Something that might help

Just a tip for people who regularly have extreme anxiety from autism. Helps me a lot, not sure if it would help you, but thought it was worth mentioning.
Narrate yourself. Pretend you are reading about yourself in a book, and mentally narrate.

Self Harm

Many people with autism hurt themselves, leaving people around them baffled. Usually, I can't understand people who engage in self harm. Today, though, I think I understood why just a little bit. I need schedule, something not uncommon among autistic people. Today, there was an assembly for seniors at my school informing us of what we need to get finished before graduation. Part of the way into the presentation, the lunch bell rang. Lunch is at 12:05 every day, and a huge cause of stress for me if I can't get to the lunchroom quickly. I get very anxious if I am not on time for lunch. I honestly wanted to run out of the room when the bell rang, but we were required to sit through the rest of the assembly. Everyone but the seniors were going to lunch. This was not a modification in schedule (which I could have handled with very little stress), it was a complete defiance of schedule. Lunch was going. I needed to be at lunch. I was not where I needed to be, and lunch was being served. My mind just kept going in circles over and over, anxiety growing bigger and bigger.
I was almost more miserable when I actually got lunch. My anxiety was through the roof at having been put outside my schedule during the most crucial time for schedule in my day, and that made my senses sharpen. I tore off the tiniest bit I could of my sandwich, and tasted it so strongly that I could barely swallow. It was like a sound so loud it made my ears hurt, but with taste instead. I could not eat. Not eating put me farther outside my schedule every second I didn't eat. I could. Not. Eat. I was stuck in another loop that got worse with every repetition. Eventually, I had to give the rest of my food to a friend and wait for the next bell to signal a return to normal schedule.
All through that time, I wanted to tear my skin off. I was between crying and throwing up in anxiety. At that moment, I understood why people self harm.
I scratched my hands until they turned bright red and dug my fingernails so deep into the skin that I still have the bright red scratches on my hands as I type this. The pain did not feel good, nor did it decrease my anxiety. All it did was keep my brain so occupied with the pain that it couldn't go through the vicious cycle of increasing anxiety quite as fast. I was desperate enough that it seemed worth it, as much pain as I could stand at that moment just to slow the anxiety.
I'm not saying self harm is a good thing, nor am I saying it should ever be done. I self harmed only because I was not thinking rationally, like how some people punch a wall to relieve anger with no regard for their hand. The point of this entry is to help you understand WHY people with autism sometimes self harm. A peek into our point of view, another moment of understanding.

Music, emotions, and our own world

Most, if not all, people with Asperger's have their own little world in their head. Sometimes we withdraw more into it, and sometimes we are more in the real world. Recently, our dog went missing. I should be in tears, but I'm having trouble feeling much of anything. It's not that I don't love the dog, it's just that I'm very withdrawn into my own world right now. The fact that the dog is gone doesn't really reach all the way to me right now. It seems very disconnected from reality, because I am very disconnected from reality right now.
Music really helps me feel the appropriate emotion. When events in life can't reach me on their own, music can help me connect the events back to reality. Right now, I'm actually avoiding music a bit. I don't want to fully grasp this situation until we find the dog.
I really do hope we find him.

Not as Easy as it Looks

Sometimes, having Asperger's is obviously hard. You can see someone cover their ears in response to a loud noise, and it's plain that being near that noise is very uncomfortable or even painful for them. Sometimes, you see nothing. For most people with Asperger's, daily events can be very difficult. People with Asperger's must sometimes do everything they can to function normally. Just the daily routine of going to school or work even without any unexpectedly stressful events can leave us exhausted. I end up going to bed earlier than most of my classmates because daily life is just too tiring to stay up later.
We spend a huge amount of energy trying to understand other people and remember all the social rules we are expected to abide by.
I'm told that I do nothing all day, but I often come home feeling like I just fought a battle. Sometimes I get a bit upset when I put a lot of effort into functioning normally, accomplish bare minimum, and get accused of laziness. I'm doing all I can most days.

Keep posting?

