Reader Benoni left the following questions:

I hope you don’t a mind a very personal question about autism, but could you give some advice about coping with the negative aspects of asperger’s syndrome? I’m a very recent diagnosis, was told by my psychologist two weeks ago. From most of what I’ve read about asperger’s syndrome, aspies in general object to the idea of an “autism cure” because they feel autism is part of what makes them who they are. But I feel like if I had the option of “curing” my autism, I’d go for it.

I’ve had people difficulties my entire life, and I know I feel isolated socially but can’t open new social boundaries because I cope those kinds of situations at all, which utterly ruins my confidence. I feel trapped by it. Now that I have a name for my problems, I feel especially anxious to get rid of them. Is this normal for newly diagnosed aspies? Will I naturally learn to accept it, or is it something I’ll have to work towards? I hope none of this offends you, but I’m kinda desperate for advice.

First of all, I wanted to address the issue of the diagnosis. I believe that the diagnosis only makes sense if you feel that it enhances your life in a positive way. I know several people who were diagnosed with autism but they decided to forget they ever were because they didn’t feel it helped them to refer to their way of being with this term. I support them completely because it’s their business how to refer to their way of being. For me, the diagnosis was a very happy event because it came quite late in life (I was 30) and I’d been convinced for all those years that something was deeply wrong with me and I had to conceal what I was really like from everybody. The realization that there were many people who experienced reality in a similar way, people who I could talk to and share my experiences, and that there was a scientifically recognized term for who I am was an enormous relief.

I’m one of those people who’d never want to be “cured”, but I completely understand those who do. We only have one life, and it’s nobody’s business what we find helpful or unhelpful in that one life. People are different and if you perceive this as something negative, something you want to get rid of, that’s completely normal and there is no reason to beat yourself up about this.

Now, the really good news about Asperger’s is that it gets better with time. When you are in your teens, it’s a curse. When you are in your twenties, it’s a burden. But as you get older, it becomes something that starts to work to your advantage.

The not so good news is that you will have to find a way to manage the negative aspects of Asperger’s and then continue to manage them constantly. This is not as bad as it sounds because once you get into the habit, it gets easier. I suggest making a list of the negative aspects (don’t you dig making lists?) and then look at them and see how you can manage them. Everybody manifests differently, so I won’t try to guess what your negative aspects are. I’ll just provide my own list and how I managed the points on it.

Since this isn’t necessarily of interest to everybody, I will place the rest of the post under the break.

Continue reading “How to Deal With the Negative Aspects of Asperger’s?” →

Seriously, folks, who comes up with this shit?

Men under stress find overweight and obese women to be more attractive than do guys in a relaxed state of mind, new research finds.

The findings complement previous studies that have shown when resources are scarce, people prefer heavier partners, presumably because fatness is a sign that the person has access to food and is healthy. In women, for example, being underweight can make it more difficult to get and stay pregnant.

I don’t mind accepting that all these men who pester me for dates do it only because they are hugely stressed but the article makes no sense on any level. Even a child knows, I believe, that being underweight and being overweight are equally problematic for conception and pregnancy. And do people really associate being fat with being healthy? If so, it must be their utter stupidity that leads them to experience all this stress.

This kind of inane “research” annoys me more than words can express. There is so much that is wrong with this “study” that I wonder who employs these pseudo-scientists and why it even makes sense to keep them on the payroll. The entire premise behind it is obviously based on the researchers’ unhealthy bias. “Why on Earth would anybody want to have anything to do with these disgusting fatties?” they probably asked themselves. “There must be something deeply wrong with such people. Now let’s go and prove that they must be psychologically damaged in some way.”

It’s mind-boggling how often people sell their own intellectual limitations as some sort of a scientific breakthrough.

I have very brilliant readers and commenters. Here is how one of them, musteryou, has explained the nature of trolldom with one concise and beautiful definition:

The structure of a troll’s consciousness is the same as that of a sado-masochist. He lacks access to emotion, so he tries to get others to exude it for him, so that he can feel emotion. This is a dependency structure.

I think this is absolutely spot-on. Trolls’ emotions are blocked, so they try to provoke others to feel anger, frustration, annoyance – anything, in short – on their account in order to experience at least some form of emotional life.

When I think about the trolls I’ve had stalk my blog, I recognize that all of them seemed to beg for an emotional response like their life depended on it. They also had a variety of tricks at their disposal that never varied from one troll to another. And they all figured out very soon what would bug their interlocutor the most. For me, for example, the most annoying thing in the world is when people repeat the same thing like brain-damaged parrots. It’s actually very traumatic for reasons I don;t want to go into right now. So my trolls would soon slip into the broken-record mode.

For the longest time, I was sure that the trolls are socially inept and simply have no idea how to communicate productively. For obvious reasons, I feel very compassionate towards people with poor communication skills, so I tried helping the trolls to be better communicators. After musteryou’s explanation, however, I realize that this is a very conscious strategy on the part of the trolls.

When are people are going to get tired of saccharine puns already? They are stupid and common, so let’s just stop with the puns.

I just got an invitation to a “cupcake fundraiser” called “Baking a Difference.” Can you get more annoyingly precious than that? Besides, it sounds like a person with a sinus infection is trying to say the word “making.”