Positive

I’ve noticed that I’ve mainly written negative blogposts. I don’t like this, this gives a very distorted view of what life on the spectrum is like. Life on the Autism spectrum isn’t all bad and struggles. I want people to have hope too. It’s simply so much easier to explain negative feelings and all the consequences to explain life on the spectrum, than to explain the good things. But I’m starting to miss the point of my blog. Life on the spectrum is exactly what it is: Life. Sure, life has a lot of bad, but it has a lot of good too. I shouldn’t ignore that.

If you’ve read my blog very carefully, you will have noticed a few positives too. I want to bring those to the front. Like my last blogpost before this one. It seemed like a very negative blogpost, and of course it was seeing I wrote it while I was crying, but there’s good in there too. Between the lines I also wrote about how hyperfocussing, which most people on the spectrum are very good at, can be great when trying to learn something and/or working on something. And this isn’t just nice at school. It allows you to excel at a lot of things. Name it and you can probably use hyperfocussing in it. Of course, someone on the spectrum can’t hyperfocus on everything. When it doesn’t interest you, it’s usually a lot harder to hyperfocus on it. But you’ll probably fill in your life with stuff that interests you anyway, so try and use this to your advantage!

Want to win at a game? Hyperfocus on getting better. Want to solve a problem? Hyperfocus on solving it. Want to impress your boss? Hyperfocus on your job.

Hyperfocussing is the reason I get a lot of compliments at work. Whenever I start doing something, I want to do it right, which instantly gets me to hyperfocus. My team leader once complimented me for being so focused on my job and told me to keep it up.

Someone even said researches have argued that Einstein probably couldn’t have accomplished what he accomplished if he didn’t hyperfocus.

Is this the only plus Autism has? Nope, not by a long shot. I even have a sheet of paper with a list of things that people with Autism are usually good at in the working place. And this is just in the working place, I’m not even talking about daily situations. Like with my sister. She has epilepsy. The first time she had an epileptic attack, I was alone in the room and my dad was on the toilet. At the time I didn’t even know what epilepsy was. So, she had her first attack and it didn’t exactly look pretty. Most people probably would’ve freaked out and panicked and maybe even taken some wrong actions in the heat of the moment. I didn’t. I decided it didn’t look lethal, which kept me calm, and simply walked up to my dad saying ‘Dad, something’s wrong with my sister…’ (of course I didn’t say ‘my sister’, but used her name, but I try to leave names out of my blog)

So, another positive thing. Being able to asses a situation calmly and act accordingly. (This doesn’t apply to all situations.)

By the way, because of my reaction my dad was able to remain calm too and he simply laid my sister down on the couch. My sister has been to the doctor and is now getting medication and is alright. All this was many years ago.

I could actually go on forever writing positive things like this. There are just so many! Instead, I’m going to make a small list, which doesn’t even cover all bases.

•  Factual knowledge
• Logical thinking
• Great sense of detail
• Very honest
• Live in the moment
• Passionate
• Very hard worker
• Very punctual

And there are far more positive sides. The reason I’m stopping here isn’t because I can’t think of more, but simply because my blogpost is getting too long. I’ll try and create more positive blogposts. There are plenty of things to write about positively, so it should be possible.