This was originally made for me senior project, but due to the overall positive response received by those who heard my speech on my project, I am considering continuing this blog. If you want me to continue, leave a comment to this post about why I should keep going. If I get and kind of response at all, I will continue posting. Otherwise, I think I will let it die.

Why we Repeat

People with Asperger's autism often repeat things they've heard. Quotes from movies, games, and even other people will frequently pepper the speech of an autistic. Sometimes this can make people with Asperger's a bit hard to understand. We might say a quote that makes no sense to someone who doesn't know where the quote originated, or even confuse those who have. If someone is talking about the alphabet, I might say "A is for Amber who drowned in a pool," a quote from the song A Gorey Demise (yes, that's how you spell it.) But why I'm saying this and what I mean can be very hard for some people to understand, even if they have heard the song.
Much of what I say is a quote from somewhere or another because I wouldn't otherwise know how to correctly say or express certain things. How do you ask someone if they need help or not? When I was young, I had a lot of trouble with this. Just saying whatever came to mind wouldn't work. If I could think of anything at all, there was a good chance the person I was asking wouldn't understand what I meant. I have many times said something that makes perfect sense to me and baffles all others. Then one day, I saw a movie in which one character asks "May I be of assistance?" Ever since that day, I have asked "May I be of assistance?" when I'm wondering if someone needs help.
There are many situations when these quotes don't work as well as intended, like things that only make sense in the context of when it was originally said. Still, it's better than nothing, so we repeat.

To Tell or Not to Tell

I used to think I was just naturally clumsy, but after much researching of autism, it turns out that may not have been the case. It seems clumsiness is, when combined with many other things, a sign of autism! Who knew. Now I know why I'm constantly knocking things over, running into things (and I don't mean brushing a wall with your shoulder, I mean taking a large bead post to the chest), tripping, and dropping things. It seems that I'm simply not as aware of where my body is in space as the average person is.
This brings me to the point of this entry, if in a bit of a roundabout way: Do you tell a kid if they've been diagnosed with autism? This is a big issue for many parents. What if they feel like they're not as good as other people because they have autism? What if they think it means they will never succeed? Over the internet, I've heard many parents worry over this.
Usually, this is where I weigh the pros and cons out for you to see, then tell you to use your best judgment in deciding for yourself. This is the exception to the rule, as I think there is only one viable choice. I believe you must tell.
Back to first paragraph now. How do you think I felt when I walked straight into a thick bedpost that I was looking straight at? Stupid. I felt like an idiot. Then, I learned that it wasn't entirely my fault. Yes, it still hurt to walk into in, but I didn't feel like an idiot anymore. Then there's social situations. If you've read some other entries of this blog, you'll know that I once failed miserably at interacting normally even when trying my absolute hardest. That made me feel like I couldn't get anything right, like I shouldn't even try. I felt broken, rejected. To this day, I have trouble putting 100% into anything because some part of me is still sure that I will fail at everything I really want. Several years and one diagnosis later, I no longer feel like a failure when faltering in a social situation. I know now that it's not entirely my fault, and that makes me want to keep trying. I'm not so stupid that I can't do anything right, I just have to try again.
I never want any autistic child to wonder 'What is wrong with me?!' I don't want them to have to think they're a stupid failure, or to think they can only mess up everything they try. I don't want them to be afraid to keep trying.
Any parents of an autistic child reading this, please, tell your child. Explain that it's not they're fault, that they can succeed if they keep trying. Make sure they know that autism is not a disability. Disabilities stop people, and now that I know what I'm up against, I never let Asperger's stop me. Let the child know that there's nothing wrong with them, but that their brain works differently. Help turn helpless failure in their future to a battle won, a success.

Autism Awareness Day Today

I find this quite entertaining. To me, autism awareness day might as well be fingers awareness day. It's a bit strange to see people raising awareness about something that's part of you, there every day. Still, the purpose of this blog is to promote autism awareness and education, so I guess it's not that strange after all.
I wonder what people wish for the autistic on this day. I bet a lot wish for a cure, which I've discussed in a previous entry. Then some must wish for an education system that better handles individuals with autism. Although this is truly needed, I don't think it's the biggest need. No, if I could make one wish for this day, it would be acceptance. Maybe this day really will spread awareness, and people will understand the mind of an autistic a bit better. With understanding going hand-in-hand with acceptance, maybe I will get my wish today. If one person learns to accept, that's enough for me. So if you're reading this, remember that you can change the world bit by bit with just a little acceptance.

