Who has a "Self?"

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Thankyou millie, I'm growing to like you quite a lot. Speaking of art, I really should go paint a base layer on my larger canvas... (wanted to start tracing yesterday, but the lightbulb on the projector screen I borrowed broke so now I have to somehow locate a new one of that specific type )

I know what you mean. I tottaly get the concept as I feel fragmented myself and even create alter-egos.

Now THERE we go!! ! subtopic misdiagnosis & IPS (Ironical PS)

did i just hear someone utter the word ALTER / ALTERS ???
and i am not even going to look up whether this be a female or male fickle pickly, until i submitted thissssssss:


as said elsewhere: i present on the "passive" of "female" side of let's call it psycho-status (i have seen more men like thhat here, i remember thinking in the WhatfinallyMadesense-thread WOW, noahveil, you and your wife: he more on the female side she more on the male 'traditional', 'typical' side of autistic presentation:

the lack, or better: affected self-"function" results in let's phrase carefully, an affected INCOMPLETE (social) PERSONA rather than personality, when it comes to social behaviour

Persona: implying that many resding this, will recognize how i ALWAYS at bbest feel i am playing, not a role, but myself

there is no other social me available to give: it has to be as open a version of you as me (you) can possibly muster - auties do not draw energy from social contact (NT's do!! !!, through 'mirroring')

This necessarily role-play-restricted persona, is presented by a being necessarily, to whatever extent NOT him/herself, hence insecure, not grounded, not in sync, not on an even keel, lacking "weight"

and no wonder this persona may be either aloofly stable (for social anxiety) of go overboard on the active side - but yes, logically, very oddly so

THIS is why many unrecognized auties arre still being misdiagnozed (mis treated) under the headings:
- adhd / add
- manic depression (especially if specified type II ??)
- borderline pd, including my atypical version thereof
and yes, the one thing I never considered but am extremely fascinated about (so much recognition still!!)
- DID (multiple personality syndrome)

These are all more typically female presentations (and 'creatively intelligent' or 'íntelligently creative' - especially DID), in my view due to a certain social plyability that comes with having a femaleish brain

as DID is causatively very similar to post-traumatic stress syndrome (more specifically almost exclusively caused by huge trauma at very early age - child abuse), i am will ing to consider PTSD for the listing above.

there is more; but waiting for input from you: suffice it to say that the 'aloof' presentation could easily be misread for schizoid PD
(also considered, with schizo-typal as a distant candidate

ALL of this i deem part of what in my case was called the AXIS II diagnosis: personalty disorder NOS, which i call IPS

oops

millsigrly, thank you a thousand times:
1. my god is called LOU REED
2. his mohamed, loving carolining in berlin,
3. if me cooooooool (voice low) may i call you ALASKA

pretty pleaeaeaeaeaeaeaeaezzzzzz....?

hey oblio - you speak my experience as over the course of mylife i was previously dx'ed or told all of he above except for bi-polar.


you also mention "mirroring." i can do that cognitively to some degree in the second half of my life - similarlher children comment on the "acting" and forced animation in exchanges with others ---- to what liane holliday willey talks about - haveing learned to do it second half of my life. but if i have to go into the social realm and work that hard to keep up, i end up with migraines and white shards of glass in my brain - like a short circuit and exhaustion.

Very accurate description of my life story. I suspect that other factors may make this condition more intense. As an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, much of my emotional development was stunted. However, AS/NLD symptoms also match and magnify this feeling of others 'moving on' while we stay stuck.

Others experience with this does help me to see this fragmented part of myself as not something to fear or condemn. It is just another beautifully laid out ceramic tile design that makes us unique.

dear millie,

you must have noti... #$$%$#%$#%$ sry

you have noticed how careful i have been in choice of word, for a number of reasons, the main one that it is essential to me to keep some track of the me before & the me after,
this defining moment may only remain defining on the proviso that i actually remain capable of defining it.

