Identity

Post Reply New Topic

Before I determined I have AS one year ago at the age of thirty-six, (I am self-diagnosed) my life was in a shambles. Most of my life I had felt that I didn’t belong here, that some huge mistake was made, that I wasn’t meant to be here. Even minor trials and tribulations of life seemed to be impossible hurdles. I had never fit in anywhere, I was chronically unemployed, desperately lonely, everything in life felt impossible to me. I didn’t understand very much about myself and certainly didn’t see that I possessed any positive traits, aside from my striving to conduct myself in an ethical manner. Over the years, I watched everyone around me grow and prosper, while I stagnated and stayed the same. I often felt that I was growing in reverse, that the older I became, the less capable I was at handling life. There were times when I entertained thoughts of suicide on a minute-by-minute basis…for months on end. The only things that kept me from ending my life was the last shred of hope I had that my life would change and the idea that it would be an intolerably cruel thing to do to my mother, who had already lost my father a decade ago and who also lost her boyfriend a few years ago, both to cancer. My outlook on the future was entirely negative: I would never succeed at anything, I would never find someone to share my life with, I would never have any independence, life was just impossible for someone like me, and that I was literally waiting to die.

After self-diagnosis, things began to change. Events in my past are finally making sense. Looking back, I can see why I behaved the way I did and why I had so many problems. For once, I began to feel self-acceptance instead of self-blame. No longer do I feel that my failures in life are entirely my own fault. I haven’t accepted myself completely of course, as self-acceptance is an on-going process. However now I have the hope that someday there will be finality about it. At least now I have some days where I actually feel I am worth something and that I can achieve some things in life. I know now that I have to do things my own way and forget about societal expectations and other’s judgments. I realize that there are some things I will never adapt to. There is a realization that it I must find work that plays to my strengths AND accommodates my weaknesses, instead of forcing myself into situations where I will become stressed and eventually fail. For the first time in my life, I feel that I have strengths that other’s lack. It’s a bit easier for me in social situations now, as I can sometimes forgive myself for my ineptitude instead of mentally punishing myself every time I screw up a conversation. There are still times when I feel hopeless, but that feeling isn’t as persistent and painful as it once was.

So, I actually feel that accepting that I have AS has saved my life. My life is nowhere near what I want it to be, but much has changed for the better and I now have hope. This is the first time that I have felt any positive change in my life since I was in my teen years. Accepting AS is probably the most important event in my entire life.

This is one thing I have yet to come to grips with. My assessment of others is never based on status, material wealth, achievements, or authority. I base my judgment of others primarily on ethics. To me, anyone who conducts themselves in an ethical manner is a worthy, respectable person. It continues to bother me that as an adult, others have judged me harshly for not having the proper lifestyle or level of income for someone my age.

I guess I need to get better at saying screw 'em...

So what's the difference? You're saying you saw a different state of consciousness between yourself and other people but you didn't really say what it was. I'm assuming whatever this realisation is, it's probably something that would help me too if you could explain it more?

The reason I didn't really explain it is because its very difficult for words to really do it justice. I guess I'd say it's just a completely different set of things your paying attention to, a completely different emotional level of your surroundings, and it's that feeling where instead of being in a room full of whatever decorations and "things" in general and then that room being filled with people it's like your cued into the people first and then the room and it's contents. In the past it has been very difficult not to get stuck in the "big picture" and not put the social stuff on the back burner but when I'm arround NT's, especially my friends and their friends and out at a bar seeing them interact, the alcohol kicks in and breaks down my habitual conscious state to where I relax on it a bit, start to see fleeting glimpses of their reality, and before you know it I'm working hard at trying to exercise those glimpses and actually stay with the program. Yeah, without being in that state I can still talk to people when I'm chilling one on one with em or at a house party when we're all involved in something but when we're out and there's lots of people just breaking off, doing their own thing, and following seperate agendas while keeping tabs on eachother and watching for friends and threats on the outside of the group - that's where this new plane of consciousness really comes in to play. It's that plane that you don't absolutely need once you really know people but you do absolutely need it when your in the process of walking arround, getting to know people, trying to build bonds, trying to be a part of the experience with them, etc. and realizing your outside of that scope feels extremely akward regardless of how unaware many NT's may seem of your being on the outside.

On the emotional front though, I'd say it has all that social intensity of some 80's party movie and in a lot of the same ways - s***'s real, much more real than I'm used to...

