• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Autism or?

@jleeb05 Thank you for such a thoughtful response. This is exactly the kind of dialogue I hoped to have. The black and white thinking makes sense. As does identity formation, and your theory of mind idea too. I was reading about theory of mind earlier. Taken on a gross level that particular theory by Cohen seems to have been sucessfully refuted by further reasearch. But I can see how one can apply that theory in a more nuanced way.

As an adult I did learn to adapt and adopt strategies to help me. Most of those strategies actually have a basis is black and white thinking, like punctuality. You are either on time or your not.
Messiness is another area I have improved though minimizing my belongings and haveing enough money to buy shelves and bins to hold what I have and doing my best to put things away immediately.
 
I found a report card from second grade where the teacher said I was “lazy”. I did day dream a lot, hated school and wanted to be outside all the time so remembered sitting there wishing I was outside the whole time. Maybe she was boring?

I’m messy, not sure if it means anything or not. My husband is messy too and with three big dogs everything stays messy. It won’t matter after we are dead and gone, least this is how we look at it so we just enjoy life.

Wouldn’t worry about it, worrying won’t get it done. Just be happy :-)
 
I still have all my report cards, interesting reading, information is power. looking back it all makes sense, only now it no longer matters.
 
Suzette said:
I was reading about theory of mind earlier. Taken on a gross level that particular theory by Cohen seems to have been sucessfully refuted by further reasearch. But I can see how one can apply that theory in a more nuanced way.
Click to expand...

True. I relate more to the "intense world" theory than "theory of mind." Perhaps, theory of mind is not the right term...maybe it's more a function of black-and-white thinking. It seems that many people on the spectrum are excellent at seeing things as they are but may struggle to see things as they could be...if that makes sense. It kind of reminds me of the thread about imagination. I think a lot of us have great, vivid imaginations. But if you give a neurotypical kid a shoe, maybe he is more likely to pick it up and pretend it's an airplane while a kid on the spectrum will give you a strange look and say, "This is a shoe. What the heck am I supposed to do with this?"

I've noticed that if something is broken my friend will think of some clever way to fix it, that never occurred to me. Like, I would probably not think to use item X for anything other than its intended purpose but my roommate sees that item X can be used to fix item Y.

As a kid, you were making observations. She's neat. I'm not. She's X. I'm Y. Perhaps the disconnect might have been that next logical step. "I admire her neatness, therefore I'm going to take action to be more like that."
 
@jleeb05, thank you again. Being fairly new to ASD, there are lots of memories that crop up and I think "did this happen because of asd?"

As a "mature woman if a certain age" (love that phrase) these are not present life questions. Just curiosities. Little mini mysteries that are helping to reframe some of my early life experiences. In answering these questions I find my cptsd feeling less present. It is therapy in a way and I appreciate the opportunity to ecplore these questions.
 
What I see in myself looking back, is a kind of acceptance of how I was, it mostly didn't occur to me I could or should change. I do remember deciding to write more neatly aged around 13. But usually I either didn't do homework or skimped it. I just didn't get that I was really expected to spend time on school stuff outside school. It seemed unreasonable after I had been there all day.

I think I would have needed all that to be specifically explained to me. Even then I would have been incredulous and inclined to argue. And it's not that I disliked school or learning things, although I did think a lot of the subjects were irrelevant to real life. Not that I knew what real life was. At all. I was quite an idealist.

I would say this is partly about lack of executive function. Experience has taught me what I didn't know then I guess. Sometimes after lots of examples of the same thing happening...
 
Suzette said:
@jleeb05, thank you again. Being fairly new to ASD, there are lots of memories that crop up and I think "did this happen because of asd?"

As a "mature woman if a certain age" (love that phrase) these are not present life questions. Just curiosities. Little mini mysteries that are helping to reframe some of my early life experiences. In answering these questions I find my cptsd feeling less present. It is therapy in a way and I appreciate the opportunity to ecplore these questions.
Click to expand...

I completely understand. That was the primary reason I sought diagnosis. The "narrative sense-making" as one author put it. It's fascinating looking back on certain aspects of your life with this new lens/framework.

Of course we may never be able to say for certain exactly what was going on inside our heads at any given moment and whether ASD was the cause. However, there is some peace that comes with connecting, demystifying and destigmatizing these confusing aspects of our lives.
 
Thinx said:
What I see in myself looking back, is a kind of acceptance of how I was, it mostly didn't occur to me I could or should change. I do remember deciding to write more neatly aged around 13. But usually I either didn't do homework or skimped it. I just didn't get that I was really expected to spend time on school stuff outside school. It seemed unreasonable after I had been there all day.

