Aspies and sense of identity

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I've noticed that most of the aspies I know (all men in their late 20s to early 50s) have a very low sense of their own identity. Since aspies mature different from their peers, many of these men seem like teenagers in some ways even in their 40s and 50s. I had a conversation with one and asked him to tell me about who he is and what he wants in life and he said "I don't know".

Is this lack of identity common among aspies?

When people aks me those kinds of questions I never know what to say, not because I don't know who I am, but because I have no way of explaining it to another person. To me the question is too big. I can't put the whole of my being into a couple of words, and I can't know what the other person would be interested in knowing either. So, if you ask me who I am, I know very well who I am, but I have no idea how to explain it to you.

EDIT: Ooooor you can just say it with an awesome graph!

Man, you're lucky to just come up with "I don't know" when somebody hits you with a question you don't have enough brainpower left to answer. Half the time, I end up spouting nonsense that isn't even halfway true, and I don't notice until later that I've done it. It's like, "insert a random question, get a totally random answer".

Derrr, I can't help spouting nonsense either.

Thats a great graph.i would add a couple more small pieces to it.the nonsense,i didnt do it often but it was easier when i don't know wasn't an option.
For me sometimes when i was fearful of the answer or response it was easier to say idk
Sometimes when i didn't want to sound like an ahole or sound condescending,idk is easier
And sometimes i just don't know

Dunno.

It's a possibility. Have you asked similar stuff of NT people for comparison?

There are studies on this actually! But, yes, current research suggests that people on the autism spectrum have trouble with their identity of self. These same studies conclude that most people on the autism spectrum have poor episodic memory as opposed to semantic memory, which they believe is vital to identity of self as well as feeling connected with other people and building relationships. Basically they think that people on the autism spectrum remember less about their distant lives than neurotypicals- they may "know" that something happened but not remember it in detail or may not be able to be emotionally connected to the event. If I knew how to upload attachments, I would post some articles on it.

I have only just realised this myself, that I don't have a good self identity.

I realised this when I went away to university, I totally lost myself their, I felt like I did not know who I was anymore, even with my important things like my books, laptop, mp3 player, radio, the things I associate with being happy did not seem the same anymore.

I found that my identity is so wrapped up with my house and road and the things I do everyday in my house and the people that come and visit that when I went away I felt like I was floating in space, this did not get better and I was almost put on mood stabilisers before freaking out completely and having to come back home again

I need to have familiar things around me to be secure in my identity it seems otherwise its jut too much

I don't know how people adjust to leaving their homes just like that, it makes no sense at all

I have nearly zero episodic memory myself. I also feel like a piece of tofu tossed and dragged through a confusing hodgepodge of marinades whenever I attempt to socialize. I can take on other people's flavors so strongly and become so lost that I've had to learn to hold onto impulse controll if nothing else and to retreat into solitude asap. So you can definitely say I have identity issues. I've come to conclude after much burn out and abuse that I can only maintain some semblance of identity if I am alone a large majority of the time (and even then its transitory). That said, even if I did have a strong identity I would falter at such an open ended question.

Why did you mention the part about them seeming like teenagers? Do you think that?s relevant for your question? Based on a lot of my tastes and how I feel I?d say my default setting is upper teen or early 20?s at most. It was when I was a teen that I was truest/closest to myself, even though I was an untypical teenager.

I?ve never lacked a sense of identity, but if someone asks me out of the blue I might be stunned by the question, and wonder where to start and also why they asked. It would also matter who asked the question. If the person is someone I don?t know well and who I don?t see in a professional setting, the question would make me uncomfortable.
If the person asking is say someone from the employment agency, then I?d assume they want to know what line of work I could do and how I?d fit in there, so my focus would be on relevant traits.




Whut?? My experience is definitely that the opposite is the case! I remember a lot of episodes from my early childhood and on and they are almost all emotional in some way.

ASD is a developmental disorder. People on the spectrum often have very uneven abilities. Most people on the spectrum are isolated because of the nature of the disorder. Isolation magnifies the developmental delays. It's no mystery that many people on the spectrum behave differently than would be expected of one their biological age. I have often said that in some ways I have the maturity of a teenager. We can talk about how ' we are wired different' all day long, but at the end of the day it's still a developmental disorder.

How many people know who they are... really? Its an ongoing journey. Most people define themselves by the stations theyve been appointed in life. Im a high power businessman, Im a mother, Im a father, Im a politician. This encompasses their entire sense of self.

AFAIK there really isnt any data on aspies and identity. I mean there's no study on earth that could actually gather data on something so massively open ended. You'd need to try and work out indices for different markers of identity. So lets say you have

Gender
Nationality
Race
Political affiliation

And so on and so forth. You could probably build up a vague picture of identity among aspies through that in comparison to a control group of non aspies

Interesting. I know one guy with AS who seems to have an excellent episodic memory - he readily recalls stories from his life and tells them to others. We were writing a couple of articles together that were intended to help adults on the spectrum navigate their daily lives and he inserted a lot of anecdotes from his life that were on topic. I could barely recall any event from my life pertinent to each topic at all. I think some of it had to do with the fact that I perceive everything in a very fragmented way, so it's difficult to put things into a narrative or contextualize them.

That being said, I think I have developed a pretty good sense of self-identity through reading books about ASD and/or about other topics relevant to my behaviour and then actively analyzing my own behaviour in light of the things I have read. I think that, before I did this, I had a very poor sense of identity. I think my identity development was partially hindered by the fact that other people's behavioural mechanisms and ways of perceiving the world tend to be quite different from mine, so I couldn't identify with any group at all.