Weakly developed or absent "self" - looking for info/advice

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I'm a high-IQ Aspie, professionally successful in my very narrow, very complicated technical niche. Always felt very different from other people, but tried my best to blend in, not very successfully, but together with tactical use of alcohol as social lubricant managed to get somewhat accepted as one of those smart well-meaning weirdos. Good with me. Discovering I'm an Aspie gave me answers to most of questions I had as to why I'm different and gave me peace. Still, one unusual trait still bothers me a lot.

I have always felt like a machine with engine on but no driver inside. Always had trouble formulating what I wanted. Because I had no specific wants/interests beside the few rudimentary ones - eating, sleeping, reading random information and playing primitive computer games. As a result, I spend my days either reacting to external inputs (school classes, instructions by my boss, requests by my colleagues, family) or when left alone, just staying at home doing nothing. I prefer doing nothing best, hence the analogy to machine with engine on but no driver inside.
I see other people having an internal need to move around, do things, interact with others, build and execute on longer-term plans. I don't have that internal need, I would want to have it but can't find it inside myself. And I also lack that longer-term thinking somehow. Every morning I wake up, and it feels I'm a new person, and have to spend some moments to rebuild an picture of myself in my head, and figure out why and what should I do today. I sometimes try to write down my thoughts and future plans in the evening, to pass over to the morning-me, but don't work that way, you can't download your person in the evening and upload in the morning, so I feel like a blank sheet in the morning

Long story short, I was binge-reading Uta Frith and Simon Baron-Cohen writings on autism, and saw there a description of "weakly-developed/absent self" as one of autistic expressions, and it struck me as a perfect match to how I perceive myself.
Since then, trying to find out more about this, but no luck. My thinking -
1) maybe there are ways to train and strengthen the "self" somehow?
2) if I could find out, how the "normal self" functions, I could somehow reverse engineer it in my head, like I do with all those social interactions etc.
3) if there are people like me, maybe they have tactics or strategies I could try

Any ideas, tactics and reading links much appreciated!

Even if no ideas, please shout out if you have felt in similar way. I have read many many Aspie-personal-story books, and have never seen weak selfs there, only the strong ones. So either weak-self Aspies don't write books, or I'm pretty alone here.

I feel like this. It got even worse when I removed drugs and alcohol from my life. I feel as if I have no soul if you know what I mean.

Yes, but not as pronounced as you describe. I wasn't diagnosed till about year and half ago. So I didn't put a lot of things together till recently either.

But I definitely think a lot of the aspects of my personality and likes were influenced by the people around me... more than influenced. I dont know how to explain well. But I didn't know what I liked when I was younger so I followed whatever my big brother was interested in. All the music, movies, and some books were what he liked. I was happy because I got to do stuff with my big bro, like go to concert, video games, or watch martial arts movies and anime together. I didn't realize till much later some of those things I didn't actually enjoy alone. Like video games and concerts.

My fashion sense is only there because of my mom. She made most of my clothes as a kid. She dressed me like a doll. She made my dresses, with hair bows to match, bows for my shoes to match, even sewed ruffles on my socks with scrap fabric, again to match the dress. So when I got older, I thought everything had to match perfectly. Hence, being obsessed with the gap. You can buy a sweater, hat, socks, scarf etc all to match there. People think its cute, but its not really my own. It was instilled in me that was how I should dress, so thats what I do. At this age I don't really feel the need to change it because it does work and I dont have to think much about it.

About my life until recently, I definitely think I just went with the flow of what I "should" be doing because I didn't have any desires to push me forward. Like going to college etc. When my mom became very sick, I moved home to be her caregiver because thats what was needed. People ask me all the time, wasn't it hard to give up your life, dont you have dreams that were crushed. Umm... no. They look at me weird. I don't really have a response. I always thought there was something wrong with me. I love my mom so I went to help her, that was my only thought.

Everything happens for a reason though. The experience of caring for my mom, and my german shepherd saving her life are what led me to finding a purpose. For the first time I actually really wanted to do something on my own. Being a service dog trainer. I started apprenticeship but then covid happened and everything was put on hold. So I read about animal behavior etc. I feel like I found a part of who I am. I love dogs, always had one, and enjoy being around them. I hope you can find something like this as well.
(There is more to the story but its too long to write now. Lol.)

That is an interesting way of putting it. It is my belief that humans possess two conscious independent brains. The first is the one we are familiar with and the other is our REM brain.

