Getting worse through trying to get better

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Hopefully someone can relate to what I'm going to write, or even give some practical recommendations on how to deal with it. Up to two months ago I had gone 35 years spending every available moment locked away alone in my room or apartment reading one foreign language text after another. For example, I would read Russian texts for two years, one after another, without bothering too much about the content or doing anything with it and indeed forgetting the content more or less, as soon as I had read the text and moved on to the next one. Then I would do the same with another language for a few years, say Sanskrit or Latin or whatever. So I did this with a whole string of languages. At the same time social contacts or daily activities were very exhausting and frustrating for me and were fairly minimal.

About two months ago it finally became clear to me that this behaviour was probably due to AS (what else could it be due to, after all?) and that I was simply being endlessly robotic to no practical purpose. At that point I gave up doing it, after so many years. Now I have noticed that I spend all my free time endlessly watching the same YouTube videos over and over and over again. Every day I watch more or less the same videos as the day before and spend my time stimming and fantasising about various situations and people in technicolour in my head. I have even revived stims from my childhood that I hadn't done for forty years. My time is spent in this pointless unhealthy way.

So, my well-intentioned attempt to stop being a low-functioning robot has backfired completely and I am now an even-lower functioning mess and an embarrassment to myself. Has anyone else experienced anything similar and how did you deal with it? What can I do?

I do similar things with foreign languages. Go on foreign language binges more or less. I honestly think for me it is due to having latched onto the idea early on in life that I would be able to communicate meaningfully with humans if only I learned the right words. Apparently the right words were not in English cause I failed at bonding with people over that so I easily get obsessed with trying to learn other languages. I never actually learn them, or if I do to any extent I forget them, but it is so satisfying, almost thrilling, to have something you can't read at all and to figure out the code and have it mean something. Even if what I read was a chapter in a dry outdated psychology textbook, I read it in Danish, I cracked the code. Then onto another language.

So if you're like me, which you may or may not be, it's due to the desire to connect with people and maybe you could try to think of a pursuit you could start doing that involves direct interaction with people but is non-stressful?

I think it would be the same whatever I had fixated on all these years. It just happened to be languages. For someone else it would be something completely different. It has a lot to do with cracking codes though, as you say. The problem is really this fixation on doing something repetitive alone as much of the time as possible. I find all interaction with other people stressful. Even just sitting around with my girlfriend makes me tired, because she is a person and I have to work hard to be with someone else. It doesn't come at all naturally to me. Because I only really feel ok when I'm alone and being iwth others exhausts me it is difficult for me to force myself to do things with others beyond the absolute minimum. That sounds terrible I know but it just is that way and I suppose it's part of my condition. What really bothers me is that when I was reading all these language texts it was a reasonably high level of functioning (up to a point) whereas without that I have sunk to a really low level, I am beginning to wonder if it would not be better just to go back to how I was before.

Last edited by Halligeninseln on 27 Nov 2011, 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe you could go back to focusing on languages but integrate a small amount of interpersonal interaction into it? Join a conversational group or see if your girlfriend is interested in trying to learn a language with you or exchanging letters in a certain language (might sound weird since you see her in person but might be a workaround to avoid so much stressful interaction)? I mean you think it's a problem that you spent so much time doing that and only that; there must be something you didn't like about how you were spending the time. Maybe go on ventures every so often to a place where the language you're currently practicing is spoken (restaurant, certain section of city etc.) and try to strike up a conversation in the language? Or even consider becoming a freelance translator in your spare time? I'm trying to figure out what would transform your hobby into something you find acceptable.

Thanks for your interest . One of the languages I have learnt is German, my girlfriend is German and I live in Germany, so I agree with what you suggest because I've already done it! I learnt German about 30 years ago sitting alone in a room in the UK. (I then moved to Italy, studied Italian for a year or so and ended up sitting in a room there for two years reading Russian. The rest of my life has been more or less the same, including sitting alone in Saudi Arabia reading Pali and Sanskrit and sitting by myself in Poland watching Polish TV and reading Latin.)

I suppose my question is really something like: Once one realises that having a (ie ANY) special interest is perhaps not something one chooses to do, because one is simply programmed that way, what is the correct way to react to this realisation? I don't know if that makes sense. It is really only having a special interest that holds me together and if I give it up then I start malfunctioning as at present, but in order to become more normal one needs to go beyond one's repetitive behaviours.

Maybe that doesn't express it correctly either. I think the problem is that I only realised two months ago that these repetitive behaviours were a SYMPTOM of something. Until I heard of AS I just thought I was doing what I wanted. Now I realise that I must be just programmed to behave that way and have lost the motivation to do anything. If learning all these languages is just a SYMPTOM then I might as well go back to stimming as I did as a child, because it's less effort. Also, I'm still waiting for my official diagnosis and on one level I keep thinking "Well if what I have always done is autistic then let's be really autistic and just sit around stimming." Basically I'm just in a mess.