Next, i believe i have something to add to the rather autistic debate on autism, precisely because i am so 'a-typical'(which i strongly believe i am not!);
in retrospect, it can be maintained that there is, on a certain level of structure, nothing i have newly learnt from reading e.g. Utah Frith, or Attwood, for that matter
(details & jargon, yeah, thats the point of language acquisition).

The point being: I am aware of a certain unique talent of lets assume linguistic observation; plus a ruthlessly honest view of myself foremost - and I have come so close to selfunderstanding completely independently, that i am now left withh only one party to 'blame' (NOT): me....
How could I possibly not have seen. I had everything, for ever, it is all there to be seen - it is all that autism that can be so easily go unnoticed and mistaken in identity.

And I can forgive myself, as I can point to those who should havve known better, but should they, no, they could not. I am so relieved I have managed to find my rolling stone to crawl away under when it came to psychiatry or psyychoitherapy: I WAS RIGHT not to trust them, unconsciously I have always KNOWN that these things, these weird other labels, were somehow NOT applicable, however I had to acknowledge the possibility -
I had no alternative knowledge....

The only information I had not gathered about myself is that is wasn't just simply littl' ol' oblio being being his lack of self, no there were so many others like him, at least a WPlanet Packed with idiots like me

(gosh, i am typing this to the Led; that ol', yup)

All that be as may, it does mean that really work from the basic assumption that I only need to tranlate my verbal view of me in more general phrasing, to achieve an INDEPENDENTLY constructed perpective of the mattter, untainted by traditional verbology, which hides as much as of not more than it actually reveals.


IT IS PRECISELY THE TRIAD THAT HAS MADE YOU&ME INVISIBLE


I have already had to use a bit of the thought&wording from where i hope&expect this thread to lead; the word mirroring however was considered too specific too soon but i did want that 'other' matter out of the way - and you did not quite get me.

There is a new(ish) topic in the debate, already mentioned with some hope for future direction by Frith herself, in a later edition (4, seems to present itself most anxiously in my memory).

and it IS called: mirroring. This then must be the time for some more reading. I do not believe this has any bearing on my argument, as it concerns only the biological basis of autism, and not how it is presented (in any sense of the word) by interpretative humanities sciences at best.

The 'mirroring' you refer to is in a sense just an image for a certain cognitive process. What if you take the very same thought to an entological level:
assume there IS, biologically, a system in the brain that would provide the hardware architecture for a mirroring process.

(The topic has been tackled here&there on WP, i just am not quite ready yet - you have forced my hand with your lost Self, woman!)

Read (as easy a read as fascinating):

Marco Iacoboni; Mirroring People, The New Science of How We Connect With Others; New York (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) 2008 [ISBN 978 90 5712 2767]

I will have something to mention in terms of referral where it concerns our topic.

Touched by pm, I remain, yours, truly

Perhaps different people define the idea or concept of the "self" in different ways.

What is the self?

I define myself in terms of things I observe and think about in the physical environment. I define myself in terms of the experiences I have in the physical world and what my personal preferences are regardless of what anyone else thinks. I also define myself with reference to any projects I've undertaken and my own interests.

For instance, if I hear a song on the radio that I like musically, I will remember the title and buy it later. This is regardless of the song's cultural or temporal context. I don't even care who the artist is or what they look like, just how the music sounds, the aesthetics and what the message is.

I think that others may define themselves in terms of the people in their social circle or the people they associate with on a regular basis. Perhaps people feel comfortable defining themselves by copying the style of the people in their social group. Perhaps they define themselves by the social and emotional experiences they have within that particular group.

Maybe others only buy music that matches the culture and views of their social group. Perhaps they are not blind to the social context of the song or admire the artist as a person for the artist's physical appearance.

Since I've never really permanently belonged to any clique (maybe my herding instinct is impaired?), I don't really have a "social compass". I have just collected various points of view and philosophies from different groups and adopted the ones that I like the best. I collect experiences and store them in my head for later.

if there is anybody out there with some true knowledge about psychological conceptualization, i guess this would be the time to jump in and

HELP: is there a doctor in the house??!

