Hello readers. I have written many pieces relating to my social experiences recently but I am going to collaborate and clarify my experiences in social environment. The two factors that influences my social life are - my hearing loss which affects my hearing on listening people's speeches and clarity; mild case of ASD which influences on my social skills, body language and understanding people's boundaries and rules. Both factors comes together, becomes more difficult than I thought. Finding someone around the world having both a hearing loss and being Aspie is extremely rare. Does that surprise you? How you feel about that? Are you aware of it?
However, I rarely disclose my ASD until later when I becoming comfortable with people including employers and new friends especially at UQ. Despite that, my hearing loss is visual thing because my hearing aids is easily seen by people, and their speech clarity are not always clear to me thus asking for clarification. I don't take a much huge deal on being an Aspie because my experiences recently has shown that I am living my life more successful than a typical Aspie. I met a quite few of them and they have not done things nor have things as much I do. So, I feel safe to say I am proud of myself to my achievements I have done and meeting people is something I do better than before.
Personally I have been to counselling, trainings, seminars and meetings in relation to my disabilities for ten years. I have gained a lot of confidence from my efforts to attend those. Meanwhile I have been improving in managing self eestem, anger and trust. So recently it did seem working. However, my hearing loss does not change the way of how people to speak with me. Many cases that hearing people becomes a miscommunication issue whilst engaging a conversation with me. I met one lecturer this semester at UQ, from day one of the classes I had to approach to speak with him about my awareness in hearing loss and his acknowledgment of my student access plan from my advisors. His reaction appears to be confused, nor does not fully understand the process. This has come to the point I realised that not everyone in the world will understand the aspects of people with hearing loss. It such a shame because how I felt about this including from my experiences I miss out on engaging with people.
You can see this example shows such a huge influence in my social life. As being an Aspie is another thing, but I don't go on too much about it since the fact I am smarter than this since I have learnt so much about social skills and the rules around it. So, it also indeed affects non-aspies to understand my approaches, different perspective on life and the skills I maintain. This is also an everyday life experience. Whether people know I have it or not, it have no such difference made in terms of reactions and approaches. This is because it is invisible disability, where that people tend to judge the mental difference side of it rather than judging the disability itself. From my experiences I have seen many people's reactions becomes quickly judgmental basing on my social and communication skills. Numerous times I have been stereotyped as being a kid, having a mental disorder and labelled in disregarding language from opposite sex. Being victismed!
The combination of both disabilities becomes very difficult to my social life. The challenge itself does not tend to change unless the society accepts who I am. I have learnt to ignore and disregard many able bodied people's rudeness, impoliteness and discriminative languages. Most times when I meet new friends, stays with them for several weeks later. I have seen observations from their reactions and body language becomes more complex. These situations makes me uncomfortable because it may show that they may not enjoy my company. To recap on my values; I am a happy, self orientated, friendly, proactive and nice human being. I do not like hurting people nor negative influences on them. So since the fact of showing my personalities to new friends I have met over time(s), people becomes less friendly and proactive which observably different to other people. I find this unfair, telling myself what I did is wrong and why they do that to me. I never had a single answer for this cause.
As I know considering my disabilities controlling of my life is a negative influence, I am not taking a big deal on this. I always wanted to know why and what is going on in many circumstances from making new friends and engaging in conversations. From the past, I learnt that obsessions becomes a negative outcome when communicating with people. So I ticked that off. Since my move to Brisbane, I tried different and new things, approaches and environments. It does seem working this time because I haven't had any negative objections compared from my previous experiences. However, the problem is still there. I tend to observe the differences of why people becomes less in touch and proactive with me. Likewise these situations I experiencing such as: why friends don't invite me to things anymore? Why that person is not responding to me anymore? Why they sit in different positions in classes than regularly? Why friends tend to forget about my hearing loss? And so on.......
So these questions comes to me everyday, and never being answered. This is what and how I see from my perspective. What is going on? Why this is happening? There are two things I may come to mind: 1) the person becomes more stubborn or 2) I may have done something wrong without knowing it. It would be such a wonderful world if people in general becomes more caring, be out there for others and share life experiences together. Do you agree with this? Would you like to see people becomes less judgmental and passive aggressive?
My life right now is enjoyable. I am experiencing new things and trying differently. I am enjoyng Brisbane and my university. But that is not it, miscommunication between myself and the mainstream is still occuring.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Aspies may be normal after all
This has been a admiring topic over past few days for me when I come cross to social development issues in debate with technology development. As the world we know it is becoming more dependent on technology, the development appears as an unit of influence towards the mainstream society where people learn the non social side of it. Aspies have social skills and relationship issues which is normal in general. But what about able bodied people have same issues, under influence of technology use such as watching too much television, mobile phones, addiction on alcohol, drugs, online social media and so on? Are able bodied people getting some signs of ASD, ADHD and other sort of mental illness as well as Aspies experiencing?
Sending out disability awareness has been on the rise since the introduction of unnecessary technology, I can see the trend of increasing awareness organisations for all disability matters, women and young children, sexuality and globalisation issues just as much people are experiencing problems whose does not respect the minorities.
I can call myself as a minority like other Aspies to the mainstream society because able bodied people see us as independent and 'outliers' due to the challenges. From my perspective, I believe able bodied people is having some signs of mental health issues by applying disregard of disability awareness acknowledgements, denying on facts and stereotypical attitudes. I feel so bad when come to these situations which I experienced every single day in my life. I am getting used to this because I understand why they do it to me. I am not saying that able bodied people have more serious problems than me and other Aspies.