Do you enjoy your special interests? If you enjoy them, then perhaps you should continue them and try to convert them into something useful to yourself or others. I like purchase's suggestion of freelance translator. That sounds like a nice low-stress no-human-interaction way to make a living off your special interest.

I don't think that you need to think of your special interests as a symptom to be overcome, if you enjoy them.

If stimming feels good to you, then you should stim, regardless of whether or not you are autistic or stimming is autistic.

Actually, you are probably right. I earn money teaching English freelance and find it a complete nightmare standing up in front of groups although I've done it for 20 years, so translating would be much better. Somehow I have tunnel vision and have real problems shifting to new activities and career options., which is why I've never checked out translating although most of my colleagues do some. Teaching groups goes something like this: Sit in public transport for an hour with earplugs in my ears, go into business premises, stand in front of group and attempt to resemble a human being for two hours, leave premises, put earplugs back in, travel home. It is so hugely stressful standing there that I do as little of it as possible. In fact, standing in front of groups is a completely unsuitable place for me to be, because I can't do it naturally at all and feel that I have to imitate normalcy all the time just to avoid getting fired. I survive by methodological competence and clowning.

Your other points are good, too.

I took up gardening. It gets me out of the house. Otherwise I just end up sitting at the computer all day doing the same stuff over and over.

I have special interests for certain times.

Weekend: exercise, watching Star Trek, movies.

Weekdays: Reading, writing chapters of my book, writing blogs or articles, researching for story.

I'd got so into my writing and didn't see people that my social skills started to plummet then my symptoms got much worse after a few weeks of shutdowns and sensory overload and seizures, so I had to build up a lot of skills again.

I basically have a daily schedule that can be moved around and I need to make sure important tasks are done first. It's kind of like a shopping list; one day you might need something but on other days you don't need to include it. That's what my lists are like. Something that I really want to do is writing and in order for me to do that sometimes I have to decided to not plan to anything, so I can end up outside doing nothing until I finally decided 'right, it's time to write.'

Turning your special interest into something practical and which you can integrate with more people is a good idea. I started obsessively watching the news and then conspiracy documentaries and I just talk about that stuff with people. When you live in a house with sci-fi nerds it's easier to get along too.

Because I moved I now give myself 'missions' to complete each week. My first mission is to go out for Subway because I want to learn how to navigate through a neighbouring town. Mission 2 might be 'project comic book.' Actually my first mission was 'project underpants'; a reconnaisance mission.

I like your idea of "missions". Lists are probably a good idea, too.

The main problem seems to be that I was on autopilot for so many years that I have lost all capacity for change. I am really blocked off against changing anything (even when everything seems to be falling apart like at present and change would be very beneficial from an objective ponit of view). It just seems like a huge threat if anything new happens. My social skills are in a really bad way, too, due to chronic disuse. In fact I don't (or can't) undertake anything new or get to know anybody new. It's a bit like being a train. A train can only go forward (or backward) along the track and can't turn off and go somewhere else.

What about starting with very little changes? Believe me, I know how hard it can be. Change has been my most impairing symptom. I've had so many breakdowns since living on my own. One day I just got up and decided to buy groceries despite the pounding in my chest which was anxiety, because I was literally starving. Having my own food in the house is like a security blanket.

Anyway change... Maybe if you started a new hobby, just for a start. Or if you started to organise your day. It took me so long to use a to-do list on my phone, and sometimes I still forget. But it really helps keep me organised and with it it's just easier to move onto the next task. I started with writing a list of tasks and actually put the time when I'd do them. I don't put down the time any more except 3pm when I need to give myself a break.

In Eric Byrne's booK "Games people play" there's a pattern where one person states a problem, then the other person makes a suggestion, then the first person finds a reason why they can't follow the suggestion, then the second person makes a new suggestion and so on ad infinitum. We are doing that here a little bit , but never mind. The strange thing about change is that like you I have big problems with it but for me if the change is TOTAL, then I can cope with it. My parents moved city every few years (I had lived in 14 places by the age of eighteen) so I am used to my surroundings just disappearing completely at regular intervals and was completely rootless up to age 48. I could in fact move to the opposite side of the world and cope with it (I think), if there was a reason to do so, but taking up a new hobby or making a new friend is a real challenge. Don't know if that makes sense. What you said about lists and missions is good. For example, yesterday I got home at 5pm and could have done something constructive if I had scheduled it. Instead of that I went on the internet and ended up staying up unitl 3am online. Then I woke up at 7am, got up and have sat here another 5 hours in front of the computer. In those 5 hours all I have done is eat a bowl of muesli and drink two warm drinks. I haven't even changed into my daytime clothes. At the same time, when some practical thing comes up to be done it feels as though it is an incredible challenge and that I have no time, which is totally untrue. Basically, I need to get some kind of grip on my daily schedule again, and a written schedule would probably help in achieving that.