Aspies For Freedom

When I first heard about AS and suspected that I may have it, I scoured the internet for more information. I came across this list which seems to have disappeared or been censored because it makes us look bad. When I first found this, I showed it to my boss and we both agreed that I exhibited all of them to some degree. I for one don't believe in sweeping the negative aspects of AS under a rug. I think it's much better to accept them and learn ways to work with and around them.

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Work Characteristics
Many of the manifestations found in the categories above can immediately translate into work behaviors or preferences. Here are some additional ones:
Difficulty with "teamwork"
Deliberate withholding of peak performance due to belief that one's best efforts may remain unrecognized, unrewarded, or appropriated by others
Intense pride in expertise or performance, often perceived by others as "flouting behavior"
Sarcasm, negativism, criticism
Difficulty in accepting compliments, often responding with quizzical or self-deprecatory language
Tendency to "lose it" during sensory overload, multitask demands, or when contradictory and confusing priorities have been set
Difficulty in starting project
Discomfort with competition, out of scale reactions to losing
Low motivation to perform tasks of no immediate personal interest
Oversight or forgetting of tasks without formal reminders such as lists or schedules
Great concern about order and appearance of personal work area
Slow performance
Perfectionism
Difficult with unstructured time
Reluctance to ask for help or seek comfort
Excessive questions
Low sensitivity to risks in the environment to self and/or others
Difficulty with writing and reports
Reliance on internal speech process to "talk" oneself through a task or procedure
Stress, frustration and anger reaction to interruptions
Difficulty in negotiating either in conflict situations or as a self-advocate
Very low level of assertiveness
Reluctance to accept positions of authority or supervision
Strong desire to coach or mentor newcomers
Difficulty in handling relationships with authority figures
Often viewed as vulnerable or less able to resist harassment and badgering by others
Punctual and conscientious
Avoids socializing, "hanging out," or small talk on and off the job

Some characteristics some bosses want in employees:

Great concern about order and appearance of personal work area
Perfectionism (ever heard of quality assurance)
Excessive questions
Reliance on internal speech process to "talk" oneself through a task or procedure (is the boss the "thought police" anyway?)
Strong desire to coach or mentor newcomers
Punctual and conscientious
Avoids socializing, "hanging out," or small talk on and off the job

quality assurance is about perfectionism to a certain standard. Conforms to a standard or not --and true, most people do not understand it.

Yeah perfectionism is meant as a negative trait here as in someone who nitpicks the details.

I'd call myself a perfectionist artist, because I sometimes fix alot on my drawings until I get the right expression from it. An adult artist said that perfectionism have nothing to do with art, but she went to art-school anyway so she probarbly have no idea.

(here in Norway people who come from art school often draw something which seem pretty absurd, once multiple artworks of birds consisting of four simple black lines, in different sizes)

The AS work characteristics listed above sound very much like me.

We certainly shouldn’t sweep the negative aspects of AS under a rug.

AS is the best and the worst part of me.

nyanchan Wrote:

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Deliberate withholding of peak performance due to belief that one's best efforts may remain unrecognized, unrewarded, or appropriated by others
Intense pride in expertise or performance, often perceived by others as "flouting behavior"

Arent these two contradictory?

I don't see any contradiction. I've done both things in the past. I used to think I was some kind of genius and would do things just to show off such as figuring out a complex program very quickly. Then telling everyone "I figured that out in 5 minutes. Why can't you?" or some other assholish thing like that. If the task didn't involve showing off to others, I would do it very slowy or worse very sloppily with lots of errors.

My husband often displays intense pride in work that he does in his own time, which could look to the untrained eye like showing off or attention-seeking, but the truth is that he just loves what he is doing and he loves succeeding at some task that he has set his mind to doing. It isn't showing off. Genuine showing off is not an autistic behaviour, because showing off is all about concern with one's social status and concern with what others think about you. Aspies generally aren't like that at all.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if my husband or other aspies don't perform at their own personal best in workplace situations. Most managers and work settings have the effect of ruining any pleasure that an aspie might gain from their work, so I find that we often keep the things that we are best a doing as hobbies to be enjoyed in our own time, and look for jobs that are the minumum fuss for the maximum pay. Why are we in any way obliged to give every talent that we have to employers?

