Some of me saying Hi

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Hi.

I wasn't planning to do this now, but there seems to be an immense internal pressure directed at Saying Something Already; so I'll just go type and see what happens.

Officially, I'm a 23-years-old autistic female, living at her parents' house in a country of which most of the inhabitants don't speak English (well, they mangle it). (They have a - potentially - beautiful language of their own, but generally it's being horribly mistreated.)

Unofficially, it's hard to say who I am really. I've always had "people" in my head, and I experience big changes in consciousness and functioning (I don't mean moods, though they can be part of it) - perhaps because my autism makes it impossible for all the aspects of my being to be held within the same awareness. This has caused a lot of trouble, sometimes externally with other people but especially internally, since any mental configuration that was prominent at any given time would be convinced it was "the real me", and some would deny the existence or validity of other parts/states. The reverse has also happened: a higher-functioning state thinking that a more childlike, emotionally connected state was the "real self", and that everything else was to be considered a mask, a persona, a false self. I can tell you, it is extremely painful to come to the conclusion that one is not real; especially since it is just not possible to face the consequences and cease to exist without simultaneously taking out what you think is the "real self".

That misery is over now, though. It's been "mutually" decided that every level of functioning, aspect, persona, hemisphere, mindset, configuration, subpersonality, or whatever, in here has the same validity. Mostly I came to this decision by myselves, but reading certain websites and books has helped. I've lived with this new view of me (us?) for a couple of months now, and it's been... oh, liberating, to finally make it mentally explicit, give words to it. It's still hard to tell who's who, and it's confusing to have so many "shadows" of neurological stuff in this here head as well: tics, obsessions, and anxieties which can also seem to have minds of their own.

The biggest difficulty left now, however, is external: who to tell, and what to tell. Whereas I am convinced my internal state(s) of affairs is/are fairly "normal" even within the bounds of traditional psychology (after all, most of it could be explained by psychosynthesis), most people probably don't share this view, and think it is a sign that Something Is Not Quite Right. Especially if the "states" look very different and you give them names, this idea can be quite strong. Since I am (to put it mildly) not very happy about "mental health professionals", I find it rather disturbing when people I know seem to suggest I should see one. [that sounds real snaky... hiss, hisss] [must be an unintentional euphuism ]

It is my hope that this forum will be relatively "safe" in that respect. I've been a member of a different forum for a while now, and I've noticed it's very hard to keep up the appearance of personal consistency; I find myselves expressing views and attitudes that are not exactly contradictory, but still noticeably out of alignment, so I can imagine people thinking, "What the blazes does she really think?" This is one reason I immediately tell this about myself here. Another is that I would be interested to hear if other autistic people have (had) experiences similar to mine. I know quite a few of us have personas, and some "regress" (I actually don't believe in that word), and I already saw a thread here about switching between hemisperes, so it can't be entirely unfamiliar to at least some of you.

A note on why I/we chose this forum:
I've seen quite a few. This seems like a big active one. But what I find most important about a forum is the general attitude of the people who post on it. I've seen some Aspergia-based sites and forums, and some of it seemed really great, but I didn't like the attitude of "Aspergian" superiority. God knows I resent the implied notions of NT superiority seemingly held by most people, but the reverse isn't so good either. It's already hard enough to get some NTs (the normalists) to understand that when you say you're not inferior, you don't mean you're superior; "different but equal" seems to be a hard concept to grasp for them. Overcompensating is a very human thing to do [I see people doing it all the time when they interact with me! ] but it doesn't solve anything. So I like the way this site distinguishes itself from Aspergia.

As you may have guessed, several of me wrote different parts of this. To make the whole me/us thing nicely confusing for you: sometimes I feel like a "me", sometimes we feel like an "us", sometimes one of us feels like a "me", and sometimes it's not clear. Wonderful, isn't it? Don't know how to make that clear enough in posts yet; names, colors?

Last edited by echospectra on 29 Nov 2004, 8:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I tend to see myself(s) as if I am a magnificent multi-faceted diamond. No side quite the same as another but all shining in their own fire-like, sparkling brilliance.

( At least this is how I see myself on a good day )

The we of me wish you a warm welcome.

That's funny, i have a similar thing. Inside my head, we are 2. There is me, and there is my helper. She is the one with who i dialog, she is the one that go into my memory to retreive things i need, she is the one who presents me solutions to the problem i'm working on, she is the one who draws on my internal screen....

Unfortunatly, she sometimes brings info that are not good, i have to revise everything before letting it going out. Sometimes i dont do that screening and that's when i got into trouble

BTW: i'm a male, i don't know why i attribute a female caracter to her, thats how i feel it

Hi!!

