Vulnerability to self-judgement tirades?

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That's precisely my problem - very low proclivity to suggestion.

I don't think that is a problem. That's how you are and you need to find ways that work for you.

Having said that, it sounds as though you/we are susceptible to the suggestions of those, or to ourselves in our interpretation of those 'suggestions', who make remarks or behave in a way in relation to us, that make us feel bad about ourselves.

Well, I'd probably be better off rephrasing that then 'That's my dilemma' - ie. the quick and easy fixes are off the table for me


Well right but in my own case my rating of the input is mathematical, unfortunately it might be *too* mathematical for my own good. I tend to be brass tacks - ie. if I really suck at something and humiliate myself, if its just an average level of suck I can roll it off because everyone has those corners, if something else happens that creates an absolute social moment of horror I can socially try to roll it off but it still ends up really impacting me that day.

My biggest moments of horror and times where I tend to freak out inwardly are instances where I find out the hard way that I've hit my upper limit on something that I'd been working on for a long time, trying to correct, fix, or improve about myself, and that this category limits my best ability to somewhere between subpar and mediocre; especially when its something to do with executive functioning. Its the kind of thing that makes me feel like I'll never fiancially go anywhere, that I could be back under the thumb of the wrong kinds of NT's at any moment, and that life could swallow me right back into victimhood, kicking and screaming, as a man who absolutely hates the idea of victimhood and has that (likely culturally abused in frame of reference) that male victim = male who's too weak to have any right to live whatsoever and who diserves to have absolutely everything taken from him, be abused horribly till the day he dies, etc. etc.. Trust me, I don't project that on other people or any of you at all - its a byproduct of something I've been through. Does anyone remember a movie called Training Day? I know that absolutely no aspies aside from me have ever watched it or ever will, something about my using it as an analogy assures that anyone I use the analogy around has both never seen the movie and never will (yes - desparate sarcasm). I can't really sum up that internal voice any better than Densel's character, and that's exactly the kind of malignant macho I was steeped in several times in my life.

I have seen Training Day, so I feel quite special to you now! Really enjoyed it too although can't remember so much about it.

I'm not sure how mathematical the relationship is between inward feelings about oneself and outward efficacy in terms of economic performance. But I would think there is some sort of correlation. What are you after: feeling good or performing well? Probably both. But I don't know enough about you or your work situation to comment on the realtionship between these two dimensions for you.

For me feeling good 'is' performing well. Then again it used to be pretty close to 100% correlation but, albeit - like with anyone else alive and breathing on this planet past 25 - reality sets in and you realize the sky's not the limit, rather its significantly lower. What I'm trying to do right now is get myself to be okay with the results that my best or at least best reasonable efforts at any given time offer. Sure, I'd like to stay somewhat ambitious to where I keep pushing but I'd like to have my mechanisms well built to where, as I map my neural capabilities, that getting to the edge of what - within us - essentially a flat earth, that I won't jump up and down and beat myself when I realize that I found another cliff on the edge of oblivion yet again.

Sounds like you're 'getting there.'

I witness my internal processing as a control system (I like SCADA).
The whole thing is divided in subsections and there is correlations and dynamics.

I cannot just say "oh let's make my input !a instead of a", just because that would make me less troubled.
I cannot create meaningless inverters out of thin air.
I live a real life, not a magic show.

When trying such a trick (I feel obliged to cooperate with people trying to help me), it always feels superficial and I am constantly aware of the lie and hate it.
It renders anything beyond that artifact meaningless.

me: "Thank you for the advice, it has now made me useless."
them: "yes, isn't it wonderful? you look better already."

Sorry, that is one of my main frustrations.
I say something and most people don't get it.
I tried simplifying my language, stretching it out to easen the learning curve that they seem to experience, drawing pictures and schemes and still very few times any of it gets across.

The self esteem angle is an interesting one.
I like myself fine, but the constant feedback I get from NT environment does affect me. And I must admit I hate that I cannot fix this problem.
So it is not a 100% all-is-wonderful nirvana.
This place is uncomfortable to inhabit and gives me constant headaches.

Feels like being put in a labrat maze with zero exits.
You can have all the brainpower in the world, but we are not god, we cannot create a solution like that.

And stop that prodding!

I am pondering the value <-> performance relation.

People always told me I "can do anything" and I have been successful in various measurable tasks.
I guess that helped me put my acceptance-baseline rather high.

It also gave me this proud feeling.
I aced those tests, I am good.
I won that thing, I am amazing.

And lately I feel very aggravated whenever I get praise for something I did.

I do not want them to emphasize the importance of my performance.
I want to be considered "okay" just for me sitting next to a test or a fence and breathing.

But it is firmly engrained: I perform, I am good.

So when I fail.. that then.. means.. I can deduct this outcome.
them: "You must not feel defeated!"
For me that is another task: I must execute it well.
me: "I do not feel defeated!" + accompanying smile_017 from my databank
them: "very good!"
I feel a tiny bit better.. and confused.

I can see where it all originates.
But where to go now then?

