Thank God for martial arts...

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I came home last night from work in a real funk. No particular work-based reason, in fact work couldn't be better - I'm about to make my company quite likely well over $100,000 in invoicing. I came home though, sat down at my computer aiming to make music, didn't work, all of a sudden I felt too tired to do anything at all. I couldn't get on wrongplanet much, I tried doing some other things, couldn't do that either. I really spent most of my night wishing that there was some way I could completely collapse or surgically remove my 'I' sense - I really wanted to die and let my body keep living.

I've had that feeling come over me a lot because, on top of having AS, I have a personality type that's either not allowed to exist or is not allowed to exist within someone who looks, walks, and talks the way I genetically do. Ie. I'm not allowed to be me, life steals my energy, steals my thunder, actually drains my sense of self and it never seems to stop. I had a few close NT friends who did fuel me a great deal but, they've moved, and now I'm starting to understand that without them I likely would have faded away into a rust spot on someone's wall had I not met them earlier or had nearly twelve or thirteen years of their companionship regardless of what kind of drama might have gone around or how hyper-critical they could be at times.

I'm not brand new to this feeling, just that in the past I had a lot more hope, believed doing x, y, and z could solve it, and I'm continually finding myself with less and less of that rope as I get older. I know a lot of you are probably familiar with this feeling - neutralized by society, rendered impotent in persona, feeling like you're being dominated and submitted by stupidity and that this same stupidity and homogeneity will in the end wipe you from existence as well as erasing any record that you ever were. By no means to I feel like I'm better/smarter than other people, I just feel like I'm trapped in a place where my own pool of talents and abilities are rendered useless - and the stupidity feels like its in the reasons why I'm held out, it feels almost as arbitrary as 'you wear beige coats - I can't take you seriously'. In that climate I really feel like everything that has made me feel great, made me even feel likable/lovable/passable, could burn what little oxygen it has left and flicker out. Half the time this is the reason why, rather than feeling like I'll go to oblivion when I die, I'll feel like I'm already there.

The reason for the title: I realize that any time I'm actively doing something that takes my mind off of life, takes my mind off of myself, and involves me in something that makes me forget about the shackles I'm wearing, I get to feel like a brand new person for a few hours. I really get to feel like I'm involved in something where I have a place, where I'm enriching/improving myself, where what I do has merit. I woke up this morning in the same slump that I was in last night, feeling like I was really on the edge of oblivion, and just working for two hours with him on lesson plan changed my day. The same thing at work - listening to Spanish while I work and trying to teach myself a language takes my mind out of the gutter, it also acts as a great self-medication because I'm not only gaining the joy of being able to listen to that and constantly realize how much I'm improving, its a big marketable skill and it opens me up to a whole continent of people who's thoughts and culture I never would have understood any better than superficially otherwise.

For what I'm going through right now, I would really like to hope that I'll find a way to cleat in, fix what ever is in my a priori assumptions about life or self that's generating this gap between self expectations and reality. I've been trying for a long time though and it seems like for my subpsyche/subconscious, like anyone elses, trying to steer it on another course or change what fundamentally makes you tick - if its to your detriment - is like cutting the wheel on an ocean liner. It takes years and even when you get the result you want its a leap of faith; there's no guarantee that you'll have found a place from which you will level out, especially if the way the world will treat you will remain disconfirming and turn everything you touch to quicksand.

Regardless though I know that my best weapons on this front are the activities I'm engaging in. Tonight will also be a reprieve as I'll be able to go back to my old club-hopping ways for a minute. I figure that a lot of people in our situation are dealing with what I am, I really want to believe that there is a dignity-friendly way of getting through this. "Your right - gut your soul, erase all emotion and identity as completely as you can, and wait for death" may perhaps be the only answer but, admittedly, that's too much reality for me right now. One of my inherent strengths/flaws (depending on the observer and situation), I'm an obsessive problem solver. I don't let nagging issues go and I literally can't rest and can't be at peace when I know that things aren't right in my life. If anyone has dealt with this kind of thing and come up with their own solutions - feel free to say something here or PM me if its too personal.

