Why Not Change?

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I think we all know whining won't change anything. But it can be terribly therapeutic.

What I don't always know is how to tell the difference.

A friend of mine once said to me that in any given part of the autistic community, you've got people doing their absolute best all the time but never getting where they mean to be (and who in fact might be doing damage to themselves by trying too hard), and people who aren't trying much at all and expecting everyone else to just deal with it, and everything in between.

And then there are people... like one person who had a degree, a job, a marriage, and had successfully raised children, and who also had time for a ton of volunteer work on the side (and all of these but the children were current, not past, so it's not like he'd lost the ability to do them, which can happen and which is different), but who always insisted he was more impaired than anyone else around even if nobody else had even one of those things. Because he always insisted he was the most impaired of any group of people he was in, he'd gripe at people who couldn't do exactly what he could and act like if they just put forth enough willpower they could be just like him. Even when he was outright victimizing people for having more trouble with comprehension or something than he did, he would always turn himself into the victim of their incomprehension. His meltdowns were never about sensory overload or anything, they were always about him sort of working himself up into a frenzy of self-pity and misplaced righteous indignation. If he saw or heard of someone else having a shutdown or meltdown from genuine overload, he acted like they were doing it for the same reason he did, and would expect them to "just pull themselves together" (which you can do if it's self-pity, but you can't do if the entire world has just dissolved into random colors/textures/etc and you can't even find your body in all of that). And he constantly whined about anyone expecting him to take any remote amount of responsibility for anything.

(I haven't caught up with him any time recently to see if he has changed, but that's how I knew him at the time, hence the past tense.) So weird combinations of all of the above exist, too, is what I mean to say by that.

Personally, I try to reserve judgment unless I'm really clear on what's going on. It's really easy to mess up in one's estimation of what is going on for someone else.

I have not particularly enjoyed, for instance, when a small number of people here have presumed emotional reasons for motor and sensory difficulties I have had. Especially since I'm the sort of person who tries too hard and actually does damage to myself that way -- not just in my own estimation, but in the estimation of every single one of my friends (in fact they have had to convince me of it over time while I tried to convince them otherwise). Not that I can't ever have a lazy moment, but my default state is the opposite of laziness. The reason for this is that I grew up in a "no excuses" sort of environment, so even when I'm working several times as hard as most people, if I'm not getting as far as anyone else my default assumption is that I have to try harder. And this is just how it is, I've checked with a number of people who know me well and this is what happens, I'm describing it as an explanatory thing, not because I'm feeling emotional about it or something.

Problem is, this has given me almost no way to gauge the exact amount to which I should try, and the point past which I am doing myself harm. Because, without reining myself in, I have a tendency to work at these things until I literally drop. I have had to learn that there is a balance that a person has to strike.

Let's say I'm trying to get a certain amount of work (of any sort) done in a week, and let's say it can somehow be divided up into 50 units of work. If I put every ounce of effort into it at the beginning of the week, then I will get maybe 20 units of work done on the first day. Then I will crash and have to recover from that for not only that week but a fair amount of time after that, getting anywhere between no work done and 5 units of work done in the meantime, leaving me with 25 units of work done in the entire week. Let's say then that instead of allowing myself to do that, I do 8 units of work the first day and 7 each day after that, then I get all 50 units of work done. So for any value above 20 units of work a week, I just shouldn't try to throw all possible effort into it because I won't get it done. I'm just using arbitrary numbers here, and not accounting for the fact that with shifts in energy and ability the number might be higher or lower than 20 any given time, and also that there are gradations of exhaustion so that doing 15 units of work in a day might lower my normal abilities but not completely exhaust them, or that different tasks may take different units of work because of how easy or hard they are, but hopefully you get the idea.

And the thing that happens after I hit 20 units of work, it's not like "Gee I really don't feel like continuing." Not feeling like continuing isn't an option I've given myself most of my life, so in order to grind to a stop like that I'm going to be experiencing total incapacitation, by some combination of pain, exhaustion, immobility, and cognitive or perceptual scrambling. (I've got more going on than just autism, too, so not all of this is just autism. I've also got, for instance, a condition that (like many) seems to have the effect of making it hard for a person to replenish their energy as rapidly as usual after they run out of it. So hitting my limits is more serious for me than it is for some people.)

So I've had to learn a very delicate balance of neither doing too much nor too little, and also learning which abilities take more and less energy and budgeting all of those things so that I don't "blow it all in one place" so to speak. One person once remarked to me that even my posture is 'frugal'. This is all something I've worked out by trial and error over time, as well as many complex details that I am always trying to juggle in my head.

I also have a tendency to assume that everyone else is doing this much work figuring out what they can and can't do to be as efficient and productive at whatever they are doing, as they possibly can. I have had a few friends tell me that they have struggled with laziness their entire lives so have had to learn almost the opposite lessons to the ones I have. I was stunned because they do much more than I can do. One of them explained this is because those things come easier so even when they are slacking off they are doing those things more easily than I do. Just as when I write on a fairly bad day it often comes out of me easier than writing would come to some of them on a good day.

So while some people have to learn that laziness is a form of selfishness when taken to extremes, I have had to learn that doing something until you drop is pretty selfish too.