We need some reliable, neutral, unbiased input as to how SELF has historically been defined, and see if that can lead us somewhere.

What do we feel intuitively would constitute (a) SELF?

Remember: this is not asking after any autistic self (or lack thereof): i first want to establish what any 'normal' self would be made up of.
So, auti.aspie: think, imagine, about what it could possibly be that you have not that makes normal people tick as they do, where we may ever only achieve tic, and, sorry OP, fragmentation back on topic.

Come on millie!
i am asking you to dance this one with me...

we can do this

my view is that is it homoegeneity that exists because of an ABSENSCE of intensities.
even reading ambereye's post i was struck with her relationship to music. for me, everthing i like and do is prefaced by a phenomenal instensity. the only time i have ever me peopl who are similar is in this autistic community. (and not everyon i might add....just some people.)

i have spent a lot o f years in therapy like neshamaruach and others. i relate very much to her experiences - in that for years she was told her journey to being "complete" as about finding this whole self inside that is relational and in existence around other people.
that is what i was also told to strive for at rehab and in therapy. i know many people who have attended therapy sessions which are very much about a fusion of disparate elements in themselves, fractured by addiction. (they have addiction but no AS histories.) what i noticed over a decade was that the bulk of these people seemed to become more whole and herdsih and happy to be homeneous. now, i have been down the same track and the approach has led me to feel limited, constricted, suicidal and unmet. when i would present the real "me" to sessions - the one that stims and the one that can talk about intensities for ages and the one who is rigid and routined and wants to be alone and reduce contact with others et etc etc - and who eats with the same cutlery etc (the list goes on) - i am told by therapists that these are disparate parts and fragments that need to be frigging HEALED or some such jargon. they are problematic atypical expressions. but for me they are not psychopatholgy or problem - they ARE who i am. FOr others, they ARE psycholopathologies and oddities and a removal of these intensities leads to wholeness and peace. this is how i differ from my recovering addict acquaintances. it is starkly apparent i am not quite the same. it i ssubtle and there. it is most noticeable at home where who i really am is most expressed. (which is why i do not go out very much.)

for example, when i am walking along a path, it is the details i focus on - these strange patterns and pavement cracks and the leaves scattered at the side of the path and the way the bitumen crumbles and the way there are slight undulations in the levelling and t he way the cracks develop a systematic series of linear veins over the course of the walk. then i might move onto a boardwalk section of the path and the splinters in the wood and the gaps that exist become of essential importance. i could write pages here, but i shall refrain for the sake of brevity. this ogoing experience of detail and my fusion with it in the moment is what makes me me. now, my sense of who i am is relational with objects and details and art and painting and music. it is not relational with people face to face. i can do it. i can get connection via email and phone, but it is very tiring and at times distressing if i have to try to bring myself to communicate with another person face to face because i have to cobble all these elements together. a person with a normal self doesn't have to even consider teh question.

on the other side of the path, a group of women my age are talking. they are talking about the food in the restaurant at the resort where we are and the way the children are playing together and their plans for the day and each has similar views and also a kind of relationship to themselves that grows in relation to others. perhaps this is mirroring......what they are doing i can these days fudge and pretend - a little blankly or overkeenly and with an internal monologue that professes ('what the f#ck are these people on about? what DO they goet off on,because this is weird and boring and total crappola to me....")

the other issue to consider is that postmodernism in philosophy and art kind of got it in a sense that it proposed a NO SELF kind of approach. the postmodern world is a world of fragmentations. well, this is true, but i think we are at a kind of pinnacle with it in terms of the intensity of out fragmentations or special interess with ASD's.HOwever, most modern therapies and religions point to the notion of self and the soul - and i do use these terminologies in spite of their linguistic and ontological limitations in my case because they are convenient.....
that is why postemodernism is hated by some christian academics like my uncle.


anyway, if you put me with the group of women who are walking along at this resort, they would see me and think i am a weirdo if they read this. and i think for the most part they are boring tossers.

