Do you feel like a different kind of human being?[/size]

To start this off, I feel different than neurotypical human beings.  We know we are.  If it is so hard for us to interact with employers that they hire less qualified NTs instead, if it is so hard for an AS to marry an NT that people write books about it, can there be some truth to the notion that we are a slightly different variety of homo sapiens?  Why do some of us feel like Spock or Data?  Speak Klingon?

Don't get me wrong.  I think now the time for Aspies has come.  Post industrial society means math, science, and computers.  These mean Asperger, at least for the maybe 10% or more of AS who have special gifts.  

<i>As you are so fond of observing, Doctor, I am not human.</i>

They need us and we have no choice but to live amongst them.  But do our differences mean that we have severe difficulty interacting, at work and in love?

And what about us Christians?  There is no Jew or Greek, no man or woman, no free or slave in the kingdom of God.  Is there Asperger or autistic and neurotypical?  If not, does the evidence show that Christians across the divide interact better than non-believers do?  My heart was encouraged in 1993 when I became a Christian and broken between 2002 and 2005 when a manager at a Washington DC Christian singles group cited Asperger as a likely reason for attracting minimal attention.  I felt like the stinking F-117 stealth fighter in there!

I feel different, but I don't feel any less human. In fact, since I spend so much of my spare time studying animal psychology, I've come to realize that most humans behave think and act exactly like the rest of the higher mammals do, and for the same reasons. I can't understand why some people insist that humans are so "different" from other animals (perhaps they just never studied them closely).

"most humans behave think and act"

That doesn't make sense. My brain must have gotten ahead of my fingers again.

Yes I do @ both questions. But I guess this applies to nearly all human beings, no?

Men, women, old, young, black, white, yellow, NT, AS, whatever...

And in general head, body, arms, legs, whatever...

We are a just recently labeled minority, but this will change.

I wouldn't know what it's like to feel like anything or anyone other than myself. What a strange question, how is one meant to answer this?

Sometimes I feel like a child trapped in an adult's body, but that is still feeling human.

Sometimes I feel more complete than others because I know exactly who I am, always. I don't need to define myself by my relationships or my job/school or where I live or anything except what goes on in my head. I don't think many NTs could say that of themselves; if they ever do get to that point of self-knowledge and not giving a *** what other people think...ness..., it takes them many, many years.

Sometimes I feel less complete than others because I know that there are dimensions and subtlties to their conversations, their relationships, that I'll never be able to percieve or understand. I wonder if I'm more like a wild animal (albeit an intelligent, aware one) than a normal human being. But I can usually accept this. I know I have sensory experiences that most people don't have and don't understand, and I don't look down on them for that. It's just different.

I feel different.  Less human at times, when the people around me get emotional about something and I don't.  More human, when I feel more strongly about something than the people around me.  Maybe that's part of it - usually when I feel something powerful or overwhelming, I'm feeling it alone.  I don't seek out others to share it with.

Overall, I feel like an outsider, someone observing human beings and trying to mimic them.  Unsuccessfully, most of the time.

<hugs>

Athie

You know, sometimes I wonder whether NTs "sharing" these emotions isn't a way to subconsciously try and "pass on the burden", or lessen the impact for the individual. Perhaps we are just more sensitive to the loss of experience/emotion when having to share these things?

I am different. I am human. I am animal. I am proud of all three!!

Drats... yet another Thread that I just must address!

Humanely speaking, my humaneness towards humans is an example of how humane I can be; Must I become one?

Seriously, this human feels very alone among Humanity, well, at least until I jump onto AFF or  WP, where there is quite a "serious-playpen" full humanoids seemingly just like myself, where I feel, not alone...

And hey! It is inhumane for you all to keep me up so late...  

Mush be time for bed, I hear aardvarks barking outside...

This human needs some sleep...

Regards, Beammeup

That is just what I meant, Beammeup.

We are outnumbered 70 to 1 by people without the autistic spectrum.  I have a gut feeling that tells me people without any neurological differences from the majority, are in the- majority.  But I don't have prevalence statistics for the long laundry list of neurological conditions, and even if I did, they are probably to some extent co-morbid (multiple conditions per person).  

Being outnumbered 70 to 1 means it is their planet, or rather, their society.  Generally, Aspergers are foreigners in every country on Earth.  (My adviser in grad school called me Foreigner, because most of Marshall University's grad students in sociology came from four adjacent WV and one adjacent OH county (on the west side of WV) and I came from between Hagerstown MD and Winchester VA in a county on the east side of WV in the "eastern panhandle".  WV had only two grad schools in 1993.)

Yes, it does pose problems searching for a job.  There is a very strong tendency to want to interact with ones like oneself.  Some can go outside the box but most (in my experience) can't or won't.  Translation: even if you have an education, skill, or ability advantage over an NT candidate (maybe even an experience advantage), the NT still gets hired, because it is easier than trying to interact with us.

But it is my "final frontier" that bothers me a little: hoping that some woman will "go where no one has gone before."

I am increasingly learning that neurology makes a difference in close relationships.  Anecdotally, the three steadies I have had, two were bipolar, kind of cousin to Asperger, at least it is on the neurological laundry list.  All three seem to be only daughters, one raised by a grandparent, another adopted, two on SSI.  

I have been saved for 14 years, but in a Christian singles fellowship, I attracted the attention of perhaps three women out of an eventual total male-female enrollment in the hundreds.  

I became a Christian because the Holy Spirit could make Christians genuinely love me as a person made in the image of God despite six months of pre-Christian religious hostility.  

I wondered where the Holy Spirit was when I needed Him in the singles group.

The manager herself cited Asperger as the problem.  My best friend thinks it is my weight, but not everybody has a problem with figures.  I do not.  I did not date the last time for her size.  I was hoping to discover a wonderful mind, but I did not.

Well, granted, my eternal destiny is more important than whether or not I share a few decades with a woman.

It almost seems as though there is some kind of neurological radar going on between male and female singles.  We are not on the NT radar, it seems.

I think the NTs think (maybe even correctly) that NTs cannot have good loves with AS.  When it does work, it seems to make headlines: Amazon has a book about one such marriage.  

But, in summary.  We are a slightly different kind of Cro Magnon, one with distinct abilities in math, science, engineering, and/or computers.  Maybe even foreign language too, I was, I had six courses in Spanish and Latin in high school and straight As in the Latin.  

Yes, we have deficits in the kind of social situational awareness that neurology seems to play a role in.  If anyone can clarify the neurology of social interaction please tell me.  But in the 21st century, America is a post-industrial society, and that means applied science and an increasing reliance on computers.

Our time has come, and the NTs need to know that they need to hire us.  Even if that means they need to learn to meet us in the middle.

It's hard to answer as i don't know how other people think, maybe they have the same doubts and securities and they have more strength or self belief to over come them?

Untill I came on here I never knew anyone who thought like I did or saw what made "sense" to me also did to them.

I've always felt different from other people, and I could never really understand why. Maybe it has to do with being gay, being an aspie, or just being eccentric, or some combination of those. I don't know.