Routine and Orderly Things

From a young age, this is one of the more obvious symptoms of autism. Lining up toys. Asking the same question. Watching the same movie. Eating the same thing. Becoming extremely upset over small changes in everyday events, like being out of Lucky Charms. This comes from the need for unchanging, repetitive schedules.
lining things up is a bit similar to OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) in that it comes from the need for things to be just so. When I played house with my various toys as a child, it was never tea parties and adventures. Instead, I would gather many small plastic toys and make them act out life on tight schedules. Even my earliest memories of Barbies worked on a schedule. I would often create extremely rigid systems in which families of toys moved through life on rotational schedules. After a few tweaks, I had a system that I could theoretically use until the end of time with no changes to the schedule at all. This repetitive cycle wasn't for lack of imagination. I had a huge amount of toy hamsters, and I made for each a name, personality, and history. Despite this, all I wanted to do with them is to move them through the cycle. This was my version of lining up cars. I just got a certain satisfaction from seeing everything mentally lined up, order in everything. It's like working in a garden and getting that feeling of accomplishment when you see that there are no more weeds left. Doing it any other way bored me as much as my rotational schedule would have bored neurotypical children.
I wasn't one of the children that ask the same question over and over until my parents were all but ready to leave me on an orphanage doorstep, but many are. Asking the same question and getting the same response over and over is soothing to many people with Asperger's autism. Nothing unexpected, everything lined up.
Some people wonder why autistic people get so upset over schedule changes. Imagine your mind as a road. Whether you want to walk, run, drive, or cycle, there's nothing in your way. Everything moves along normally at a proper speed. A schedule change is like your mental road suddenly becoming a corkscrew that would terrify even Sonic the Hedgehog. All comes to a screeching halt. When this happens, I find myself caught in a loop. I turn in circles, say the same thing over and over, and thinking the same thought. It feels like becoming a human record, skipping over the same word again and again because the next one can't be properly read. For some reason, my mind just can't make it past the disruption.
For some people, success means their life is spontaneous. They suddenly decide to go bowling, or on a vacation to Hawaii, or to visit family in France. For me, success is repetition. I want a life of doing the same thing at the same time every day until the end of the world, the kind of thing that can drive most people out of their heads or into the depths of depression. I find it funny how what most people describe as being stuck in a rut is my favorite place to be.

Lack of Empathy

One thing you'll often find on lists of Asperger's autism symptoms is lack of empathy or caring for others, and I think that's (for lack of better terms) an absolute load of baloney. The harder you look, the more you see things like it: things saying autistic people are incapable of forming emotional attachments, or even love. I'm not sure if I should be outraged or saddened by things like this. There are many reasons why it may seem like someone with autism doesn't care about others, but I've never come across one who really didn't care about others at all.
One reason is the afore-mentioned lack of social skills. My mom tells me that, when I was very young, I was constantly saying things like "Mama, that lady has a ring in her nose. Does she know that she looks silly?" I had no idea that such comments could hurt feelings then. I remember being instructed not to tell people if their house stunk, and I couldn't understand why. If their house stunk, why not tell the truth? These comments wouldn't have offended me, and in my lack of social knowledge, I had no idea they would offend others. This can lead to accidentally hurt feelings and the appearance of a complete lack of caring for others.
A second reason is that they might not know how to show it. If someone is distressed, and autistic person might simply leave them alone. This isn't for lack of caring, but the opposite. The autistic person might have wanted to be left alone in such a situation, so their way of helping is to leave a distressed person alone. I've come across situations where a person is upset and realized that I had no idea at all how to comfort them. Because of this, I probably came across as cold and uncaring.
Lastly, they may be looking at the situation so differently that they can't find any reason to be unhappy. One thing I hear about autistic children living in religious families is a lack of grief at the death of a loved one. In such situations, the child has been informed that the deceased has gone to live in a paradise called heaven. They are not old enough to think about how this will affect the world in any way but the loved one being happy in heaven, and thus find no reason to be upset. Or maybe someone is upset at being insulted. To an aspie, especially children, they may not think being called fat or ugly is anything to be upset about. Again, they cannot understand why the insulted person is unhappy, and make no attempts to console them because of it.
If autistic people were unable to form connections with others or have empathy, then we'd all be sociopaths and likely murderers. The extremely low crime rate among those with Asperger's alone should prove we are capable of empathy.

