glider18's Wonderful World of Autism

Post Reply New Topic

glider18, I could say here what you told me on PM, and that would end the discussion. However, telling here what another wrote you on a PM is against T&C, as you well know. So let's just leave YOU to fight dirty instead of having an honest and productive discussion. I'm not interested in power games, just argument for the sake of enlightenment. If this is how you defend your points, by breaking T&C and playing the "I was so nice to you" game, then it's too low a level for me to learn anything from. Not to mention, there's nothing POSITIVE in your attitude. So long.

It is time to look ahead to the future at our goals. I know that sometimes I fail to complete goals, but it is always fun to work at them anyway. So what if there is a half-finished coaster model sitting on my desk? There will be time to finish it later. My main "intense focus beam" is now resting on this novel. I would never have imagined I would be working on a novel. Fiction is not my thing, but it is fun trying. Sometimes it is good to clean the mind by trying things a little different for us. For me, the entry into fiction is interesting as I try to manage fictional characters' relationships with each other---whoa! It is good to exercise the mind in this manner. I guess to try something challenging like this could be thought of as a Spring cleaning as we focus on new things. What new things would some of you like to try?

Glider18,
I'm so glad you started this thread. I can see that in the past when I've approached anything with enthusiasm I have done well and when I've approached with anxiety or fear I've got what I expected, failure.
Sadly, since I realised I was on the spectrum last October it caused me to remember all the rejections I have had from people and the problems I've had without realising why. I was seeing a psychologist at the time with my teen son who has since been diagnosed aspie. The psychologist constantly tried to put me off talking about asperger's, told me I was pathologising and generally invalidated me.
So now I am in the depths of a depression.
I have a wonderful internet friend I met on an aspie forum who has the worst of circumstances as he also has multiple physical disabilities. He is the most warm and compassionate person I have met despite being in a group home with limited privileges, treated like a minor despite his high intellect, and constantly being expected to act like an NT to be allowed to do things that others take for granted. I am privileged to have him helping me.
I see a thread like this as inspiring and wish there were more of them. I know I can get out of this depression without mind altering anti-depressants with the help of uplifting and positive help even though sometimes positive messages can grate a bit when I feel so different.
I need to work on procrastination problems and hope others will give us some hints, but right now I just need to find my happy self again.

Many thanks for just being here.

Hello Itsallrosie. I can share with you on the experience of enthusiasm and anxiety in regards to approaching things. Lately, I have been experiencing anxiety issues---which I have from time to time. Right now, school is almost over for the summer and we teachers are hurriedly working on finalizing grades. Changes to routines can cause anxiety. My interests help with anxiety, and in the past I have even played solitaire on my computer to help relieve my anxiety. I often need my own personal quiet time and space. Do you have that?

I hear a lot about people's experiences with therapists/doctors similar to yours. I have been fortunate in finding a therapist that has worked well with me, but this often not the case. When I was diganosed last November, I began replaying my life and remembering all those awkward times in my life. But, I also remembered all the wonderful times---and I began focusing on those. I had all of my family's old 8mm home movies transferred to DVD and began watching segments of my life with a new perspective. I was analyzing all of my peculiar movements, odd walk, etc. But...I was having fun. Well...most movies taken of the children are of them having fun. We generally don't take movies of the terrible moments. I guess that has been a philosophy of mine recently (though I don't always follow it---I am human)---to focus on life like a home movie camera---capturing the good. And replaying the good. And thinking about "good" films to take in the future.

You do have a great advantage in this friend of yours at the group home. One thing I have learned from reading people's needs on the WP is the importance of a friend that you can talk with that seems to understand you. Actually, you probably help him too---and that is a gift.

Procrastination can be an interesting thing in our lives can't it? I have tried to write things down on a calendar that need to be done. If there is no particular deadline for the "thing", I will try to write down a date that is should be completed by. I think writing down schedules and lists is a healthy way for us to deal with procrastination issues.

And yes, you need to find your happy-self again. I often sound like a broken record, but I will say it again...I think many of us can find our happiness in our interests and/or gifts. What interests do you have that give you satisfaction/happiness? Do you have gifts? If not, look for them...I think you might find some.

Keep informing me on the forum here at how you are doing. I do think we all deserve to be happy. Best wishes.

Glider18, I completely agree that you have to go and re-do the things you love, and it makes you feel a whole lot better.

Since discovering that many of my traits my be related to AS a few weeks ago, I've found myself from time to time in a weird headspace. Obsessing, overthinking, overanalyzing, sure... I guess that's part of the condition. In my head I know that nothing is really different, but sometimes I have felt rather disconnected and not myself as a result... as if the logical and the emotional were way out of whack.

Doing the things I love to do (playing tunes with friends and at dances, mostly) has helped me re-center and make me feel like myself again. It reminds me very strongly that I am still just me, I have always been me, and nothing really has changed.

Positive Attributes of AS for me:

-Good long-term memory.

-An interest in collecting "small objects." I'm now enjoying taking a bunch of random stuff I started collecting at age 17 and displaying it in shadow boxes. The stuff includes old school toys, keys, old tools, etc.

-An interest in animals, and the ability to properly care for exotic animals that most people simply buy impulsively and then ignore. (Right now I'm into my pet rats).

Hi Gaya. I am glad you enjoy interests too. I always found displaying my prized items as rewarding---but I never used shadow boxes---those sound neat. It's good to properly care for exotic animals---that is a gift. All we have at my house is fish---I don't think I would properly be able to take care of those types of animals. The rats sound interesting. Please post some more if you like---your interests sound...interesting .