Haven't you ever had that "I'll show you!" attitude after being dismissed as inept or some sort of idiot just because you act differently? That's what I mean by showing off. Apies may not care about social status but most of us don't want to be seen as stupid, at least I don't. I used to do things to prove the opposite but now I don't really care.

I usually tried to keep a sense of detachment from office politics and personal stuff at work, and in any case, being stuck in the casual ghetto for most of my working years, I usually wasn't around long enough to get personally involved with conflicts or rivalries.

theosoph Wrote:

When I first found this, I showed it to my boss and we both agreed that I exhibited all of them to some degree. I for one don't believe in sweeping the negative aspects of AS under a rug. I think it's much better to accept them and learn ways to work with and around them.

I agree, after all *everyone* has good and bad qualities, and giving employers an idea of what can be done to allow the good ones to shine and avoid the bad ones (by adapting the work structure etc.) is better than not doing anything about it Smile

I've highlighted some in bold that I feel apply to me & commented on others in italics.

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Difficulty with "teamwork"
Deliberate withholding of peak performance
But not this: "due to belief that one's best efforts may remain unrecognized, unrewarded, or appropriated by others"

I don't understand how one would decide that WITHHOLDING peak performance would do anything to improve recognition of one's skills/efforts? If you pretend to be crap at something then of course people are not going to recognise that you're actually rather good! Or have I misunderstood this explanation?

Intense pride in expertise or performance, often perceived by others as "flouting behavior"
Sarcasm, negativism, criticism

For both of these tbh I don't talk enough at work to exhibit these

Difficulty in accepting compliments, often responding with quizzical or self-deprecatory language

Partly because I don't see the point, partly because I don't particularly enjoy the attention. I do however like to have my work and abilities acknowledged now and then

Tendency to "lose it" during sensory overload, multitask demands, or when contradictory and confusing priorities have been set

I don't flip or scream etc. but I tend to freeze and develop some nervous tics or just tell people [by email, since most of my work is given to me that way] to wait because I'm busy.

Difficulty in starting project

Definitely, very much so. I have to get my brain 'hooked into' a project or else I cannot start. And sometimes in the middle of a project I have to do something else because I just CAN'T get into it at the moment. Thankfully I have a lot of different little bits to do at work so this is usually not a problem.

Discomfort with competition, out of scale reactions to losing
Usually because it involves more communication & also because it means unknown factors/change

Low motivation to perform tasks of no immediate personal interest

Oversight or forgetting of tasks without formal reminders such as lists or schedules

Another biggie... sometimes I get onto something straight away but if I don't, I need a reminder. I have a free program called Phatsoft TMR that is brilliant for this. http://www.phatsoft.net/format.php?page=...xsl&id=TMR

Great concern about order and appearance of personal work area
Not as such, or rather nobody touches my desk so it's not a problem

Slow performance
Perfectionism

I do sometimes perform very slowly because I get lost in details, but a lot of the time it's the only way I can work. Plus it means I know the project inside out by the end of it.

Difficult with unstructured time
Reluctance to ask for help or seek comfort
Excessive questions
Low sensitivity to risks in the environment to self and/or others

Difficulty with writing and reports
Not writing as such but find it really hard to report on things I am working on. I either work, or I write, but not both.

Reliance on internal speech process to "talk" oneself through a task or procedure
I mostly don't think verbally but I don't see what is wrong with doing so in situations where it helps?