I think I would have needed all that to be specifically explained to me. Even then I would have been incredulous and inclined to argue. And it's not that I disliked school or learning things, although I did think a lot of the subjects were irrelevant to real life. Not that I knew what real life was. At all. I was quite an idealist.

I would say this is partly about lack of executive function. Experience has taught me what I didn't know then I guess. Sometimes after lots of examples of the same thing happening...
Click to expand...

Exactly what l thought. How does this school work relate to the real world? I don't get it. I didn't like geometry rules , they weren't identifiable, l can't find patterns, rules were rubbish. I later would procrastinate doing my homework until the end. I didn't like mistakes on handwritten homework and would rewrite the entire page. And only by doing something over and over and over, would my cheese grater brain finally retain, or after lots of examples. I wasn't an idealist, l was more a skeptic of the whole system especially in Jr High.

Habits were not quantifiable in my brain. I didn't think l had that power to become better. I thought l was just a cursed kid.
 
In regards to school in general, I thought it was total crap except for history and civics. These two classes had the best teacher (Sorry Miss Anderson)
Doc Martin and Disco Don allowed and encouraged kids to look beyond the ciriculum and bring their questions, ideas and curiosity into class.
Otherwise school offfered me nothing. The real world things I needed to know were not taught and I had to figure out much for myself.
 
I never thought of tidy as something to achieve. Did concern myself with it.
I spent a lot of time obsessing on keeping things in a certain order or my collections in place.
It was like a compulsion that I actually enjoyed.

As far as school, I was another one that thought most of it was crap and didn't pertain to real life
needs.
I liked art and science. Hated maths.
Only after high school graduation did I continue with my interest in art, science and medical arts.
In Uni I found they were not only of interest, but, could put them to use in life as career builders.
 
Keeping clean rooms and lockers are a human invention. There is a lot of research to suggest "mental illness" (or quirks) are actually evolutionary glitches. Why would you need to keep your space in the forest clean?
 
OkRad said:
Keeping clean rooms and lockers are a human invention. There is a lot of research to suggest "mental illness" (or quirks) are actually evolutionary glitches. Why would you need to keep your space in the forest clean?
Click to expand...
Predators are attracted to food trash. :bearface::tiger::wolfface:
Don't feed the wildlife:)
 
Ridgid thinking probably suits me very well. But that is a hard one to swollow as I have been so insulted by that idea from others.
 
Suzette said:
Ridgid thinking probably suits me very well. But that is a hard one to swollow as I have been so insulted by that idea from others.
Click to expand...
It is hard. I used to have so little vacation time that I used to plan and plan and plan and would melt down when reality intruded on the map I had in my head. I was only hurting myself and losing trust in my spouses' eyes that I learned to embrace imperfection and learn the difference between what was important and what can be changed to be interesting. That has helped a lot for my enjoyment of trips and let me be more relaxed about my planning while enjoying the moments I can break out from the jail of rigid thinking.

I remember camping in the Grand Teton National Park, where we had our stay mapped out. Somebody driving by our campsite noticed the whitewater canoes on our car, struck up a conversation and invited us to paddle with them the next few days. I couldn't say no, and had such fun with these people that I'm happy I wasn't rigid.
 
Last edited:
Perhaps what the OP is getting at is not so directly relative to autism alone so much as it may be to comorbid Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Compelling me to be neat and orderly on a level that may alienate most people, autistic or not.
 
@Gerald Wilgus
Growing up we did a lot of travel by car, hiking, camping etc. For travel purposes and planning, I am pretty flexible.
I think where my ridgid thinking has been a problem is in believing some of the stories we make up about people in our interpersonal relationships and even some self beliefs. These are tough things to tackle as most stories I have been teling myself are decades old.
The good news though, is that recognizeing the problem puts me in a much better place, mentally, to changing the problem.
 
Suzette said:
@Gerald Wilgus
Growing up we did a lot of travel by car, hiking, camping etc. For travel purposes and planning, I am pretty flexible.
I think where my ridgid thinking has been a problem is in believing some of the stories we make up about people in our interpersonal relationships and even some self beliefs. These are tough things to tackle as most stories I have been teling myself are decades old.
The good news though, is that recognizeing the problem puts me in a much better place, mentally, to changing the problem.
Click to expand...
I wish you every success @Suzette . The problem I had with self belief was due to biased and habitual thinking, not rigidity per se. The messages I gave myself were negative, I wasn't good enough for a relationship, I was unattractive, I had nothing of interest to offer anybody, I was valueless. All self-fufilling when I self rejected to avoid more hurt. It was very hard to rewrite that narrative. And even in moments of sublime positivity, that habitual thinking tried to ambush me. I've written about being at the cusp of losing my virginity to a wonderful woman when my mind tried to interfere.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom