StuartN wrote:
I wonder how many of you recognize the following as simply Asperger's syndrome thinking, or as your own character. ... ... ... If these thinking patterns are a part of your nature, rather than a psychiatric condition ( and a recent change in thinking ), then what differences in approach are required to change them or to cope with them?
I don't make a distinction between "my own character" and aspergers/autism. I don't know if it is desirable or even possible to do so, unless one sees aspergers/autism like a mental illness which one is going to recover from.
StuartN wrote:
All-or-nothing thinking:
Awfulising — catastrophising:
Personalising:
Negative focus:
Jumping to conclusions:
Living by fixed rules:
Apart from the last one I have found that a completely gluten-free, and mostly dairy/casein-free, zero/low-sugar diet massively reduces precisely these sort of thought-patterns, most particularly the catastrophising and negative focus.
I don't know whether this is because of the food opioid peptides in the gluten, ( 36.7% of people on the spectrum have unusually permeable intestines, compared to 4.8% of the general population, according to a study publ this year ), or the effect that gluten may have on my autoimmune system and the impact that inflammatory cytokines and other autoimmune reactions have on various organs including the brain, or the result of poor absorption of the fructans, ( which wheat is high in ), and fructose which blocks zinc and tryptophan absorption, leading to depression, poor sleep, etc, ... or something else again.
I am what I eat though, just as much as I am my genes, my upbringing, social conditioning, etc, ... and what I eat is determined by what I eat ... :lol ( seriously, both gluten and casein contain chemicals that not only increase intestinal permeability but also suppress our natural appetite suppressants, such that we want to eat more, and fructose has a similar effect, bypassing our regular appetite regulator leptin and stimulating production of an appetite stimulator, ghrelin ), aswell as by my genes, upbringing and social conditioning, ... so who do these thought-patterns belong to when they occur? Are they "mine"? Who or what is responsible for them?
I have tended to think in this way most of my life, but I didn't realise it until my life came crashing down, when I could no longer escape/avoid the effect of those sort of thoughts by drinking more alcohol, smoking more dope, eating more sugar, chocolate, crusty fresh bread, cheese or pizza, buying more clothes, travelling even faster and more recklessly, or moving house/changing my job more often, etc. When I came to the end of that escape route I began to really "see" this thinking; it had become visible ... and I suffered a manic-depressive breakdown, followed by periods of intermittent but serious depression.
I still have a tendency to this kind of thought-pattern, even when gf etc , but much much less; the difference is quite remarkable; I don't "believe" the thoughts so much anymore, they don't seem so "convincing", I am far more detached from them. And some of them don't even "happen" anymore. I think that they were quite literally a side-effect/by product of a certain physical state, or states, and although a lot of the neural connections that these chemical states and the resultant mental "events" created are still there, they are like roads less and less frequently travelled, becoming grass-grown, less like "auto"-routes. I'm not saying I'm free of them, just that they seem faded/less powerful.
.
01 Nov 2010, 5:23 am
