Adjusting to knowing your perception is faulty

Post Reply New Topic

Learning how to practice Acceptance helps me.

Far from being any sort of passive, do-nothing approach, I find that getting to a point of Acceptance and being OK with myself, my history, and my present circumstances can be quite challenging.

@Retrogamer87 I know the feeling of being around a group of others and ashamed because you don't feel you've done anything interesting enough to add anything to proceedings. I still feel that way if I get caught with peers sitting around talking about their college and high school days. There's nothing like listening to a bunch of folks talk about getting drunk, going out, and breaking rules together to make me feel like I seriously missed part of the experience of being in my late teens and '20s...and like my store of stories is very, very tame and dull.

For me, the feeling of 'not realness' is--hm. Not more literal, quite. I know I'm technically real. But I have days where I feel as though I'm more of a mirror or an echo. It's particularly bad if I'm in a relationship, because I can't tell if I'm reacting to someone because *they* want me to react and social scripts say I should react or because I'm genuinely interested. It's also bad with forcing myself out to social gatherings in general. The old 'do I want to go or am I just going because without these experiences I lapse into boring inert nothingness.'

And fault--man, I think everything is my fault. When I was little (and more OCD), I used to think snow days were my fault

I was diagnosed first as bipolar 25 years ago and adjusted well, because lithium really was like a miracle drug for me. I had a few years of wonderful success, living a life I'd always hoped for. Then - outside forces intervened and basically destroyed my financial existence. The stress was unbelievable and I went through years of trying to recover. I had always supported myself and lived independently, but I became permanently disabled. It became obvious that much more was going on than bipolar and I was recently re-diagnosed Asperger.

I'm having a much harder time adjusting to the new diagnosis: maybe it's like others here have said: it's so final. I've always been capable of adjusting, even if slow and having to do it my own way, but I feel like I've been hit very hard and I'm surprised at my reaction. Usually obstacles fire me up and I get to work solving the problem, but now - what is there to solve? I am who I am, which really, is who I've always been, so why should I feel bad? It's irrational, but I feel badly about myself. It seems that in so many posts I've read in several threads that it's a common reaction. I wonder why?

Why feel bad is a good question. I don't really get why perceptions are considered faulty, maybe that's part of it. I know it seems that way to a lot of people. And it's demoralizing to be told you are less then. And no amount of different but equal talk fixes that.

Some to things are more difficult to figure out, yes, more work, yes, but I don't see how the perceptions need to be labeled as faulty. And hearing that all the time makes it feel like it's so, but I don't really understand why we have to see it that way. The wiring might not be right to make things go easily, and there are different misunderstandings, but in some ways perceptions can be very accurate.

I guess, for me, I feel bad because I've always thought maybe there was something I could do that would make me NT, which would then mean I could go to work every day without worrying about crying at my desk for no good reason, flirt and be intimate with a partner like it came naturally, and be adventurous and make decisions without agony and self-recrimination. If I do have a neurological difference in my brain/nervous system, there's nothing I can do. I can manage my behavior to appear different, but I'll never fully feel different; the feeling of looking through a window at a group I can never quite be a part of isn't fixable.

I know there are some folks who are able to go, well, what I have from working the way I do is more than what I don't have. I'm not sure I'll ever get there. For me, I do feel like I'm 'missing' something, because there's a constant feeling of grasping after something that I can *just* feel the edges of--knowing how to socialize--and can't quite grab onto. And also I hurt people and myself by acting unpredictably and carelessly and without warmth, and I hate hurting people, particularly people I care about. Possibly those are all things I can learn to manage, but I do wish I didn't have to 'learn to manage' and instead just had the capacities!