In my experience, psychology books are useful... up to a point. There's many psychological shared concepts between AS and NT. 'Self-esteem', for example, is a valid concept AS and NT. But there's a big problem with AS and 'normal' psychology: NT people happens to lie to themselves a lot. Why is this a problem for AS? Let me tell you a story.
For years, I felt blocked when I was single or in a friends-with-benefits relationship. Everytime I talked about it (and it has been many years) the only answer I got was kind of 'you don't know how to be alone', 'you need to learn to love yourself', and so. And everytime I was saying 'hey, it's not that, I'm very well alone, it's something else' the answer was 'you're lying to yourself'. Why? Because this is how it works always for NT people. No way to explain people that I can't lie to myself (now I know it's because AS).
Now I'm discovering that I think/remember through a kind of abstract emotions. So unblocking in relationships was a collateral effect: I jus unblocked in emotional situations because I couldn't avoid abstract emotional thinking. Now I know, I can unblock either single or not, not needing to draw on emotional situations any more for this reason.
The big problem with AS and psychology is that sometimes you feel that some psychological theory/advice is wrong for you, but people accepts it as a dogma for everybody (included you, of course). I hated psychology for years because of that. And the other big problem is that, as NT use to lie to themselves, if you say that something in the standard NT psychology is wrong for you, the official answer is that you're lying to yourself. So psychology, that is supposed to help, becomes nonetheless the cause of a fake charge upon you.
My piece of advice? Psychology books are interesting. But if you really feel that in some aspects of your life they're wrong about you, trust on you. And check Asperger books, of course.
16 Jun 2012, 12:49 am