Lol, I have interesting interests. I never thought of it that way before.

I don't know if this is AS-related or not but when I was a teenager I'd create these wild paintings. I could spend hours absorbed working on them. When some druggie friends of mine saw them, they said "Whoa! You can reach your unconscious without drugs? Are you sure you weren't on drugs when you painted these?" (I've never done drugs and they knew it). Temple Grandin wrote something once about autistics lacking an unconscious, because all the stuff most people have in their unconscious we have in our conscious. I think that's pretty neat, if it's true. Maybe that's why psychoanalytic therapy doesn't generally work for people on the spectrum! (Psychoanalytic therapy is all about reaching the unconscious). Then again, Carl Jung said an avenue for reaching the unconscious is painting, so maybe what I did wasn't all that AS-related.

That is very deep Gaya---very deep. I have never thought about the conscious/unconscious scenario before. I have no definite opinion on this---Are your paintings AS inspired? Or non-AS inspired? I am stumped.

What does intrigue me though is your remark, "I could spend hours absorbed working on them." Were these hours spent taking you away from the social interaction with NTs? In other words, did this absorption into painting hinder your social life? If it did, then it sounds very much like what my interests did/and still do do to me. They absorb me into them in such a way that today---I have no friends. I have family...yes...but friends in the sense of how NTs have friends---no.

But then you mention Carl Jung and his opinion of paintings reaching the unconscious. So if his philosophy is true---then perhaps we have no way of knowing if AS has driven your talent.

I will be thinking about this. It is most interesting. I do believe though that if you have AS, then there is a pretty good possibililty that your painting is an AS gift. Very good post---it should make anyone who reads it think deeply.

Thanks, glider18. You're one of the nicest people ever.

I think the paintings may have been AS-inspired, as one day I suddenly decided I wanted to go buy materials to paint with and couldn't think about anything else. It was an obsessive deal for me. I, too, frequently become absorbed in stuff and prefer whatever I'm absorbed in to social interaction. I had friends when I made the paintings and I have friends now, but most of the time I have a very regimented way of seeing my friends. I see them at the same time of the week, and I only see one at a time. (Currently). I'm much better one-on-one, and I don't like to spontaneously decide to hang out with someone unless I'm very close to the person.

Of course, the unconscious that Freud talked about was different from the one Jung talked about. Freud was concerned with the personal unconscious, whereas Jung was concerned with the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is accesible to everyone, but I wonder if it's more easily accesible to those on the spectrum. The paintings I made seemed more collective unconscious-like than personal unconscious-like.

I kept thinking about this some more and I am wondering if I got the following right in respect to this topic.

So I encountered lots of people who said this isn't a trait of autism, but I don't know what else it's supposed to be if not a possible manifestation of my autistic spectrum disorder. It appears the opposite is frequently true for autistic people, day-dreaming, lessoned awareness about their surrounding but even more awareness for their inner nature. For me, my perception is different but clearly not normal, why-ever that is. There's a downside to it, sure thing - the connection between my perception and language ability isn't so good, over-awareness results in more overloads, drains me of more energy, hinders me at pretending to be like many others whose senses are duller than mine, and more - but there's also something originally special and mutual about it.

I so often marvel at other people who do not notice many things about their environment even if they pay attention to their surroundings. I am aware that this is basically advantageous, has its reason and right and that those people unlike me are likely to have all their abilities that I mentioned as problematic or defective above intact. And of course I also know that I sure, like those people, miss several things that my perception does not pick up on or which it blocks.

Yet I could imagine not being so extremely aware of the huge amount of stimuli around me. Just closing my eyes makes me feel distraught despite that I am perfectly able to navigate still as I rely on the heightened perception of my remaining senses. But is is truly frightening to experience that I am robbed of my perception, no matter how well working it is even then.

I see, hear, feel, taste and smell what's around me and I am fascinated by it as the many details that I perceive reflect that it is ever changing. I do not grow tired of watching things as there's always something new about them to explore. Slight differences depending on the changes in time and place.

Things do not get boring, old, I haven't finished exploring them because they're always wondrous anew for my details of realisation.

So in all things, even in things ugly, there's an utter beauty. A result of my fascination that things keep changing always.

Hi Gaya. Thank you for the compliment . After hearing how you describe your painting skills, I too agree that they sound AS inspired. A key point there is the preference to the interest over social interaction---so much the way I am too. Right now I am starting to get into the old pinball machines again. I am wanting to try to design my own using some of the computer software simulation stuff. I used to study psychology years ago, but I am a bit rusty on it now. But I find your discussion and analysis of psychology most interesting here. I think you should consider writing an essay/composition on this in reference to your paintings.

Hi Sora. I can say when I daydream I shut out to a large extent everything/everyone around me. About your different perspective here, I would say it is still an autistic thing. I heard recently at a lecture on autism that, "you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." I think that is so true. No two autistics are alike. I have Asperger's, but I doubt there is another Aspie like me (sorry if that term offends anyone---don't know what else to use). We're all different. According to one thread on WP that wanted us to identify our AS, it stated there were somewhere in the neighborhood of eight AS types. Like Gaya, I think you have an interesting basis for an essay/composition here. I especially like your final thought on your post that even in ugly things there is beauty. That is similar to what my goal of this thread is---that we that are autistic can find the positives/beauty in ourselves---and not place so much emphasis on the negative.

Thanks for the wonderful posts---I look forward to more.