Does anyone else forget they're a person?

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I know exaclty what you mean, I can't see myself when I'm not looking in a mirror. And it freaks me out because to me I'm just a floating mind with feet when I look down.

@Marybird I try to reply to the people who reply to my threads, because I know it makes me sad when it seems like people haven't acknowledged my input, because even though it may not be helpful it was intended to add the persons perspective or something.

@ThinkTrees I definitely don't have the excess of empathy problem. People confuse me with their emotions, I generally have very little idea what they're feeling unless I have contextual knowledge of their person situation and I come to know their feelings through logical inference.

@Nolan1971 No, I don't mean that I experience things in a 3rd person sense. It is more that I experience without a person, 1st, or 3rd. But I do forget I am a creature with feeling, and I do miss out on pleasure, lots.

@CrazyStarlightRedux I think self awareness is good, and robots are awesome.

@MONKEY This, very much! Do you know if anything can be done about it?

Pretty sure I get what you're saying. I start daydreaming about the nature of the universe, existence, and reality, and I get "lost" up there. Suddenly there's no subjectivity, no "me", no "other", there are only nameless truths floating around in some arbitrary void. And then I come back and connect the dots - that I'm just a tiny biological organism experiencing neurological impulses which have combined to produce an illusion of "total perspective", that all this information is necessarily subjective and filtered through a lens of "self", and it's a pretty jarring and abrupt shift.

I don't find it unsettling... Weird and existential, sure, but I never stopped to consider that this might be "abnormal" or that something might be "wrong" with me. For whatever reason, "spacing out" like this is relaxing and comforting to me.

I experience what you mean daily with moments of clarity when I feel centered again when all my senses and desires get
set on high. When that happens every sensation smell,touch etc is almost intoxicating.
The robot like feeling comes in handy when I have to do the things I hate chores,work but sucks when I am trying to have fun!

a lot of times i feel im watching a movie where i have no part and then i remember that its not a movie and its real life sucks because its not that good of a movie.
I do this a lot when im on the street i start observing other people and their behavior trying to guess whats going on.

I believe dissociation is what we are describing in this thread. Here are a couple links on AS and dissociation:

http://forums.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=71995
http://www.caetextia.com/pages/leftright.html

I believe many AS dissociate to deal with stress, boredom, and even creative activities or work.

http://www.therapyhub.com/articles/type ... ssociation

I don't think it makes you feel less enjoyable or that you do not get the full pleasure from experience it is more of a new perspective sort of like a photographer seeing things thru the camera lens or a bird watcher using binoculars each time you catch your self feeling this way EMBRACE it SAY THIS IS ME SEEING LIFE FROM A NEW BETTER PERSPECTIVE AND ITS A BEAUTIFUL POSITIVE AN LOVING ONE! Good or bad learning to be ok with our Aspie traits will give you light at the bottom of the blacks holes of depression because nobody knows like we do that we are our own worst enemy and until we learn to get out of our on way and embrace all of our traits and qualities we are unable to be fulfilled. Or at least that's how I feel about life Feel free to contradict me, anyone?

I get that feeling sometimes, heck, I think I'm a robot once in a while.

Most everyone regardless of neurological makeup will ponder existentialism at some point. This is normal. In the grand scheme of things, it's amazing just how minor all our individual problems are and how irrelevent we truly are to the universe.

Yes, I feel as if I'm not human and I just observe. I get very irritated when someone tries to involve me in something, not because I'm antisocial but because I feel I'm not here for that, in all honesty I don't want to be a person and I prefer being alone, I've had relationships but I've never felt comfortable, I don't really have a sex drive and sometimes I forget that I'm in a female body.

You mean that you forget that there is a boundary between self and non self?

That you kinda become "one with the universe" so to speak?

Almost sounds like you naturally fall into the same state that many strive to get to through years of studying meditation.

But you not only cant help it, you get sick of it!

I know exactly what you are talking about, it's unsettling when it takes over, or rather when the "you" returns, it feels like watching yourself drown, or panicking that your personality will be irretrievable. There are lighter stages of the same state that I quite enjoy, where distinctions are blurred, for example, stationary objects also embody movement and moving objects embody something static. Does any of that make sense?

There is a common phenomenon where people who are concentrating or hyperfocused on a task can sometimes lose themselves to the task and lose their sense of self. As if they are so focused on what they are observing, they forget they are the observer. The feeling can be kinda like, everything around you is a TV show, and you're just the camera, at the scene, but not actually part of it. Artists athletes musicians dancers etc have this happen a lot, they call it being "in the zone". Its possible you are prone to going "in the zone" while viewing the world around you (aka "zoning out", even though you are in fact zoning IN on things). It used to happen to me more when I was younger. Now I have a little more conscious control over it, and it really only happens if I let it happen.

I hope that makes sense. Any of that sound familiar to your experiences?

I've been in a state, where I think that I do not have a right to be a person.
That all I see is my wrongs, my guilt, that everything is my fault, and no more and no less.
That I should be persecuted, I should be punished, and whatever lashing done is never enough.
That I must beat myself, that I must beat this flaw out of my system. That I should be put out of the equation because the problem is me -- everything is just about me, me being in the right and wrong.


Then... There's a much different state, a complete opposite to that.
I've experienced in such state, as opposed to pondering or intellectually playing with the idea.

A state where one understands that everything is connected that one is a part of everything. A state that 'I' am everywhere, everything... A state that is unconditional, where time and space is meaningless, that everything is true and false.
A state that realizes that one is more than just the mind and body, that one is more than a 'person'.

While confusing, as many of my usual confusions about myself, meditation or not, I didn't forget that I'm separate.

A part of me already knew this, a part of me accepts, a part of me awes, a part of me longs for it.
A part of me becomes hilariously bored and wanted me to get tortured, indulged or something.
A part of me is still confused, a part of me went scared out of it's existence, a part of me is also driven into insanity, a part of me denies that it's just a dream or some another weird state.

It was heck of a trip when I came to such point.

Amazing that I’m still amused by this topic after all these years, who knew one question could stay with me 7 years and my answer has changed just as many times.

Ooh time went all fuzzy!