was my school's only stabbing that year, but I had always heard that the rival school had stabbings every day.  This was in a pathetic little backwater school in a pathetic little redneck state, back in the 1980s.  School stabbings were nothing unusual back then, and I'm sure there's still one somewhere on any given day.  So why should the one in Massachussets be considered special?  Maybe it's unusual in some suburban school in the middle of Soccermomland.  They needed something to blame besides lame security, and unfortunately for us Asperger's was the first thing they could find.  I bet if it happened in the worst part of New York or Los Angeles, we'd have never heard of it.

So how do we manage our own image?  Get the local groups together.  (There's a forum elsewhere on this site for people looking for such groups.  Just go there and find one near you.)  The group can then look for community events where it can be useful.  (Maybe the event has some tedious detail-oriented task that no one else wants to do, fitting the advantages of AS.)  Keep doing stuff like that and eventually it will be noticed.

And my mother wonders why I resist her efforts to convince me to be a journalist... reporters have no souls.

"reporters have no souls. "

To be fair to a profession that is not always fair, newspaper reporters seldom write their own headlines, and it was the trashy headline that was most objectionable in this case.

Well... the ones working for News Corp don't.