Wait, Were You Kidding or Not?

One problem common among people with Asperger's autism is a complete lack of social skills. All the unspoken rules most children pick up as easily as breathing must be taught to autistic children. Most parents do not realize the need to teach something they never had to be taught, and it takes their children hard years to learn these skills alone. Autistic children are often labeled as loners who don't even want to interact with others. I have always wondered if this disinterest in others is just part of autism for some people, or if it's learned after repeated failure in social situations.
When I was very young, I had no friends. None. Not even someone who pretended to be my friend. Sometimes another social outcast would talk to me, but even the outcasts usually had better options for interaction that me. It wasn't that I didn't want to make friends. In fact, the opposite of that was true. I desperately wanted a friend. I'd see groups of other people and marvel at how happy they looked together, wishing every moment it could be me. I felt like a ghost, completely separate and invisible. Looking back, I can see exactly why I couldn't make a single friend until I met another outcast in fifth grade: I didn't know how to interact.
Imagine being dropped on a planet full of aliens. They look just like humans, so they think you're one of them and expect you to play by their rules. The only problem is that their rules seem completely nonsensical and absolutely no one will tell you what they are. An alien talks to you with familiar English words, but you can't understand what he means. You unknowingly offend dozens of aliens because you don't observe their odd customs. Everywhere you turn you are shunned for reasons you don't understand, or seemingly no reason at all.
That was my life for many years. I would completely miss the importance of everyday things like a handshake. Even after I made friends with a fellow outcast and began to try and mimic them, I would often trip over every social hurdle presented and fall flat on my face. One example is being asked how you are. The correct answer is "Good. How are you?" It took me years to understand that people didn't really want to know how I was when they asked. After learning the correct response, I tried using it. People would give me strange looks when I gave the answer, and I had no idea why. I was giving the same answer as everyone else, so what was the problem? It was how I said it. I said it rather emotionlessly and quickly because it all seemed like a pointless formality to me, which was not what others expected. Still, since no one pointed out what my mistake was, it was a long time before I figured out the problem.
Another thing that impairs social skills in children with autism, especially Asperger's, is eye contact. Many aspies find eye contact extremely uncomfortable, so they avoid it. This means that a lot of communication is missed completely. Remember how I said I knew I was giving my response wrong somehow because the other person gave me a funny look? I had no idea people communicated with their faces beyond a smile or frown until junior high, because no one pointed it out to me before then. I would never know if what I did was a success or a failure because I wasn't getting any more feedback than you would from a brick wall. This led to many broken social rules and accidental insults where I didn't even know I had done anything incorrectly.
I think the day when I gave up on most social interaction was around first grade, when a new kid came to the school. I decided that I would stop being the weird kid so this person who didn't know me would become my friend. I failed miserably. I think this is why so many aspies stop interacting with others completely. It's often no more than thinking you can do nothing but fail.
Today, as a senior in high school, I still don't know all the unwritten social rules. I still find non-literal speech going right over my head, and I could count the number of facial expressions I am able to reliably read on my fingers. Luckily, I've been able to make a few more friends, and being around them teaches me every day. With friends, I can ask questions like "why did he laugh at that?" or "why did he just touch him on the shoulder?" and actually get answers. In this way, I have gone from being 'that weird kid' to seeming like a normal teenager.