My point is that the way that able bodied people are not respecting nor accepting Aspies to be part of the society. I observed that they:
In my observation from the able bodied people, they told me that:
Sending out disability awareness has been on the rise since the introduction of unnecessary technology, I can see the trend of increasing awareness organisations for all disability matters, women and young children, sexuality and globalisation issues just as much people are experiencing problems whose does not respect the minorities.
I can call myself as a minority like other Aspies to the mainstream society because able bodied people see us as independent and 'outliers' due to the challenges. From my perspective, I believe able bodied people is having some signs of mental health issues by applying disregard of disability awareness acknowledgements, denying on facts and stereotypical attitudes. I feel so bad when come to these situations which I experienced every single day in my life. I am getting used to this because I understand why they do it to me. I am not saying that able bodied people have more serious problems than me and other Aspies.
My point is that the way that able bodied people are not respecting nor accepting Aspies to be part of the society. I observed that they:
- are not listening to our feelings
- does not want to understand
- nor want to know about it
In my observation from the able bodied people, they told me that:
- can't be bothered acknowledging it
- cannot be understood
- doesn't know the awareness
- taking little issues becomes a big problem
Sunday, April 05, 2015
Aspies are the most honest people
From my experience I do not take advantage of other living beings from my lies which that makes me think I am going to hurt them. Most able bodied people knows in reality Aspies are prones to social suicide and make lies. Well unfortunately you got this wrong.
Aspies are 'the' one of most honest group of people in the world. Why? Because that we do. We hate lying. We hate hurting our feelings. We don't like hurting other people feelings. So that answers your question? Personally, I try to make things 'right' or 'goes according to the plan' when come to social situations. In past tense, we share experiences of what exact has happened in equivalent to sharing our feelings at present tense. That is one of signs we are being honest.
There were so many experiences through friends I made over last few years including this year at UQ. I find some people are not proactive or assertive when come to realism. It may be their lack of organisation, creating influence on not believing in me. The conversations I spoken with many group of people are aligned to honesty and committment. My feelings are always hurt when people are pretending things to happen when comes to planning. For example: I be back, going to the restrooms, then ten minutes later he/she never bothered talking to me again. Aspies are smart when come to this kind of situation when the person or group of people are not being bothered again; sometimes capable to finish things too quickly because of the judgment in behaviour. This is because I observe this clearly when I see their confusing facial expressions and body language. I know that I am not a good reader non-verbally but I can see the negativity of people.
Many times I can't see what my behaviour makes people to act like that. I am honest (yes being honest) to this that I am actually do not know exactly what is happening. I understand that my hearing loss influences on this social environment. So, how I can tell when I did something wrong? Numerous times I always explained and asked people what I did is wrong. They never responded. That makes me feel uncomfortable by their behaviourial 'reaction'. They become stubborn and avoidance. When I observe people's avoidance, that is when I become ill and uncomfortable. I understood that I should walk away and say 'that is your problem or 'stuck up'. When you hear people say something about you in terms of those quotes, wonder how you feel about this? This is what I have experienced. People can't tell if I have serious mental problems or they may aware I have ASD but not fully understood? This is big question.
In many case studies I heard over the years of how able bodied people treat people with disabilities. In many third world and developing countries I observed disability discrimination. I have experienced this everyday only when come to social situations. Despite, this may be the case that why I am experiencing this frequently because I live in Australia. Many countries around the world knows we have racism and discrimination issues. But we are not alone.
In conclusion, Aspies are one of the most honest people in the world. We have feelings. Never underestimate us!
Aspies are 'the' one of most honest group of people in the world. Why? Because that we do. We hate lying. We hate hurting our feelings. We don't like hurting other people feelings. So that answers your question? Personally, I try to make things 'right' or 'goes according to the plan' when come to social situations. In past tense, we share experiences of what exact has happened in equivalent to sharing our feelings at present tense. That is one of signs we are being honest.
There were so many experiences through friends I made over last few years including this year at UQ. I find some people are not proactive or assertive when come to realism. It may be their lack of organisation, creating influence on not believing in me. The conversations I spoken with many group of people are aligned to honesty and committment. My feelings are always hurt when people are pretending things to happen when comes to planning. For example: I be back, going to the restrooms, then ten minutes later he/she never bothered talking to me again. Aspies are smart when come to this kind of situation when the person or group of people are not being bothered again; sometimes capable to finish things too quickly because of the judgment in behaviour. This is because I observe this clearly when I see their confusing facial expressions and body language. I know that I am not a good reader non-verbally but I can see the negativity of people.
Many times I can't see what my behaviour makes people to act like that. I am honest (yes being honest) to this that I am actually do not know exactly what is happening. I understand that my hearing loss influences on this social environment. So, how I can tell when I did something wrong? Numerous times I always explained and asked people what I did is wrong. They never responded. That makes me feel uncomfortable by their behaviourial 'reaction'. They become stubborn and avoidance. When I observe people's avoidance, that is when I become ill and uncomfortable. I understood that I should walk away and say 'that is your problem or 'stuck up'. When you hear people say something about you in terms of those quotes, wonder how you feel about this? This is what I have experienced. People can't tell if I have serious mental problems or they may aware I have ASD but not fully understood? This is big question.
In many case studies I heard over the years of how able bodied people treat people with disabilities. In many third world and developing countries I observed disability discrimination. I have experienced this everyday only when come to social situations. Despite, this may be the case that why I am experiencing this frequently because I live in Australia. Many countries around the world knows we have racism and discrimination issues. But we are not alone.
In conclusion, Aspies are one of the most honest people in the world. We have feelings. Never underestimate us!
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