I'd say you did a pretty good job of finding words that do it justice, better than I could have. I know what you're talking about - I've been very aware of that exact same thing for a long time now (years, even before I knew anything about AS). I've been fighting it all this time but I still haven't found a way to get past it. (Am I just not trying hard enough, or is it really just one of those things that's part of our wiring and we can't fix it?) Stuck in the big picture, kinda seeing everything around me as a spectator, not zoomed in enough to pay attention to people and interact with them the way I know I should. (Even to the point of being annoyed when people try to interact with me because they're interrupting my 'big picture' analysis of what's going on around me, even though I want to interact with them. ) I think it's probably a pretty common autistic thing - NTs would probably perceive it as 'being in our own world'. I can get out of it and get in that right frame of consciousness a little bit here and there but nowhere near an amount that I'm happy with yet. Keep me updated on this one - I'd pretty much given up any hope of beating it. If you come up with any strategies that help I'd love to hear em. What's your plan of attack at this point?

One of my strategies is usually remembering an angle, remembering where it exists, remembering what it feels like, trying to make myself feel it as much as possible whenever I'm in a situation that has the kind of vibe about it, and hopefully the more I practice trying to draw it out of myself and put myself into that mode the better.

Yeah, that's about all I've come up with too, and that's after years of working on it. And that strategy hasn't gotten me very far. That default state of consciousness seems like it's so hardwired, it's almost impossible to stay out of it for any length of time. What's Plan B?

I always thought this problem was just me - I've never heard anyone describe anything similar before... It's nice to know at least one person is experiencing the same thing.

Another thing to mention from your original post -



I don't know if I'd get my hopes up too far in that direction... I think (for myself, at least) the other things holding me back like sensory and processing issues (usually resulting in overload) and executive function issues, etc - that stuff might get a little better if there were less general wear and tear (by improving/fixing the consciousness problem), but I don't know if it would make a significant difference.

Same here, the real time executive functioning and overload is a definite issue. Hopefully the more I drill myself, like I have for the last 6 years or so, the better things will get. It may be slow going but so far the track-record for that tactic hasn't really gotten to where I think it'll level off indefinitely.

Just be careful about drilling yourself too hard - I know how important it is to you, but the rest of us worry about what it might be doing to your health...

BTW, sorry to sound so negative about all this stuff we've been talking about. Like I said before I've been fighting it for years (at least 10 years) - I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating and discouraging it gets when that amount of time passes with so little progress. (Hmmm, maybe I'm not drilling myself hard enough? Too hard, not hard enough... I guess it's all about weighing the pros and cons and finding a balance you can be happy with. Maybe I should do some more weighing myself.)

I have felt not-aspie many times...

Thinking about this more this morning, looking back on recent times when I pulled this off pretty well... For me the first challenge is getting myself zoomed in to where I need to be, but the bigger challenge is once I get there, keeping myself there. My attention wants to zoom back out to that default level right away. The strategy that seems to work the best is a lot of self-talk, consciously talking myself through it like a football coach or something. A lot of times that seems to be the missing link between thinking something and doing it - probably an executive function problem. (I remember reading about self-talk being a poorly-used skill in auties, aspies, and ADHDers, but I can't find those articles right now.) I have to keep consciously telling myself to stay zoomed in on a person, consciously pointing out the social dynamics to myself and telling myself what to do about it. Having a social conversation with a coworker the other day... starting to zoom out after a couple of sentences were exchanged... "NO, zoom in, she's still talking to you, pay attention... get back in there..." - I was telling myself stuff to that effect. At one point she mentioned going to her Mom's place to help her set up and decorate the Christmas tree. This will be her Mom's first Christmas alone since her Dad died. "There's an opportunity - grab it! Ask her how her Mom's doing. No, don't zoom out, stay in the conversation, ask her. She needs to know you're interested..." Do you use that kind of self-talk? Does it help? It makes a big difference for me, it's just a matter of remembering to do it. And maybe as I practice all this more, my attention and outward responses will start to get more automatic and I won't need so much conscious direction from myself.

Lol, I'm thte king of self-talk. As a matter of fact my dad was just getting after me about the fact that he can always hear me in the bathroom every morning and he was concerned about what would happen if I was doing this at my new job (lol, you'd think he'd realize I have a bit more common sense than to do it outside of the house but whatever). There's plenty of days that go by where there's hardly a moment I'm not lecturing myself - doesn't happen as much as it use to but it does still happen.

