Sense of self?

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Hi,

You are right, Anbuend.
I apologize.

I generalized stupidly.

You corrected me once before when I wrote something about my thoughts of the spectrum, you said that IQ couldn't be the 'thing' (or not only) which determines the level of functioning. You were right, then.... and also, the silly thing is, I heard it from a psychiatrist. And you quessed by now that I somewhat dislike some. Not all, of course. New topic stuff.

I simply assumed it was right.

Now I know my perception of functioning or the implication of it isn't correct. Although I have physical impairments, some have it more severe and I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

May I come back on this, after more reading, studying and making my mind up.

You replied to posts of me (thank you) but may I ask, how do you see the spectrum? And the concept of functioning. Too big a question, I quess, but I am honestly curious about your opinion.

Best of luck to you,
and all,
C.

Last edited by Erminea on 29 Sep 2008, 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am a part of Anonymous, a group of hackers on steroids!

EDIT: referring to the OP's discussion. I believe he's talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(psychology)

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_(social_science)

You seem like a smart person.
Some guy has been asking why I won't see him anymore.
I pretend to acknowledge him by saying it's because we have nothing in common.
Of course, that's not informative, so he'll just have to guess.
Do you think I should communicate more?

It must have been really disappointing for you then when no epileptics died, and the worst that happened was that dozens had to go the ER huh? Wth all those flashing images and locked pages it was quite clearly a definitive murder attempt especially as anonymous targeted the site where those who were currently undergoing diagnostic testing would be looking for information and so would not be on medicine or yet have the knowledge for what things they need to avoid, like rapidly flashing lights and how to set up their computers to avoid them

Considering that we are the product of everyone and everything that we have experienced. The self can be considered to be a conglomeration of everything. As I read this post I am assimilating its contents. The result of this is that it effects my/our identity. A small part of me is now a part of you and a small part of you is now a small part of me. The self in essence, I believe, is a feed back loop, Universal in scale.

The problem is frequent ambiguity on the definition of self. If the self is defined as mere sentience then it’s difficult for me to imagine how someone could not have a sense of self.

Other times ‘self’ seems to refer to an awareness of being part of some whole that is bigger than you. You aren’t considered self aware if you aren’t concerned with the image / personality you present to other people. This isn’t something that feels natural to me. It is something that seems to be built in others through social interaction. It is rather forced on me to try and imagine how others see or define me in order to relate to people. This is difficult since I live most of my life inside my head. What I imagine myself to be inside my head is probably very disconnected from what other people see.

The latter sense of seeing yourself as part of a social construct is what I think they mean when they say people with autism lack a sense of self. That is the 'NT' definition of self. I think most aspies misconstrue self awareness as sentience.

I think 'sense of self' = self-concept, as in 'how one perceives one's own personality'.
The way we see ourselves is powerfully shaped by the way in which we impact others, IOW - the way others react to us.
And since Aspies tend to have rather limited impact on others, their self-concepts (senses of self) tend to be significantly weaker than NTs'.
I guess SOS boils down to what makes me uniquely me.

Most Aspies have difficulty divining any sense of anything internally, sometimes even with internal physical sensation (hunger, thirst, needing a whizz) - so it's hardly surprising that as just another internal thing, SOS should really be much different

Those with strong personalities (by which I mean an ability to influence others and NOT a stubborn streak) have well-developed SOS's.

my self is me.

I'm not sure that not caring about it or feeling distanced from it means that you haven't got a sense of self. You repeatedly demonstrate one here, by my reckoning.

I feel like scum...get so verbally put down by chicks I might as well be scum.


"OMG he's so ugly... it's DISGUSTING!!"

I have a sense of self in terms of knowing that I am seperate from others.

But in terms of a concept of self, ie. my personality, no, not really. I don't really have a discernable personality, or at least, I don't think I do. If someone asks me what I like, or what I enjoy doing, my mind seems to go blank. It's actually very hard just to try and explain all of this, it's almost as if there's some sort of mental block when I try and establish and recognise who "I" am. I can tell people what music I listen to, which films I have watched, the books I read, about my friends, about my parents and about my past.. but, that's just me trying to emulate what others think of as what makes them who they are.

I think the hardest part for me, is that I have a very different view of myself in comparison to how others apparently see me. I don't mean with regards to delusions of grandeur or anything. It's more like, I have no insight whatsoever into how others perceive me. I'm able to put myself in thier shoes in many situations, just by thinking "well, how would I feel if I was in thier position" and I seem to do remarkably well, so much so that almost every one of my friends expresses that no one understands them like I do. I think that's because I'm just extremely systematic in my way of thinking. I'm able to understand them much better than I'm ever able to understand myself.

I don't know whether it's in any way connected to this thread, but I do have problems identifying my own emotions. If I was asked I'd say I have a very narrow and basic spectrum of emotional capability. The majority of the time I just feel, I don't know, I wouldn't know the word for it. It's like a kind of screensaver , I think. Nothing discernable or extreme is fleeting through, so I'm just blank. My Mum did point out that when I'm in that particular state of mind, I'm at my least able to react to nonverbal cues and others' facial expressions. Also have problems understanding whether I feel hungry, cold, ill, tired. To me, I'm just "not feeling so good". Something's "not quite right".

Anyway, I feel like I've somewhat digressed, apologies. Hope someone else sees everything I have said as relevant to the thread. Then again, my trailing off might just be proof of the fact I really can't discuss my concept of self and just choose to fire off a monologue lol!