focusing in the zone

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I was feeling really off, wanting to freak out but surrounded by family that will talk about group homes or call it having a fitso. So I poured out all that energy into learning calculus and doing gymnastics and playing a word game with my family. In the zone, feeling this strange fast energy that comes when I pray to be a genius, I used the energy towards learning and towards my "special interests"/obsessions. My mom said doing math isn't normal and she meant it as an insult but I was happy, I don't want to be normal.

does doing your special interests or pursuing knowledge help you?

Sorry to hear how your family reacted to you – being in the midst of the holidays with people can be challenging, sometimes overwhelming. It sounds like your mom may have wanted some other behavior from you, but resorted to putting down the way in which you were coping with the stress. Sometimes people who get criticized or insulted will repeat that behavior with others because they may not feel they can directly ask for what they really want. Maybe she wanted more social interaction from you and was frustrated. Playing the word game is pretty good interaction though. Your ways of coping with the impending freak-out were really quite constructive. It’s just *monumentally* unhelpful to have family laying the “not normal” label on it – it helps nothing beyond her externalizing her frustration and laying blame. I grew up with a heavy dose of “you better act normal no matter what” with heavy consequences and it sure doesn’t help in learning how to be ourselves and live authentically. I’m not normal, it’s unfortunate that some folks can have such a problem with it.

Math and certain sciences (physics, chemistry, electronics…) are my primary special interests and I learned to do basic calculus while young. I obsessively studied and studied – in fact I spent much of the time doing that when other kids were spending time socializing. I still love reading and watching videos on these interests and as a kid I was really motivated to learn all I could. This helped me enormously both in school, university, graduate school, and in my career. I got to work in electronics and physics, avionics and other embedded systems where I developed firmware and software, system design for cellphones and the like. I had a very successful 38-year career, got to lead teams and be a manager. I know I’m seriously not normal and I have specific strengths and deficits. I can adapt but I can’t really change the fact that I’m different. Pretending I’m not for the sake of people who disapprove has been a big mistake – like trading away parts of my identity to avoid criticism, ostracism, etc.

I like being different. Once I insisted on being in a higher math class (Math C instead of A in middle school) or else I'd drop out, and they moved me. I'm relearning advanced algebra and calculus and algorithms and fractal math. Fractal math...its so awesome but I can't fathom it.

Could you explain differential equations? Is that calculus or advanced algebra or trig? I have a collection of math textbooks but I only learned bits of trig in precalc. I really want to learn it.

Also. Thanks for your response to my post

I really enjoy learning math and science! I really liked math subjects like multivariable calculus, calculus of complex variables, differential geometry, topology, statistics, and the predicate calculus of logic (very useful in programming). I studied fractal geometry – geometry with fractional dimensions – on my own and found that to be fascinating as well. It's funny you mention it - the one subject that I had a hard time with was differential equations - the class focused on linear ordinary differential equations. Those are equations that incorporate one or more variables together with their partial derivatives. A simple example is dx/dt + x * f(t) = 0, which can be thought of as the time rate of change of x (dx/dt) plus the product of the value of x and an arbitrary function of time equals zero. You can switch this around to dx/dt = - x * f(t), which is more intuitive to me, where the time rate of change of x is a proportional to x and some function f() of time. You can have higher-order terms like second- and third-order derivatives, etc. too. Differential equations are useful for figuring out things like how fast a swimming pool drains whose shape is given by some function of its depth (z) in both the x and y dimensions, when a constant flow of water exits it. Or if the flow of water is dependent on the pressure, which is determined by the current depth of the water if the exit pipe is at the bottom. Differential equations are also used to solve things like heat transfer, where the rate of heat flow between two regions is proportional to the temperature difference between them. I like these sorts of real-world physics applications, they help me picture the equation in my mind. My problem was that I overloaded myself with classes and didn’t have time to devote to fully getting the concepts right from the very start. I’m not a verbal thinker and I have to have some patterns and pictures in my head to understand and after that I can manipulate various equations even better than most NTs. But unlike NTs, I can’t just start solving equations on the basis of words alone. And if I ever get behind (like I did in that class) then I'm at a huge disadvantage. My autism is both a strength and a hindrance in math. In school I would typically get all the books early and study everything before the classes even started, so I’d have these images and patterns in my head. Then I could ask good questions in the classes and reinforce the concepts and patterns even further, and I did extremely well in school, university, and graduate school. Of course other kids tended to hate me for that, thinking I was showing off, lol. But I was really doing my best to reinforce what I had learned before the classes began. There’s a really cool YouTube channel where the presenter goes through various calculus problems and proofs, which I totally LOVE called “black pen, red pen” (well I love 95% of his videos, once in awhile I can disagree with something). If you like math, I think you'll enjoy his many videos. He has a good one about differential equations here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsjZ5aYK_g