you will receive due response, but may be a very uncontrollable evening, so i am not even bothering right now;

just wanting to note i somewhat autistically smirked at your very last turn of phrase, that sort of tells a thousand&some words about inaptness

o, and i am quite sure you did not refer to THIS resort, did you now?


only apparantly (keep forgetting -[i]ently or -antly, same as assistent/assistant.. never quite sure, deeply frustrating)[/i]
off topic:

are there any human activities you enjoy watching, preferably with at least a shadow of that intensity you describe; eg do you like watching sports, even individual athletics, or the circus for similar mattter, human activity you WATCH with emotionally charged interest, i.e. identification

don't think about where i want to take this, just need an answer, any answer in the positive will do me to take it further

millie grazie! [bows, taking hat off, tongueincheeked upward glance]

i enjoy watching people a lot. i know a great deal about human interaction. i like to watch the tour de france - that consumes me each july. i also stare at people and try to figure them out.

it is simply that the interactions are mostly trite and boring.
and tiring.
i love to watch lots of thing re people. it is enjoyable to analyse.

why do i always notice these interesting threads just before my bed time

well to put it really short since i need to go,

well i can relate and ive been thinking about it allot, and from what ive discovered it seems like my mind is like a lighthouse and by that i mean my mind can only recognize/be aware of the parts that are illuminated by the lighthouse at any given time and as we all know the lighthouse light goes around and so is never completely still, what this in practice means for my mind is that i feel like a whole series of fragments of something bigger which i cannot grasp due to lack of lighting...i would like to experience the oneness, but so far ive not found it...i have not tried too many drugs and whatnot, but i am sure there is a solution out there...

will read this thread better tomorrow:)

I encountered a very able female (a PhD no less!) who expressed similar views, so maybe it's a female thing, but male autistics have no conflict with broad interests.

I don't think it's a female thing, because I have a self that doesn't feel fragmented. But to me, the important thing isn't whether the self feels fragmented, but whether a) it feels atypical and b) it feels easy to keep in focus.

When I'm alone, I have a very strong sense of self. I can remember this from when I was a child. Each year, I'd say to myself, wow, I'm older and older, and yet, I'm the same. The essence of me is the same. I could feel it, almost tangibly, as a child. I can still feel it to some degree now, but there have been many more twists and turns in the road that have shifted my consciousness since then.

When I'm overloaded, I couldn't find my self if you led me by the nose directly to it and shouted "Here you are!! !" I feel as though I've been emptied out entirely. I'm still walking and talking and breathing and digesting my food, but it feels very empty inside me nonetheless. Like I'm just a shell and my self is gone, gone, gone.

A few months ago, before my diagnosis, my husband and I went out to see a movie. We didn't realize that Pete Seeger was playing a concert at the movie theatre that night, in the main theatre, while the moviegoers would be packed into the smaller theatres. So we walked up to the ticket window, and there were all these people around, many more than usual, and everyone was talking in a very small space, and people were walking back and forth and gesturing to each other. It was loud and busy and felt like chaos. I went into immediate overload.

My husband took one look at me and said, "You're gone, aren't you?"

And I just smiled and said "Yup. Gone."

I don't think that happens to most people.

What helps me most is my sense that I have a pure soul that can't be damaged by anything, although in the light of the AS diagnosis, I wonder how I will experience things when my soul finally leaves my body. I mean, you hear about people with near-death experiences walking toward a bright light. Will I do that? Or will I resist it and get a migraine?

Well I know I have tremendous difficulty identifying or understanding my emotions. I can tell if my emotions are "big" or "small" and less frequently can tell if they are positive or negative. I usually function on a "comfortable" and "uncomfortable" system. If something makes me comfortable I am attracted to it, if uncomfortable I learn to avoid it, but even that can take a while to process. I often feel that I am feeling my way around in the dark because my emotions are so estranged and indiscernible to me. So if emotions are the "self" then yes, I have trouble understanding if I have a self and what that self is...