A Spectrum Disorder

There are a lot of question out there as to what exactly it means for something to be a spectrum disorder. I think the easiest way to explain it is by comparing it to color. Imagine every shade of blue ordered from darkest to lightest. At the lower end you have the darkest colors and at the higher end you'll find the lighter colors. Autism is similar in that people on the lower end of the spectrum are more likely to have extreme difficulty living alone, severe mental retardation, and physical symptoms such as tuberous sclerosis. Those on the higher end are usually able to live alone and tend to have high IQ. Someone with autism could be placed anywhere on the spectrum, just as the color blue can be any shade.
Asperger's is a bit controversial when it comes to fitting in with autism. Right now, it's officially a type of high-functioning autism discovered by Hans Asperger. However, some think that it should not have a unique name and just be diagnosed as high-functioning autism. Others say that Asperger's is too different from classic autism (autism on the lower end of the spectrum) and should be separated from autism completely. I honestly don’t care what they do, the name they give it won’t change anything.
Another thing about Asperger’s is how people pronounce it. The most common pronunciation sounds like as-burgers, and can be quite embarrassing to say. It is also sometimes pronounced as-per-jers, which is slightly less embarrassing but not technically correct. It's no wonder that you find statements like "I think I'll just say I have nerditis," on autism-related forums (nerditis coming from the high IQ and lack of social skills often found among those with Asperger's, fitting the stereotype of a nerd.) To avoid being ridiculed, the term aspie is often used on the internet for people with Asperger's.
The number of people being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum has grown dramatically over the years. Experts can't agree if this is cause by it being under-diagnosed in the past, over-diagnosed now, or both. People are also wondering if environmental triggers are causing autism in higher rates, but there is no definitive proof of this.
I've heard people who think autism is severely over-diagnosed because many of the people on the spectrum are simply spoiled brats with parents that can't accept they are doing anything wrong. I kindly ask these people to take a long walk off a short pier. Yes a spoiled child and an autistic child may both have a meltdown over something simple as a slight change in schedule, but the reasons are different. The spoiled child throws a fit because he/she believes the world revolves around them and that they should be able to do anything they want whenever they want it. An autistic child has a meltdown at a schedule change because they need an exact schedule like fish needs water and a change in schedule results in huge amounts of anxiety.

A Cure!

...Is actually not something I'd ever want, nor is it something I believe will ever be found.
Autism is not a disease. You can't just get a shot or take a  pill that will destroy autism like you can with the flu. Autism is a way of thinking, part of the way your brain works. There's no pill for that. Maybe we'll be able to alter a brain to cure autism in the distant future, but I doubt a procedure like that can ever be considered safe or even legal.
Another thing is that I'd never want a cure. Asking to cure autism is like asking to cure comedians of being funny, it's taking away a huge part of their personality. I see things differently than most people, and I never want that to go away. I love the hum of electricity, the texture of a soft blanket, and even the way the light hits a gravel road. These are things most people ignore, but I find beautiful. Every negative of autism is worth it to me just so I can be moved by the beauty of things others find mundane.
I'm not saying that there's no reason for treatment in some cases. I occasionally take anti-anxiety medication when things overwhelm me, and there's nothing wrong with that. I believe that some autistic people, especially at the lower end of the spectrum, can really benefit from treatment such as classes on social skills and some medication where the benefit outweighs the side-effects. I just don't think trying to wholly remove autism from a person is right, or even possible.
Saying you wish someone didn't have autism is like saying you wish a non-autistic person had been born in their place. As I said before, autism is not something someone lugs around behind them like a suitcase. It is part of our brain, present in every thought, and the color of our world. The day I want to go without Asperger's is the day I want to go without skin.

We're still here

Sometimes I hear things from parents about how autism stole their child somehow. There are a lot of variations on it, but what it boils down to is that people think their child has been stolen by autism. This is one of the saddest things I hear.

I could go on for miles about this topic, but it comes down to this: We are still here. Autism did not steal us away in the night. We do not struggle in chains of autism, disabled under a crushing weight. this is who we are.