It feels wobbly, uncertain.
I try to eduate my family, teach them what my core problems are.
They care and do their very best, yet habits do not change easily.

I sense I just need some time quiet somewhere where I am accepted for being myself and not required to jump fences.

That's due to a chronic low self-esteem developed from childhood .

There's no cure for it.

The only way is to keep yourself preoccupied.

Exactly. I can remember most of the 'incidents' that permamently took a bit of my esteem from primary & secondary school...you can't change the past.

A counselor once told me that he thought higher intelligence made people more susceptible to this kind of extreme frustration and self-loathing feelings. You probably have strengths in some area (an area that unfortunately may not easily translate into "success" in the current corporate world) and thus you know what it feels like to perform well. Thus you have lower tolerance for everything that's a struggle and doesn't come naturally. I know I feel this way all the time. Being told to just accept the struggle while I see most people around me breezing through feels like the worst kind of patronization. It is so disheartening being forced to spend an inordinate amount of effort on your own "weakest link". My problem is I just develop an extremely unhealthy level of stress that occasionally boils over into an outright seething rage that forces me to basically check-out on life and retreat, lest I completely snap and have a violent meltdown that lands me in prison or a mental ward.

Lol, doesn't it feel like being Johnny Knoxville in the ringer trying to explain the lawn mower situation?

I'd say that's a pretty good assessment, though at the same time - likely for both of us its prehaps childhood/teens that the problem is "I understand that motion/action completely, why can't I just do it? Why does it need practice?", of course we grow up and learn the caveats a little more realistically in regard to being human. However, that's when we hit the next, even more challenging layer - realizing there are all kinds of things that we'll want to do well, could put near infinite amount of effort into and simply hit an asymptote and even hit that asymptote at what people would consider a subpar level. I guess being able to get through that absolute-value self judgement is a sign that we've *really* become adults, then again it seems like with any kind of trauma people go through - whether the social reprocussions are as direct as they are to us - its an extremely difficult thing to do.

Another way I might describe it slightly different - you're right about having a self-esteem (perhaps from intelligence) that's out of sync with 'place' that the world has for people with certain weaknesses and not enough counterbalance. OTOH I think its our inherent tendency toward objective thought, not being able to rose-color or white wash our situations (partly perhaps because we just don't lie to ourselves well, also because many of us perhaps feel the long arm of society catching us and saying "Wait a minute - no, that's not going to fly" the very instant we try it - so we know that we're allowed no such entitlement the way other people are). That and when this is negative and really what I'd think of as natural/eugenic abuse starts taking place on one's sense of self - its something that's factual, albeit incredibly dark, and that sense of fighting for one's worth against being bottom rung on nature's sorting scale (which you can try to be 'above it' as much as you choose but at the end of the day when other people can still encapsulate, isolate, and render a person helpless its still largely tautology to say that it simply doesn't matter what other people think). To me to run up that wall is a temptation brought on partly by feeling like I'm doing right by myself to be as brutally honest with myself about myself as I can (again, incredibly easy when many areas of life feel 'roped off' and you feel like you're inherently doing something or many things 'wrong'), and the scary thing is that it does have quite a strong rational appeal.

I think one of the most helpful revelations I had in my late 20's was that trying to bully myself to success didn't make me stronger, it didn't turn me into what I was trying to bully myself into being, it infact made me weaker as my nervous system was getting damage, it made me stutter more, look more docile, look in every way the opposite - ie. even more like a mark/victim. That's were I knew that I needed to cut that out and at the very least I would only, only, allow myself to do that in incredibly tight situations where I felt like my boat was heading toward the falls.


Lol, yeah. I had incredibly competitive friends, sore/gloating winners even. Pretty much any time we did anything, for quite a while, I just ate it - ate it - ate it, couldn't improve enough to catch up or be anything more than curmudgeonly sidekick. Women of course saw this problem in me through life and while they found me attractive visually it turned right around and blew up when they realized that I just didn't have a healthy enough nervous system to win the race against other guys. Good news - after late 20's early 30's that changes, bad news - it does get replaced by other challenges and issues but...best I save that for another conversation I suppose.

As for what you said about snapping - for better or worse, (better as an adult, obviously worse in highschool) my anger was never physically impowering. I'd feel it like no other in my mind and on all kinds of other levels but no added strength came with it - I was still just as much of a chump, pushover, its almost like my nervous system and body literally weren't designed for violence at all and that the ability to do things I see some guys doing like hitting things hard enough to break their hand or foot, being able to 'fly off the handle' and level someone, wouldn't be something that I could have even if I'd wanted it. As an adult - its great because I think its just one other thing where, living with this my entire life, its taught me to stay calm and work through things rather than get any more confrontational than what would be by the even the strictest standards assertive. For people I do know though who have combustible temperament that can lead to self harm or to hitting people rather than objects though - I'd love to have advice for any of them but, its terra incognita for me having needed to just about fill my life, live, and breath ultraviolence in certain ways just to change into looking/vibing up as 'male' enough not to come off as a homeschooler.