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Jan. 22nd, 2007 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urocyonEarlier I was looking for more info on inertia, which really seems to be affecting me lately. I want to do things, but honestly can't see how or where to start, and am getting very frustrated with it again. At least I am sure now that it is not really laziness or lack of motivation. At any rate, I also ran across Dave Spicer's piece, "Autistic and Undiagnosed: My Cautionary Tale".
Though excellent, this piece was difficult to read. I got a stomachache and kept having to get up out of the chair, it came so uncomfortably close to my own experiences--particularly the "internal mechanisms" Spicer goes into fairly early on.
Trying to quote and comment was difficult, as I found myself wanting to quote 2/3 of the text!
Over time, I internalized others' beliefs about me - that "there was nothing wrong with me", that I only needed to try harder, that if I really wanted to do things differently I could. In order to deal with each of these premises, I had to develop an interpretation of them, to translate them into something I could (at least partly) understand, and then turn into my beliefs about myself. [goes on to give a great explication]
This fits my experience to an almost frightening extent. It is only the past few years that I have been breaking out of this, or even realized it needed broken out of. There will probably be an amazing amount of crap to try and clear out of my head for many a year to come.
Unfortunately, I am seeing one of my younger cousins going through the people-pleasing thing to an insane extent--really implanting similar snakes in her own head, I fear--and don't think addressing it directly will help. My mom mentioned it earlier this evening.
I should add that, during these years, I began to see mental health professionals, in an effort to understand what was going on with me. Several years (and a lot of money) were spend pursuing various possibilities, including codependency, ADD, and nonexistent childhood sexual abuse. In each of these cases, some of my affect and experiences matched some of the profile for the condition. In a couple of cases, the professionals involved either ignored a clear sign such as my overloading during an exercise and banging my head on the floor, or wanted to continue pursuing a path which was clearly not leading anywhere.
BTDT, even got hospitalized at 13 over violent overload meltdowns that got called something else and never adequately explained, accumulated quite a range of shirts that never did fit.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that Asperger's wasn't even a recognized "disorder" until 1994. I try to remind myself of this, that many of the "experts" were probably truly puzzled, when I get too angry about all the inappropriate medication and condescension. It's truly appalling to think how many people have undoubtedly gone through similar experiences, once they did get into the absolutely clueless mental health system--and are still doing so, every day.
Again I realize what a good thing it is that I never really got started drinking.
For many years, I had a fear that "something was wrong with me"... and right along with it the fear that something wasn't "wrong with me"... that everything which was happening to me was my own fault/responsibility. It was an awful trap to have to live in. Only in recent years did the truth finally become known - that there is something different about me, which lets me make sense of what has happened and how my daily life goes.
Amen. People have accused me of going to great lengths to find something wrong with myself; what they didn't seem to get was that a lot of what I'd heard was that something's seriously, inherently wrong with me. There may have been some diversions along the way, while I tried to figure out exactly what it was, but I have been very glad indeed to find that there is nothing wrong after all.
Though excellent, this piece was difficult to read. I got a stomachache and kept having to get up out of the chair, it came so uncomfortably close to my own experiences--particularly the "internal mechanisms" Spicer goes into fairly early on.
Trying to quote and comment was difficult, as I found myself wanting to quote 2/3 of the text!
Over time, I internalized others' beliefs about me - that "there was nothing wrong with me", that I only needed to try harder, that if I really wanted to do things differently I could. In order to deal with each of these premises, I had to develop an interpretation of them, to translate them into something I could (at least partly) understand, and then turn into my beliefs about myself. [goes on to give a great explication]
This fits my experience to an almost frightening extent. It is only the past few years that I have been breaking out of this, or even realized it needed broken out of. There will probably be an amazing amount of crap to try and clear out of my head for many a year to come.
Unfortunately, I am seeing one of my younger cousins going through the people-pleasing thing to an insane extent--really implanting similar snakes in her own head, I fear--and don't think addressing it directly will help. My mom mentioned it earlier this evening.
I should add that, during these years, I began to see mental health professionals, in an effort to understand what was going on with me. Several years (and a lot of money) were spend pursuing various possibilities, including codependency, ADD, and nonexistent childhood sexual abuse. In each of these cases, some of my affect and experiences matched some of the profile for the condition. In a couple of cases, the professionals involved either ignored a clear sign such as my overloading during an exercise and banging my head on the floor, or wanted to continue pursuing a path which was clearly not leading anywhere.
BTDT, even got hospitalized at 13 over violent overload meltdowns that got called something else and never adequately explained, accumulated quite a range of shirts that never did fit.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that Asperger's wasn't even a recognized "disorder" until 1994. I try to remind myself of this, that many of the "experts" were probably truly puzzled, when I get too angry about all the inappropriate medication and condescension. It's truly appalling to think how many people have undoubtedly gone through similar experiences, once they did get into the absolutely clueless mental health system--and are still doing so, every day.
Again I realize what a good thing it is that I never really got started drinking.
For many years, I had a fear that "something was wrong with me"... and right along with it the fear that something wasn't "wrong with me"... that everything which was happening to me was my own fault/responsibility. It was an awful trap to have to live in. Only in recent years did the truth finally become known - that there is something different about me, which lets me make sense of what has happened and how my daily life goes.
Amen. People have accused me of going to great lengths to find something wrong with myself; what they didn't seem to get was that a lot of what I'd heard was that something's seriously, inherently wrong with me. There may have been some diversions along the way, while I tried to figure out exactly what it was, but I have been very glad indeed to find that there is nothing wrong after all.