Special Interests

I'd say me favorite thing about being an aspie (Short term for someone with Asperger's) is this. Many people with Asperger's autism have a special interest, something they focus on almost obsessively for long periods of time. These can be just about anything, but the most common one I've heard of is transportation (cars, trains, airplanes.)
My interests vary from month to month. I'd say my only constant is computers, although I'm a lot less intense with it than with other things. Sometimes I start talking to my friends about playing around in an operating system, or a new graphics card I read about, and their bored expressions surprise me. Sometime I forget that glitches and .bat files don't interest everyone like they do me. There is an Asperger's stereotype about people going on and on about absolutely boring or extremely obscure topics, and this is probably where it came from. Every girl can go on endlessly about shoes because it’s such a common interest among neurotypical (normal, average) girls, but an aspie might have trouble finding someone who wants to listen to facts about cars built in the 1980s.
My varying interests are all over the place. I’ll often fall in love with something and then research it until I know more than most of the people composing fact lists in the first place. I breathe facts, eat them like fire, love them. Most of the time, my interests will take up a few weeks or months and then become boring. With some, I fall in love with them over and over again between other things. I know huge amounts about things that interest me more than once. An odd recurring one is Pokemon. No matter how silly I tell myself it is, Pokemon keeps drawing me back in. I can recognize all 649 of them by the sound they make, I can name nearly every glitch ever to be discovered in the games, and I know enough trivia to write more than one book. I just can’t help myself, I love to know.
Sometimes I notice obsessive interests with unexpected things in unexpected ways. One is food. I went for at least a year living off almost nothing other than Hot Pockets. I felt no real want to eat anything else. Yes, I might eat pork chops if they were handed to me, but why have those when I could have Hot Pockets? Right now, it’s rice. Almost all of the meals I’ve made for myself in the last four months (at very least) have had rice in them. Why? Why not. Right now, rice seems like the best option in any situation I can think of. I’m sure that I’ll eventually get tired of it and make some other food the staple of my diet, but for now I see little reason not to eat it at every meal.
As for the why of an interest, it isn’t easy to describe. Why one might choose a certain interest over the rest of the world, I have no idea. What I do know is how it feels to have such an obsessive interest. It’s like walking out of a stuffy room and into a spring field. It’s like feeling the sun on your face after being cold for too long. It’s like breathing easy for the first time, like relaxing, like smiling, like feeling full after being hungry all day. The faster I consume facts about my interest, the more wonderful it feels. I imagine it a bit like fire, consuming every shred of information, reaching high into golden light and warmth. To put it in as few words as possible: It’s my favorite feeling. Why learning about computers gives me that feeling when model cars doesn’t is a mystery to me.

Anxiety

I've chatted online with many autistic people, and quite a few of them (including myself) have issues with anxiety. Personally, anxiety has always been a big problem for me. This is sometimes caused by a legitimate problem, like finding out too late that I'm not ready for a big test. However, it is often caused by something seemingly inconsequential or nothing at all. I have accepted this as one of the drawbacks of autism. I find that this problem can be managed if you stay healthy, avoid known anxiety triggers, and learn to deal with stressful situations to the best of your ability. Most people with autism that deal with anxiety have a way to self-soothe. This is often called stimming (self-stimulating), although this term often not completely correct since most of these behaviors are to sooth instead of stimulate. Some stims are nearly unnoticeable, like running a hand through your hair or tapping your foot. Others such as hand flapping and rocking are not only noticeable, but are often associated with serious mental disability (and I do NOT consider mild autism a disability in any way.)
I have found that one must find what they can and can't deal with when it comes to stimming. If your most comforting stim is hand flapping and you don't care what others think when they see you, then go ahead. If you find yourself embarrassed or ashamed from a stim, I suggest to try new ones until you find one that works reasonably well and is not too noticeable. If push comes to shove, remember that the most important opinion about you is your own. This may sound like something from a corny motivational speech, but it's true. If you have to do something noticeable, then do it without worry. No one is perfect, and you don't have to be either.
Something I've run into time and time again is the "Why don't you just stop?" speech. Why? The reason is I'm experiencing enough anxiety to make me feel like I want to scream, or at least cry. Stimming lessens the feelings of anxiety greatly, and can change hours of anxious misery to a just a minute or two. For people who don't often deal with anxiety, please remember this: It may seem like nothing, but to them, it's everything. Anxiety can bring a mind to a screeching, screaming halt. Anxiety can make you feel like the world will tear apart, starting with you. Anxiety starts small, then feeds on itself, growing big enough to suffocate and breeding more of itself in the process. Remember that this cycle can be put to a stop before it becomes unbearable if you'd just let the person rock, or flap their hands, or do any other harmless soothing behavior. Remember this, and you can spare someone from feeling like the air is trying to suffocate them. You can change a day in a moment.