Hello Echo
You sound really cool, and I can relate very much to what you are saying. I like to think of this as a painfully high level of self awareness. I do believe that everyone has these different parts going on, but most people are not concious of them. I went through this whole question of which one was me and all and I determined that I was the objective one, the one that saw all of the others. That still left me feeling a little hollow and I subsequently did a whole lot of reading. I do think that some sense of unity is helpful, trancendence might be better though. If you would like to discuss this more thoroughly I would enjoy it. But I'll stop now before I start to ramble on.

Hi monastic,

I heard of a director who used that picture. It was about how an actor creates every character out of him/herself, somehow.

Last edited by echospectra on 28 Nov 2004, 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

One of me (female) had a male dialog person like that for a long time. I guess the Jungians would say it's an anima/animus thing.

Hi "wherefore"(?) [edit: always obnoxiously guessing at meanings...],

My habitual self is a bit surprised at finding herself thought cool all of a sudden. Mostly pleasantly surprised. I'm basking in my new aura of coolness . (Yeah, and one of me is suddenly very actively in hiding.) [edit: I don't know where the idea came from that this was a "habitual" self... she used to be, though; years and years ago.]

That's exactly... Well, I think that is true. I read this book about "subpersonalities" and it seemed to say it's, nota bene, a sign of maturity if you have them. Which brings up the question why I've been feeling so messed up about having/being them. People telling you it's not real when a kind of involuntary Gestalt therapy session happens while you're walking home from the train (it happened to me!). As if you're not supposed to find out about that until a therapist tells you how to do it. "Nobody's putting thoughts into your head", I was told. Implied message: "You were delusional, or maybe you imagined being delusional, it's wrong, ignore it." (Later, paradoxically, they said they were "addressing your healthy part now, not your sick part". I screamed inside: "There aren't two of me!" They were just so inconsistent. It scared me.)

The part about "painfully": Yes, absolutely. At least part of this is a way to work around what Donna Williams calls "exposure anxiety", the extreme shyness and terror-of-being-seen in autism. I've tried to get rid of what I thought were personas for a while, but I noticed I was trying to cut off flesh, not a costume. So I stopped trying that. Framing it the way I/we do now actually helps the "shy" people to see life more positively. (E.g., the me that's in hiding doesn't actually try to prevent another me from writing a message back; which hasn't always been that way.)

Last edited by echospectra on 30 Nov 2004, 5:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Huh, what? I turned from an emu egg into a butterfly? And I was so looking forward to being an emu! What have they done to me?!

The following is a more or less systematic jumble of some things that interest us/me. Which doesn't always mean we/I are/am (an) expert(s) on them. [:roll: If anyone can come up with a convenient pronoun for something between "I" and "we", they will have my eternal gratitude.]

"classical" music (most of which isn't classical)
some "popular" music that isn't very popular (now)
film music (sometimes the films, too)

somewhat older English literature (like Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson) and poetry (much of which most of us don't "get", but would like to)

fiction and non-fiction by "mythopoeic" authors like the Inklings (J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and others), G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald; George MacDonald's friend Lewis Carroll (mostly the "snarky" stuff); Inklings' friend Dorothy L. Sayers; and the guy many of them were fans of, Dante

the fast-growing collection of books and websites written by autistic people; the portrayal of autistic characters in fiction; possibly autistic people in history (both real and fictional); disabilities and other differences that are similar to and/or tend to coincide with autism, such as Tourette Syndrome; autism in the context of disability rights and disability studies; other "different ways of being"

disability theology, gay theology, and other non-mainstream theology; I'd love to see a theology of multiplicity [clue: subcreation?]

old testament history & chronology, some non-canonical writings, and other old stuff most christians don't bother to read or think about (but someone has to, right? )

the creative process in acting and writing, how characters and stories are made

tv shows (alphabetical order):
The A-Team (Murdock. need I say more )
The Avengers (old-fashioned cars! old-fashioned robots! old-fashioned time machines!)
Early Edition (great premise, philosophical & funny & moving)
Ellen (makes me really really laugh)
Buffy (the dialogue & the "myth", not the violence) [pooh, I like the violence ; it's nicely choreographed]
Miss Marple (delightfully slow-paced)
Monk (great comedy with an undiagnosed autistic title character)
Poirot (athmosphere)
The Pretender (some truly great characters; oddly catholic)
Star Trek (esp. DS9)
The X-Files (the early and middle seasons, when it was still potentially consistent)
and others

and oh, other things as well