Something's wrong with me

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But I can't figure it out. This past Thursday and Saturday, I got up out of bed at Noon. My mom reprimanded me for it, and who could blame her, because getting up this late made me grouchy on Thursday, and draggy on Saturday. Saturday night, I could not sleep. I slept well for the first two hours, but then I started thinking too much about certain obsessions, and kept waking up to see what time it was. At 4:00 am, I started waking up more and more worrying about waking up at noon again, and when I discovered that it was starting to get lighter outside, I tried to stay awake. THis lack of sleep made me feel hungover. Sunday, my dad corrected me on keeping my hands away from my mouth. I reacted by firstly jerking violently every ten seconds, then complaining to my sister about how Dad treated me, and then yelling at Dad, and then discovering that I was in the wrong by flipping out, and that instead of flipping out, I could have gone outside to get some fresh air, and then use one of my relaxation tapes to help me recharge and put things in perspective.

I also am having trouble learning how to cook. I need to learn because I will need to learn how when I am out on my own, but also because I am tired of having mac n cheese for lunch, and want to try fried eggs. Unfortunately, when I set a day to learn how, I get all enthusiastic about it until the set day comes, then I get anxiety about screwing up or getting criticized for every little thing, or flying off the handle at my sister or losing focus. The above issues are being taken care of, but the cooking issue I need help with, because I want to learn how to cook. Mom said,"Oh, don't worry if you screw up, it's only food." But she's the one who paid for it, not me, and what if I screw up five times in a row? THese worries of mine keep making me too nervous to learn how to cook.

Re the sleep thing:

When I've been left to my own devices, I've functioned best by staying up till about 2 or 3 am and sleeping till noon or later. You may work the same way. The fact that most of the world doesn't, doesn't mean there's something wrong with YOU.

Re the cooking thing:

Why don't you ask your mom that last question? If she isn't worried about it, then you needn't worry about it either.

If you don't screw up, you will never learn. That's not just as AS thing, it's the same for all people. Nobody gets it right the first time. Never be afraid of failure!

I function best when I go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 9 or 10. Didn't you read the part of my post that said that I was grouchy and draggy from getting up late at noon? I nearly growled at the customers at work for crying out loud.

Are you cooking for the whole family? That would increase anxiety, because then you feel obliged to produce something they like. If that is it, ask to use the kitchen after the normal cook has finished and make something for yourself. Make it a rule to eat everything you cook unless it would harm your health. That will be motive enough to improve quickly, without pressure to produce something tasty for your family. Would you like me to pm you two or three recipes?

Gromit

It's not that I have trouble learning the recipes. In fact, today, I am planning on making myself fried eggs. The recipe is available in my mom's cookbook. And no, the meal is just for me. I just keep getting nervous about other things like screwing up, having a meltdown from trying to concentrate so hard, or just having a meltdown, losing focus, or daydreaming about ceiling fans or home theaters and getting distracted, etc. But I do want to learn how to cook, because the easy microwaveable meals are just not doing me justice anymore, and I can't keep making tuna sandwiches when I get sick of Easy Mac because my Mom, and even one of my aspie friends , told me that having too much tuna isn't good for you.

I don't know what it is, but I think I have experienced this all my life. Whenever I am about to learn something new that requires skill, whether it be driving, riding a bike(already mastered that at the age of six), bowling, or learning how to operate a new electronic device(I never used a computer by myself until the age of seventeen, unless it was for word processing), I get nervous and shaky inside.

You could try doing things like in chemistry labs, when someone tries a new synthesis. They write a protocol with all the steps and the time that each step takes. Then they go through every single step without the ingredients. If something takes longer than expected, the protocol is revised. Then they practice until they can go through the whole thing without error. Only after all that do they actually try the synthesis. In chemistry, avoiding errors may be important because the ingredients can be expensive, dangerous, or both.

In chemistry, they usually know how long each step takes. To make things simple, prepare all the ingredients before you start cooking. Then you won't have a problem with a step coming along before you have finished the previous one. Once you have a protocol, you can visualize it, go through all the steps in your mind until you have them all down. Or speak them onto tape, or make a sound file that you play through an mp3 player and listen to it when you start cooking. Then you will be reminded of each step in the proper sequence. Make the protocol as elaborate and systematic as you need. As you get better, you can make your protocols less detailed.

As you get a better feeling for how long the preparation of each ingredient takes, you can introduce parallel processing, where you start cooking one ingredient which needs a long time, and only then prepare an ingredient that needs less cooking time.

Do you think this would work? If it works for other skills as well, you could get back to us and report on it.

I just realise I break down new skills into lots of little steps and learn the sequence myself. Only the process has become automatic enough that I don't really notice anymore. Perhaps you just need to be a little more systematic to start with? If this works for you, in the long term you can probably develop a higher level protocol for learning new skills, or a set of high level protocols for different types of skills. See what happens.



True. Tuna is a top predator, so all sorts of fat soluble toxins have accumulated with each step in the food chain. Mercury is one of them, PCBs another. As a rule, try to eat from as low in the food chain as possible.

Gromit

Okay, at 12:30, my mom helped me make fried eggs. She cracked one egg, and I cracked the other. I did a pretty good job, aside from breaking the yolk inside the egg that I cracked. I almost thought it was ruined, but MOm did reassure me that breaking an egg properly takes lots of practice, and that it's only food, and I'm going to be eating it.

The one thing you should always do is set the oven timer, even if you are only boiling stuff. Then it doesn't matter so much if you get sidetracked.
Assemble all the ingredients & tools you need to cook first. After that it's easy, you'll see.