Has autism or is autistic

People say a lot about whether the correct term to use is "they have autism" or "they are autistic." Some say that "they have autism" is incorrect because they do not lug around autism like a hiking backpack full of rocks. After all, when was the last time you heard "she has womanliness" instead of "she's a woman"? Autism is often such a huge part of an individual's personality that they feel it wrong to refer to that part like you would a suitcase.
On the other hand, saying "they are autistic" still isn't right for some people. The word autism has a lot of negative connotations with many people, and very few people want these to follow them like a label everywhere they go. Then there's also the fact that no individual is just a big walking ball of autism with nothing more to them. Personally, I've always felt that calling someone autistic is a bit like ignoring all non-autistic parts of them in favor of an easy label.
As for which is superior, I don't think either term is perfect. There's always someone who will feel offended by either term. I use the "they have autism" way of saying it to try and avoid slapping a label on anyone who has autism/is autistic, but I worry that I'm still offending people.
To put it simply, you can't win. The saying goes that "you can't please all the people all of the time," and it's true. You just have to either use the term you favor or find out the preferred term of who you're talking to.

Sensory Issues

By sensory issues, I mean having trouble with anything that comes through one sense or another. It's different for everyone, so I can't make many generalizations. Some people with Asperger's may have very severe sensory issues and others may have none at all. For some, the feeling of gloves might be like having hands covered in poison ivy. For others, the clatter of metal against metal might be like nails on a chalkboard. I myself have several sensory issues that can make life difficult. I flinch and cover my ears in pain at sounds others may barely notice. In fact, I have been given headaches by sounds too high pitched to even be heard by most people. While most things in Asperger's strikes me as having both good and bad to it, this is one of the things I have only seen as negative, meaning this could be one of the more debilitating things about high-functioning autism. This is also something that is rarely understood by others. I've often been asked why I cover my ears in some situations, why I won't wear some types of clothes, and why I refuse to eat certain foods. The answer is that I have sensory issues with them. Where an outsider may think I'm overreacting when I cover my ears, I may be experiencing physical pain from the sound, and am covering my ears in the way you might cover your head if someone was trying to punch you.
Tip for those with Asperger's: Explain what's going on in your head. It took me quite a while to understand that the things I couldn't stand were absolutely nothing to most people. It was just so strange to me that such things didn't affect others at all. If someone asks about your behavior, take time to explain what things are like to you. People may be oblivious about things that seem obvious to you, don't make any assumptions about how others see the world. People understand what you mean surprisingly often when you take time to explain.

In Wonderland...

I wanted to sum up autism in a paragraph, but I don't think I can. I don't think anyone can. I have been asked what it's like in my head many times, but I can never think of any answer other than: Read Alice in Wonderland. People say Lewis Carroll must have been on drugs when he wrote that because it's so crazy at times. Honestly, that book makes more sense to me than any other book I've ever read. The characters do things like pointing out that "I like what I get" is not the same thing as "I get what I like," no matter what you meant to say. This makes sense to me. Then there's the sheep in the second book that seems to be spouting gibberish, but is actually speaking in rowing terms. Don't know rowing terms? It's gibberish. Know them? Makes perfect sense. It has taken me quite a while to tell sarcasm from seriousness because of autism, and it seemed like the whole world was speaking in rowing terms until I learned it.
So, as my mind is a bit like a trip into wonderland, all these posts will be signed as Cheshire. (This is also done for internet safety reasons) The Cheshire Cat has always been a favorite of mine. He's like the representation of all things in wonderland, and so he will represent me in this blog.