Stress, frustration and anger reaction to interruptions

Difficulty in negotiating either in conflict situations or as a self-advocate
Very low level of assertiveness
Reluctance to accept positions of authority or supervision Strong desire to coach or mentor newcomers
Difficulty in handling relationships with authority figures
Often viewed as vulnerable or less able to resist harassment and badgering by others
Punctual and conscientious
Avoids socializing, "hanging out," or small talk on and off the job

Lili Marlene Wrote:

Most managers and work settings have the effect of ruining any pleasure that an aspie might gain from their work

We used to have this manager who used to "make quotation marks in the air" whenever he used jargon. He used to pop up behind people's desks and quiz them about what they were working on. He had no clue what anyone did, and kept everyone from doing their job!

My manager now lives in China, while I live in her house. That arrangement works pretty well for me Cool

Noetic's signature ""While not clumsy, she does tend to walk into things" [My neurological report]"

One of my kids is like this. I think there are actually two different kinds of clumsiness, poor motor coordination causing things such as untidy handwriting, and poor spatial-body awareness, in which one has a poor sense of their own body's place in space, causing a person to walk into things or to unwittingly invade the personal space of others. I think the latter kind may be more common in AS than the former type of clumsiness. You can have one but not the other. Most people and even some clinicians don't seem to understand these two different types of clumsiness, they seem to assume that all genuinely clumsy people will have bad handwriting or be unable to throw a ball. Not so. The thing that I find interesting about the poor body-spatial awareness is that it can be found in people who are gifted in other forms of spatial reasoning, suggesting that the function of one part of the brain may have "stolen" brain area from an adjacent part of the brain that has a similar spatial function.

Lili Marlene Wrote:

Noetic's signature ""While not clumsy, she does tend to walk into things" [My neurological report]"

Until I switched display of signatures on, I hadn't even realised that when I originally added this signature I wrote "TALK into things" Shy

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One of my kids is like this. I think there are actually two different kinds of clumsiness, poor motor coordination causing things such as untidy handwriting, and poor spatial-body awareness, in which one has a poor sense of their own body's place in space, causing a person to walk into things or to unwittingly invade the personal space of others. I think the latter kind may be more common in AS than the former type of clumsiness. You can have one but not the other. Most people and even some clinicians don't seem to understand these two different types of clumsiness, they seem to assume that all genuinely clumsy people will have bad handwriting or be unable to throw a ball. Not so.

Some very interesting points there, I have come to similar conclusions myself. My coordination is fine 'inside myself' (e.g. dance steps etc.) aside from movement issues (mostly my fingers, I have to concentrate quite hard to make them pick stuff up and not drop the wrong thing etc.), I've never had the "not being able to tell left from right" problem because I 'feel' left and right in relation to my body.

My handwriting is messy and chaotic but not in a motor skill problem way, more that I don't always pay attention, start in the wrong place and the style and neatness fluctuates a lot depending on how well I am and how tired etc.

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The thing that I find interesting about the poor body-spatial awareness is that it can be found in people who are gifted in other forms of spatial reasoning, suggesting that the function of one part of the brain may have "stolen" brain area from an adjacent part of the brain that has a similar spatial function.

That's very interesting, because every IQ test I take says spatial reasoning is my strongest skill and I am a *very* strongly spatial thinker with an exceptional sense of direction (although I do sometimes get the scale wrong when I am getting used to translating a map to 'the real world').

I've been meaning to look into this for a while, because the 'stolen' brain area is a very valid suggestion (I had similar theories about how what others usually use for social skills and emotional mindreading seems for me to be used in language processing and reading, e.g. it's more unconscious than with most people and I do not always understand it consciously, but it comes to me naturally, just like social skills and 'mind reading' comes to NTs).

Thanks for bringing this up Lili Marlene, I have made a note to do a bit of sleuthing on Google about clumsiness, spatial awareness and which areas of the brain are responsible for what Smile

I think Roger Meyer copied that list. I originally found it on Jypsy's website which is now defunct.

http://www.isn.net/~jypsy/

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