REM sleep makes up about 25% of your sleep cycle and first occurs about 70 to 90 minutes after you fall asleep. Because your sleep cycle repeats, you enter REM sleep several times during the night. We typically have 3 to 5 periods of REM sleep per night. They occur at intervals of 1-2 hours and are quite variable in length. REM sleep begins in response to signals sent to and from different regions of the brain. Signals are sent to the brain's cerebral cortex, which is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. Signals are also sent to the spinal cord to shut off movement, creating a temporary inability to move the muscles ("paralysis") in the arms and legs. The arms and legs become temporarily paralyzed during this stage to prevent a person from physically acting out their dreams and nightmares while sleeping. During REM sleep the eyes move around quickly behind your eyelids and your brainwaves look similar to those of someone who is awake. Breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure rise to near-waking levels. Electrical and chemical activity regulating this phase seems to originate in the brain stem and is characterized most notably by an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, combined with a nearly complete absence of monoamine neurotransmitters histamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.

REM sleep stimulates regions of the brain that are used for learning. Studies have shown that when people are deprived of REM sleep, they are not able to remember what they were taught before going to sleep. Sleep aids the process by which creativity forms associative elements into new combinations that are useful or meet some requirement. High levels of acetylcholine in the hippocampus suppress feedback from hippocampus to the neocortex, while lower levels of acetylcholine and norepinephrine in the neocortex encourage the uncontrolled spread of associational activity within neocortical areas. This is in contrast to waking consciousness, where higher levels of norepinephrine and acetylcholine inhibit recurrent connections in the neocortex. REM sleep through this process adds creativity by allowing "neocortical structures to reorganize associative hierarchies, in which information from the hippocampus would be reinterpreted in relation to previous semantic representations or nodes." In other words, REM sleep aids in the reconfiguration of stored memories. This is probably why around 25% of the adult sleep cycle is REM while around 40% of an infants sleep cycle is REM.

In a sense, during REM sleep, your REM brain removes all you memories from the day stored in short term memory and files them away in long term memory. That is why achieving REM sleep each night is important. Otherwise your buffers will fill up and overflow (not good). That is why each morning your short term memories are wiped clean and you begin each day anew.

The REM brain operates at a much higher speed than our normal conscious brain. It feels like it moves at the speed of light. And it is also a very smart brain. Sometimes it takes our body on a joy ride, such as sleep walking. When I was young, I was driving late at night and fell asleep at the wheel. I woke up 2 hours later and over a hundred miles further down the road. My REM brain detected me falling asleep at the wheel and took control. When the REM brain became confused because of a fork in the road, it went in a panic mode and woke me up.

Somewhere I recognized along the way that I was so worried about trying to please others that I had no idea what I wanted, or who I was within myself.
I always focused on trying to make the other person happy, satisfied, keep them from being angry, and I based all of my behavior on appeasement/people pleasing.

I have since learned that this was a survival technique to avoid being abused when I was quite small, and that I failed to learn other behaviors until I got therapy to learn healthy self assertive behavior. I was not able to make the changes I needed to because I did not understand that I had alternatives to the behavior I had been taught and conditioned to from before I was even able to talk. I needed an outsider to help me see and to explain that I had alternatives, and I could choose how to respond in any situation. What a huge revelation that was!! !


I had to be taught How to say no, how to set limits and boundaries, how to enforce them, how to recognize when I was being intimidated, pressured, bullied, manipulated, etc.

In effect I had to be taught how to separate my own self from others and to do self care, make my own self important in my own thoughts and mind to be worthy of self respect, self care, and to even be able to find myself or to care about anything except the panic of the moment trying to please any other person in even the most superficial of encounters.

It has been very hard to unlearn, it felt truly dangerous and it raised a lot of anxiety at first to even consider trying... but I am so much better now after 38 years of practice beginning with my therapy at age 30.
Therapy no doubt saved my sanity and probably my life. I did not know I was autistic,neither did my therapist, and the things I was taught still worked.
One thing that helped me was a book called "when I say NO I feel guilty" by Manuel J Smith.
It is available as a free pdf online or very inexpensive in any place where used books are sold. It is out of print now, but it teaches you the things I mentioned above, and the therapist used it as a tool to help me learn that I could make healthy choices and that I could say no. Even the idea that I had rights as a person to make choices for myself was almost overwhelming. When you live in a bird cage and somebody opens the door, you may at first be hesitant to leave the( metaphorical/ behavioral) cage. Very emotionally scary!! !!

