Maybe you’ve heard of him or you know someone with this syndrome, or maybe you, who read this article on the other side of the screen, are living with Asperger’s syndrome.
Asperger’s syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder. However, it differs from typical autism by several research conducted in this area. The most obvious difference has to do with the ability to be independent in adulthood, compared to people with more prototypical autism.
- It is a genetic and hereditary neurodevelopmental disorder.
- In which brain structures are damaged.
- But what are neurodevelopmental disorders?.
Neurodevelopmental disorders are a heterogeneous group of neurological disorders that have alterations in different processes: cognition, communication, behavior and motor skills, these changes are caused by atypical brain development.
In other words, the brains of people with Asperger’s work in many different ways than people who haven’t experienced changes in their neurological development, we’re not talking about something bad or good, we’re talking about a different way of processing and perceiving information.
In a way, it’s like they have different codes to interpret the world and its environment, these different codes make them live in a way that some find strange, but who has never met people who sometimes act differently than expectations?We often perceive reality, we mismos. de a distorted way, and this leads us to act in a way that others find strange.
Let’s talk a little bit about the most typical features of this syndrome:
Common features of this syndrome include
? They are socially clumsy and have difficulties in their relationships with other children and/or adults. They can be naive and gullial.
? They often ignore the feelings and intentions of others or do not understand these emotional reactions.
? They have difficulty directing and maintaining the normal rhythm of the conversation. They change easily with changes in your routine and transitions.
-They literally interpret language and everything they hear. They don’t understand the irony and style of the figures, for them everything is literal. For example, in the phrase “does it have a heart that does not fit in their chest”, for them the interpretation is literal and they understand that “their heart is so big that it does not fit in their chest”.
? They are very sensitive to loud sounds, colors, lights, smells or flavors.
? They usually develop a strong interest (fixation) for a subject or object and can become true experts. There are many children from Asperger’s who see a landscape for a few seconds and are able to reproduce every detail with incredible accuracy.
? They don’t have motor skills, so they’re not very good for sports
? They are often unable to make or keep friends their age. Basically, because they do not perceive the world in the same way and are frustrated; like any of us, when we meet people with which our ways of seeing the world and living are antagonistic, something similar happens to them.
Then we have to be able to go beyond disorder. People with Asperger’s often feel misunderstood; they feel strange in a world that works with rules that sometimes conflict with their own; they don’t understand the meaning of most people’s behaviors.
So we have to do a deep work of empathy with them, we need to understand that their way of perceiving reality is different from ours, and that doesn’t mean it’s good or bad, it’s just different.
We live in a wonderful world where, fortunately, we are all different and can learn from these differences, differences that enrich relationships and help us to be more tolerant and to take away most of the prejudices that we carry in our emotional backpack.