Posted by Liam Sirius on December 8, 2011, at 11:28:03
In reply to Little Professor Syndrome - Asperger's - long..., posted by dj on June 18, 2000, at 11:06:29
A very good article. I have Asperger's Syndrome and I'm used to reading absolute nonsense about it. The fact that this was written in 2000 before the condition suddenly became "fashionable" makes it practically revolutionary.
To briefly discuss my experiences, I was an incredibly awkward child although since I reached my mid-20's signs of my condition have become outwardly pretty difficult to detect. I still have a very short attention span for anything that does not immediately grab my interest. This can make small talk awkward as it feels so utterly pointless but I have worked hard at this as I understand it's a means to an end to build relationships with people. When I'm lucky I even find such conversations interesting and after a few chats with certain people I can even stop pretending to be enjoying myself and actually enjoy myself.
I enjoy it more when I am the subject of the conversation - I know that this is a very autistic attribute. For instance, when someone asks me how I am, it still can take some mental prompting on my part to ask that person how they are in return. It will probably never be my nature. However, I am constantly refining my second nature to make it ever more consistent. My empathy has come on wonders - at 29 I have started a degree in psychology - I enjoy studying the brain because I've had to learn most "normal" behaviour from watching that of others and consequently I am quite good at it.
I also have great trouble in hiding what I am really thinking unless I have the advantage of at least a few seconds mental preparation time first. At work, if I walk past somebody I can't stand or who makes me uncomfortable it shows on my face - but if I see them coming before they see me, I can smile in a hopefully convincing fashion and even say hi, if I feel that the moment requires it. I could in theory sometimes simply attempt to politely half-smile and not even say "hi" but I suspect that my face would still betray my true feelings to that person - it is easier to override my accidental face reaction with an extreme!
I still do act awkwardly in other ways sometimes too. When I'm tired I'm more likely to slip into old behaviour - behaviour which irritates me. I'm always absolutely determined to betray no signs of autism whatsoever but I do sometimes fail. Conversation is a big one - trying to pay attention to what the other person is saying when my mind is somewhere else. I'm sure that everybody has this problem but the main difference is is that my mind wants to be somewhere else a lot more obvious than in the brains of, to use the vernacular found in this article "typicals".
For instance I'm quite good at seducing girls (this is related and by no means should it be taken as a brag - it ultimately means diddly squat)- I understand how they would want me to act - it makes sense that in some areas I have become a master of imitating behaviour - I read Casanova's memoirs and he put me on the right track (although I would never attempt to plumb the lowest depths of his deeply immoral behaviour) - but they will normally always go off me when they discover how I am really, after 2 or 3 dates - I can only pretend for so long. I'll betray myself in some way - it's not like girls tell you afterwards why they have gone off you either. I would bloody love it if they did - because I would learn from these mistakes and I would stop repeating them. One way I suspect I am failing myself though is that I will listen to them talking - for a while - I know my attention span is short so I will compensate with extreme focus on their conversation.
But ultimately at some point, I will daydream entirely by accident and then I will snap out of it and have to guess what they have just been saying - I would love to say "I'm sorry, I just snapped out of it for a minute - please can you repeat the last few sentences" but it isn't exactly the done thing. It would be seen as offensive that I found them so boring I just couldn't listen - it wouldn't even necessarily be the case either! They might say something interesting and then my mind will go off on a tangent FROM that interesting point, they'll carry on talking and then... I realise a minute or so has passed while I was effectively elsewhere.
This kind of thing is unhelpful clearly. It's not even as though I don't care what other people have to say - I actually do if I find them interesting enough - but I have no control over daydream zone-out moments. As soon as I realise it's happened I can try to save the situation but this has limited degrees of success. I understand it too - I HATE it when I've just poured my heart out and then realised the person I've been talking to hasn't been paying attention. But I can't help it damage-limitation is the best I can hope for and with girls, who are just dying to dump someone at the first sign of any character flaw it just isn't good enough.
I have no shortage of male friends but this may have something to do with the fact that daydream zone out moments will be less common when talking to them as their brains are more similar to mine and therefore my mind is less likely to wander while they're speaking. Or they're just more forgiving of my quirks, again because their brain is more similar to mine.
Again in true autistic fashion, I could talk about this all day, after all the subject is myself. However, my lunchbreak is now over and I know full well that I may not care enough later to continue writing this, as my mind no doubt will have moved onto something else. I'll have to bully my brain into doing some psychology text book reading as it is - even though I enjoy it, often I stare at the page for literally 3 hours without a single word going in. But I get it done in the end. Once again, I can override my quirks and get what I need to be done, done. Again, not some kind of weird brag that I "rallied against my own brain" - I'm just trying to add to the body of knowledge on the subject.
Some people will be too deeply entrenched in the autism spectrum disorder to have as much say in how to override their brain's instinctive behaviour but in many cases if not all (I would wager all) practice and concentration will reward each subject - especially if they have someone to assist them in acting in "normal" ways as discussed above. I had to learn myself for the most part, which definitely slowed me down and made my earlier life much more of a challenge. I didn't have my first thing until 18 and my first relationship til 25 - these things stay with you.
In psychology I would love to be such an advisor who could offer such guidance and/or help to broaden the field of knowledge. I'd love to help those with Asperger's become the people they want to be more quickly, using both the knowledge I've accumulated personally, and informed by academic studies I will shortly be learning about.
It's important to stress that autism isn't all emotional turmoil from not fitting in either. I can get absolutely OBSESSED with playing a game, watching a serialised TV show or reading a book I love and when this happens I suspect my happiness is tenfold to a "typical" thinker at such times. Also, there's plenty of other things I love too that I never used to even notice when I was younger. I've established that I have throughout my life practiced at being normal to the point where this is second nature and I can remain in my comfort zone. However, not all my changes have been founded on a conscious, refined level of pretense. In many ways, my brain has simply become less autistic as I've gotten older. You use a muscle and it grows. Perhaps my empathy for others was at first faked but now it's real. With scenery I liked the idea of liking a good view although I couldn't have cared less. Now I actually like a good view. So even as an autistic person it is certainly very possible to love the world around you instead of just being entirely egocentric.
Clearly, by this waffle-fest though, ego-centric thinking is still very much a part of the package!If I wasn't in work I'd have made an effort to proof-read what I've written, tidy my passages up and make them flow a little better but as it is I hope that some of what I've written may be insightful or interesting - preferably both!
poster:Liam Sirius
thread:1004465
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20111017/msgs/1004465.html