I began to think through all the worst struggles... Wearing certain clothes and my hair and makeup to please another who expected certain things of me, making myself sit through endless sports games, movies, concerts, and restaurant outings, all of which gave me great distress due to both anxiety of not pleasing others who wanted me to participate in these things, and social anxiety as well as sensory processing difficulties that often made me have severe head aches, stomach aches, and made me throw up.
It took a long time to understand why I always got sick in those situations and/or in the company of certain people. I began to understand I could choose not to do the things that caused me so much distress and anxiety.

I am not sure how one starts to develop 'self'... I spent time about age 35 or so working through a book called "what color is my parachute" which had lots of homework about finding your best strengths, interests, and abilities. It asked me to go back to childhood and remember every thing that gave me pleasure, that I found interesting, exciting, satisfying to do.... etc.

I finally figured out a bit about who I really was/am underneath all the appeasement.

I know everybody is different and maybe none of this is stuff you can identify with or use, or Maybe you will see some things in my experience that you can apply to your self search.

It did not happen over night, so don't expect quick results, but keep looking for yourself and I bet you find you!! ! Best wishes

I have issues with my fashion sense too because I was never allowed to dress myself up, and controlled even up to 26 y o by my hysteria helicopter mom. I have likes that are very varied and seem to be extremes, in opposition. Same in my personality and sexuality so building a staple fashion is hard and understanding how i come across as an image to know what way I want to push it.

Dogs used to be the only thing I liked in the world as a kid, my art teacher would keep on telling me 'Dogs, dogs, dogs!' to stop drawing dogs. Dogs in space, dogs as geometrical figures, dogs in every position, family of dogs.

Haha. The hysteria helicopter mom, made me laugh really hard. My mom is bipolar so when she was manic she would stay up all night cleaning and sewing. I always describe her manic moments like a typhoon or tornado, you just have to get out the way and let it happen, it will eventually blow itself out. I remember her waking me in the middle of the night to test a dress on me to make sure it fit perfect before she did the final seems. Lol. She told me a few years ago a bit sheepishly that she may have gone a bit overboard treating me like a dress up doll because it kept her focused in her mania to do something productive. She got a bit better once she was medicated properly.

Also, dogs are the best! I've always had one or two since I was born and always will. They make life so much better.

No suggestions here, but I relate. My interests are few and far between so trying to figure out what I want to do (or even if I want to do anything) is challenging to say the least. Now and then I have things I like to do (I do get obsessive over things now and then) but I prefer doing nothing and being alone while doing so, above all else, it seems. I don't really get bored, at least I don't think I do. I don't get lonely either, I don't think. I have no idea how to plan for the future, or what I want that future to look like. I'm very much an 'in the now' type in that sense. Machine with no driver...makes sense to me. I call it 'doing it on automatic'. It's how I live my life most days.

That's good she got better.
I never had a dog, but I used to walk neighbots dogs and teach them tricks and off the leash. I used to pet grandmas dog for many hours until hed close his eyes and hold his head low. He was such a mean dog, baddest of the bad though middle sized, but when pet he was a potato.

doing nothing - you are recharging and resting actually and as an aspie you need the rest or you will get meltdowns and nervous break down from chronic stress.

explore yourself creatively - dress up, make music, take an acting class, draw, read novels, take a dance class such as swing dance or ball room, get a dog, etc.
Feeling Good by Dr Burns helped me in that regard initially.
but take care of yourself.
finances, make a nest for yourself. just because you have a job now, does not mean you will have one forever.

You are by no means alone. I too am professionally successful. The “Sense of Self” is central in autism and ever fragile. As such, we are referenced to particular settings, people etc. Part of this life. A particular drug(prescribed has helped me) along with alcohol at my discretion. Fortunately, I don’t have an addictive personality.

OMG that's so me! Definitely not alone!!

People drive me insane. I know exactly what you mean.

You are so fortunate not to have an addictive personality. Alcohol and marijuana helped me so much when I was using them. But alas, having an addictive personality meant that I was essentially drunk or high all my non-working hours (and even some of those as well).

Thanks for saying that you understand. It makes me feel slightly less alone.

Yeah feeling alone with how you feel isn't a good thing.