AspergerianYogi
Member
Hi all:
I'm wondering if anyone thinks it is possible for us, as Aspies, to reframe what most consider our "peculiar interests" into tools for maintaining daily hygiene and empowering ourselves with it.
In the self-help as well as mental health communities, there is a lot of talk of 4 layers of our personhood - social, physical, intellectual, spiritual. For me, yoga has provided a conduit into my maintaining my spiritual hygiene - I don't necessarily LIKE meditating and performing an impossibly challenging sequence of postures everyday (in fact some days I begin my routine and my first thought is not how peaceful I will feel, but "Okay...I just kind of want this to be over...wait - I've only finished the first posture? DAMMIT!!!!!!"); But, like brushing my teeth, I find it necessary to get me in the zone to interact with the rest of the world. But in committing to doing it everyday, I also feel like it's become much more intensely personal and private and it affects my interaction with the NT world less and less. Before I committed to making yoga a daily practice, it would come out in subtle ways - I would want to talk about it with friends and co-workers, or fit in what five seconds I had in the bathroom or the elevator to doing a posture (like a backbend or something), or do some research on my work laptop if I was taking a mental break from a task. But after 2 months of yoga being a daily practice, designated only for home, it's become much easier for me to compartmentalize it and leave it out of the outside world persona I am shaping.
This one commitment also helped me learn to compartmentalize the other 4 layers. Everyday I have 90 minutes worth of exploring my peculiar interest in spirituality set aside. Now, all of a sudden I find myself fitting in 15 minutes a day to read fiction for pleasure, something I have not done since I was in middle school. I want to read up more on political theory and current events, but hate reading nonfiction, and I still also have to clean up my home once a week - now I listen to books on tape and so feel like I can flex that muscle of exploring my political and social views without it getting in the way of doing my chores. I am trying to learn 2 languages simultaneously - Spanish and French - so after my important tasks are done I set my timer for 30 minutes-1 hour and try to move up a level each on Duolingo. In the social realm, I began to realize that I did not really need to work so hard to appear normal or aesthetically pleasing, because I have a group of friends that I've somehow managed to keep in my life for over 10, and in one case 20, years, so I should probably make sure I am committing more time into nurturing those relationships if I truly value them.
Then my commitments started getting really weird. The weirdest right now is that I wear body-mapping compression gear and posture-correcting apparel (there really are shirts with built-in posture-correction technology - it's pretty rad, actually!). I started doing this because one way in which I have not matured much is that I need constant feedback from external sources. CONSTANTLY. This has turned into a real problem professionally, at times costing me jobs entirely or coming very close to it. But I need this feedback about EVERYTHING, including my bodily movements and my posture - it's partially a sensory integration thing and partially dance teachers who would be strict about proper alignment to the point where I second guessed every time I walked. This compression gear has helped me get over that because now I'm getting immediate feedback - if I am slightly over-extending my knee, for example, the compression tights (designed for wear while performing athletic activity) send an immediate signal. The even better news is that nobody needs to know this - all of this is base layer clothing and so I can put on my work clothes or my casual clothes over it and nobody needs to see it's there. So now, I have been able to find a way of coping daily - and minute-by-minute - with my obsessive need to be properly aligned, which has made me feel mentally freed up to focus on other things, such as whether or not I misread someone's facial expressions or incorrectly took a reaction personally that had nothing to do with me.
So I guess my question is, do other people on this forum feel they have similarly found effective ways of incorporating their obsessive interests into their daily lives in such a way that they can still explore them and find fulfillment in them without having to question whether or not others in the outside world have picked up on their oddity?
Does my question make sense? I really am hoping this sparks discussion and that I don't just sound like a presumptive idiot. Thanks so much for reading!
I'm wondering if anyone thinks it is possible for us, as Aspies, to reframe what most consider our "peculiar interests" into tools for maintaining daily hygiene and empowering ourselves with it.
In the self-help as well as mental health communities, there is a lot of talk of 4 layers of our personhood - social, physical, intellectual, spiritual. For me, yoga has provided a conduit into my maintaining my spiritual hygiene - I don't necessarily LIKE meditating and performing an impossibly challenging sequence of postures everyday (in fact some days I begin my routine and my first thought is not how peaceful I will feel, but "Okay...I just kind of want this to be over...wait - I've only finished the first posture? DAMMIT!!!!!!"); But, like brushing my teeth, I find it necessary to get me in the zone to interact with the rest of the world. But in committing to doing it everyday, I also feel like it's become much more intensely personal and private and it affects my interaction with the NT world less and less. Before I committed to making yoga a daily practice, it would come out in subtle ways - I would want to talk about it with friends and co-workers, or fit in what five seconds I had in the bathroom or the elevator to doing a posture (like a backbend or something), or do some research on my work laptop if I was taking a mental break from a task. But after 2 months of yoga being a daily practice, designated only for home, it's become much easier for me to compartmentalize it and leave it out of the outside world persona I am shaping.
This one commitment also helped me learn to compartmentalize the other 4 layers. Everyday I have 90 minutes worth of exploring my peculiar interest in spirituality set aside. Now, all of a sudden I find myself fitting in 15 minutes a day to read fiction for pleasure, something I have not done since I was in middle school. I want to read up more on political theory and current events, but hate reading nonfiction, and I still also have to clean up my home once a week - now I listen to books on tape and so feel like I can flex that muscle of exploring my political and social views without it getting in the way of doing my chores. I am trying to learn 2 languages simultaneously - Spanish and French - so after my important tasks are done I set my timer for 30 minutes-1 hour and try to move up a level each on Duolingo. In the social realm, I began to realize that I did not really need to work so hard to appear normal or aesthetically pleasing, because I have a group of friends that I've somehow managed to keep in my life for over 10, and in one case 20, years, so I should probably make sure I am committing more time into nurturing those relationships if I truly value them.
Then my commitments started getting really weird. The weirdest right now is that I wear body-mapping compression gear and posture-correcting apparel (there really are shirts with built-in posture-correction technology - it's pretty rad, actually!). I started doing this because one way in which I have not matured much is that I need constant feedback from external sources. CONSTANTLY. This has turned into a real problem professionally, at times costing me jobs entirely or coming very close to it. But I need this feedback about EVERYTHING, including my bodily movements and my posture - it's partially a sensory integration thing and partially dance teachers who would be strict about proper alignment to the point where I second guessed every time I walked. This compression gear has helped me get over that because now I'm getting immediate feedback - if I am slightly over-extending my knee, for example, the compression tights (designed for wear while performing athletic activity) send an immediate signal. The even better news is that nobody needs to know this - all of this is base layer clothing and so I can put on my work clothes or my casual clothes over it and nobody needs to see it's there. So now, I have been able to find a way of coping daily - and minute-by-minute - with my obsessive need to be properly aligned, which has made me feel mentally freed up to focus on other things, such as whether or not I misread someone's facial expressions or incorrectly took a reaction personally that had nothing to do with me.
So I guess my question is, do other people on this forum feel they have similarly found effective ways of incorporating their obsessive interests into their daily lives in such a way that they can still explore them and find fulfillment in them without having to question whether or not others in the outside world have picked up on their oddity?
Does my question make sense? I really am hoping this sparks discussion and that I don't just sound like a presumptive idiot. Thanks so much for reading!