I can also see that just as it is really dangerous for me to delude myself into thinking I'm generally lazy (because it provides me with an excuse to do damage to myself by pushing too hard to prove to myself that I'm not lazy), it would also be really dangerous for someone who is generally prone to laziness to delude themselves into thinking they're really the sort of workaholic sort of person I am (because it provides an excuse for laziness). As an old friend wrote in a poem, "The flipside is the same as us, their towers are no higher, for a mirror is a simile, and not an amplifier." The opposite of a bad trait is also a bad trait quite often.

But I can't see how, unless I knew someone pretty well, I'd be able to tell the difference. I have a friend who is constantly assumed to be a lazy freeloader, but I can see somehow the effort she puts into a lot of things and that those who accuse her of that are generally living in much more stable situations with much more abilities than she has currently. That she doesn't have even the energy or brain to spare right now trying to learn a balancing act, although I think she will need to do a lot of work in that way once her situation gets more stable, and it will make her more able to do at least some things than she is now. Right now though isn't the time because I can see she's basically hanging on by her fingernails to survival itself the way I once was.

But usually things aren't as obvious as with her, or the guy I described earlier. I can't tell whether most people on a forum that I've never met are too lazy, the opposite of too lazy, or somewhere in between, or switching between them, or what. I can in extreme cases recognize self-pity, but if a person doesn't express "I'm really feeling horribly sorry for myself" as a consistent pattern, I can't tell whether they do or not.

I know that some other people don't seem able to tell the difference either, given that I've been accused of it here merely for describing parts of my life without any emotional feelings about it (I'm not incapable of destructive levels of self-pity, but they weren't what was going on right then). I think a lot of people have never learned to tell the difference between stating an ability and bragging about it, or stating a difficulty and feeling sorry for oneself about it, so they see one and assume the other whether it's accurate or not.

So I would have a hard time accusing forum members of something like this unless it was a really obvious pattern and definitely what was going on. I would be afraid of doing damage by doing so, since I am a genuine (as in, this has been said to me over and over by everyone who knows me well , rather than just something I made up myself, and the people who told me this are quite willing to tell me my flaws) example of the destructive character traits that happen when a person misjudges themselves to be lazy, usually after being told they are by people who don't know better.

So... yeah. It's an interesting topic of discussion, but I'd have a hard time pointing fingers the way the original poster did. I will shut up now.

im extremely new here, however i reckon the last thing people on here need is some arse trying to suggest a personality switch. half the trouble is that the vast majority of people only seem to see things from their own perspective, and dont look from anyone elses. that is why people on here are as wound up as i am, because other people cannot except someone else for who they are.
the fact is that we shouldnt have to change. people come on here with completely different opinions on all sorts of things and manage to get on just fine. there is no way im going to change who i am, what my personality is built upon just so i can fit in with the masses, not appreciating anything in life and seeing things from the same, stagnant perspective.

rant over


chris.

DELETED BY POSTER

To put it simple:

Change=No.
(Attempt) to adapt=Yes

It's a survival skill. You can't change who you are. If you don't like talking in front of lots of people, yes you can eventually get better at it, but it won't change the fact that you feel your best when you're by yourself. Simple as that. That's what people come here for help for.

Wow. First off, I'm not trolling.

Secondly, it seems maybe I should reword what I said a little bit. I'll try to simplify. Spokane_Girl seems to have understood what I said pretty well.

Basically, what I was trying to say is...

...that it bugs me sometimes when I see someone complain about their life or some sort of social problem, but do nothing about it. I'm fine with venting amd the occasional whining, and I see no problem with the fact that there's obviously a few things that something as simple as effor won't fix. But if you read all the advice you're given and not use any of it, you're wasting everyones time. With the mass amount of help now available to anyone, I just figured that I would see a lot more stories of successfully doing something you previously couldn't. Over 18,000 members, and it feels like almost no one's winning. Maybe all the people who finally overcome their major difficulties simply leave, I know I did for a while. Maybe that's why I only notice a scarce victory here and there.

That's it for now. I don't feel like quoting people individually, it'd take me too long.

P.S. Change=Adapt...That was bugging me, not that change itself isn't also possible. I honestly don't know if I've changed a lot simply because I've grown more, or cause I wanted to. Probably a bit of both.

people come on this site for support and to confirm that they are not the only ones in their situation. having a whine once in a while is not a crime.

what can be annoying is when you give peoples advice on how to make it better and they don't listen to you and they just continue whining.

eg: a guy really hates his job, complains every day about it and talks about how he is going to get a better one. one day the perfect job comes up. his collegues bring the job to his attention, and even help him draw up a resume but he does nothing about it. so the job ends up going to someone else. (this is nothing to do with AS, i just read this story in a rant about serial whiners (nt's and as) at work and peoples ways of coping with them, it is in a book caled Pains at Work)
in some areas, autism support services are rare or non existent, so telling AS people to simply get over it is just unproductive.

I hate people who whine non stop about something. My first ex did that. He whined about gas prices, having to pay to live, and having to work to live and he complained about his job. It's okay to complain about something you don't like but to complain about it everyday or all the time is annoying.

Anyone who understood the issues of AS and theory of mind would understand that it is senseless to ask such questions.

doesn't help anything.
cool avatar btw.