The question is, do you use it when you're out in real-time social situations to talk yourself through those? (In those cases it would be a silent internal version of the self-talk of course, not the out-loud stuff.) That's my problem - I'm the queen of self-talk when I'm alone but I rarely remember to use it to get me through things like social situations where it would really help me. For me when I'm alone it's not always lecturing like you mentioned, but there's almost always some kind of talk going on. The type of talk depends on the day... I've done it all my life, right back to my earliest memories. (Even my parents say that when I first learned to talk as a toddler, I didn't talk to other people much but I talked to my toys ALL the time - was I really talking to my toys or myself?) I guess when I was around 13 or 14 years old I must have gotten complaicent about hiding it because my parents were hearing too much of it - they had a few talks with me about it, because the only explanation they could come up with was schizophrenia and they were pretty worried. They wanted to send me to a psychiatrist but they presented the idea in such a negative way, I didn't want to have anything to do with it and it scared me into being more careful, putting on a more normal front again. Lol, my parents thought I was cured because they weren't hearing the talk anymore. Believe me it still goes on all the time, just not always in the right situations where it would actually be beneficial.

I think a lot of times when I'm out and arround people I'm really observing the people arround me, sizing things up, if I'm going to talk to someone I'm trying to find the most opportune moment (something that lends itself to an angle I can work) and yeah, I am usually staying within myself in that sense. I guess I really don't feel like I need the self-talk quite as much at that point because when I'm trying to calibrate myself to someone elses mode its almost more of a distraction than anything. What sucks though is days like today I feel like that part of my mind that would allow me to be a social player is just paralyzed and no matter how much jogging I tried to give that part of myself it feels like almost anyone who talked to me would get discouraged pretty quick.

It's like you said though, it's almost an innate tendency and the only times I've really noticed that I broke out of it and stayed out of it for a while where when I was when I had a friend living with me and it got jarred enough for a long enough period of time that I was able to break free of it for a while. Unfortunately I get the impression that the second that jarring stops, it'll all go back to this - and it probably doesn't matter even if I was being put in that state constantly for years, the second I'm taken out of that social context and don't have the practice I revert right back. If anything that may well be an insentive for me to move in with that friend in a few weeks - being at home is a real killer for me and the more alone time I spend the more hopelessly geeky my internal energy and general mode tends to get. Still, it's almost impossible to not feel like I'm doing it to myself, probably because the NT world out there has pretty much put it to me that there's only one way things work and if I can't meet that mode of thinking then, well, I'm f'ing myself and it's really my own problem.

Unfortunately I've found that the jarring can lessen even while you're still around/living with the person if you're with em for long enough. When John and I were first married I think I was a lot more zoomed into him than I am now after 9 years. Over the last few years it seems like he's fading more and more into that same distant spot as everyone else. It's taking more effort to avoid that big picture tendancy even at home with him, which can really be a problem especially if it progresses any further in that direction - time to start drilling myself even harder than I have been when it comes to that because it's scary to see where it could lead to.

Ouch, hope your able to sort that out with him. Is he still avoidant about meeting other people with AS or have you had less contact with Hangout members? I was gonna say that if you were able to get him to see what it is in you though meeting other people with it that it might help him to have a better sense of it and a better sense of you as well. Then again, it really just depends on how strong that gut-level aversion is - I'd like to think everything will work out for the best between you two.

Well he hasn't met any real-deal aspies but we do have several friends/aquaintences who are probably aspies and I also have a bunch of likely-aspie/HFA relatives. Unfortunately what I've noticed with those people is that generally he doesn't enjoy being around them - they're just too "different". What I can't figure out is if that's the case, then how did he end up marrying me? And how have we managed to be very happily married all this time? I think a lot of it probably comes down to the different subtypes of AS - he finds some more enjoyable to be around than others. He needs to meet more aspies who are more like me... too bad he was so opposed to meeting you when we had the opportunity. It's not just aspies, he tends to be the same way about 'different' people in general. He's pretty skiddish about even meeting the people I take care of at work. As for contact with Hangout members, I only had that one meetup with Mmitch a year and a half ago. Laser222 lives nearby but she doesn't seem too interested in meeting.

As for the distance I mentioned (being more zoomed out with him), the problem there is all on my end and he doesn't even seem to be too bothered by it. I just wanna make sure that bit of distance I'm starting to feel isn't going to progress to a point where it becomes a problem.

Last edited by neongrl on 12 Dec 2005, 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.