Try the meditation instructions on this page: http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/



Flow state? Absorption? Yes, I like that feeling. I think it's possible to be in it at all times. Engaging with what is, even things that we dislike.

A lot of your trouble seems to be a disliking of what is. When feeling impotent, why not allow yourself to be okay with impotence? Then there is no problem. Soon the feeling of impotence will go, then no problem. We don't need to be potent all the time.

Don't 'gut your soul' or 'erase your emotions', get familiar with them. Let them come and go, examine them. Don't push them away. That will only put them into your 'shadow' and they will haunt you from there. Emotions are information too. 'Heady' folks tend to ignore this.

Overall, I think a meditation practice is the medicine you want. I suspect your solutions to problems tend towards activity, and that leaves you burned out.

When I write things like this and get an answer that's counter-clockwise enough to my usual way of thinking I have to remind myself to empty my cup and really evaluate it properly (if I do slip on that though please feel free to delve into that particular area in more detail). I'll say what comes to mind with these things, which is in no way defensiveness or trying to explain it off - just tracing the shape of things and answering the questions.

I had a chance to skim over this, I've tried meditation in the past but unfortunately it was attempts at TM or blunt-force clearing of the mind, both of which if anything make me more tense. I'm glad to see that this is more natural and it allows for me to let my mind drift. I'd be curious to get your take on this recommendation - ie. it looks like its about taking apart and untangling your own subconscious from itself to obtain more coherent behavior as well as answers on what to do with yourself? It seems like for anyone alive practically our biggest challenges aren't external but rather the shape of our own internal container, what we can or can't get out of our nervous systems, and going with that in which ways we're capable of adapting to our realities simply by submission to life and which ways we aren't.


Admittedly the last part of this goes over my head a little. My main way of dealing with life has been first and foremost recovering my governance, my space, my territory, from society as it utterly abused ownership of that (when I lived more unconsciously), going with my internal senses and trusting the very visible slivers of internal emotion and instinct in particular that - when I hold them up against the world around me - they are the items that make me distinctively me, give me my Matt'ness. After that, once I'd really hit rock bottom in highschool and new I couldn't kill myself, I decided that I had been through too much not to fight for my identity and its rights, thus I really wished to make a place for myself utilizing and communicating the items that I mentioned above, the things that make me me and the things that I feel that I have that are rare and which I can give back to the world or explore on somewhat of a 'spiritual' level, regardless of whether there even is such a thing in the literal sense, its a need like anything else.


Its specifically the sense of starvation that I mentioned. The things that I mentioned as my best attributes and the things which I really felt were the best of me. The real problem, what I mentioned with society - the things I have inside me are apparently too 'high brow' of transcendental, ie. I'm not basic enough and because I'm not basic enough I pay quite a heavy price - ie. I realize I haven't been in sync with the world around me and I'm pretty sure I never will be unless I'm somehow able to give that up. I feel like a classic Jungian introvert living in a world where for 95% of people Freud and breaking everything down to sex sounds about right. That's not to say I'm asexual by any means, just that it seems like if there's any part of a person that isn't involved with attaining food, water, shelter, security, or p---- that there's something seriously wrong, I get my greatest pleasures out of things that aren't of that and its part of why I feel out of step or like places for me are too few and far between.


The $64,000 question is 'how?'. For what I've been through in life I've got quite the social Darwinist as*hole of a superego crushing down on me, he's a bit like Alanzo from Training Day and perhaps not too far off from most of the adults who made themselves quite significant in my past whether I wanted their influence or not. The upside right now - I'm doing a lot to help myself, which shuts that part of myself up, and I think as I round the bend of 30 it seems like I've been able to relax a bit more. To really say that I'm completely ok with absolutely anything though still seems like its a good way in the distance. Still hungover from last night I can imagine what that would feel like but then again, admittedly, right now my brains flooded with way more GABA than usual.


I guess the hypothetical worst case scenario answer that I came up with was one saying that the things I hold in great esteem about myself, ie. the core attributes that seem to separate me from my environment, would have to be removed or ignored in favor of conformity or that they needed to bleach out and fade away in order for my life to change. I agree though, when you get into bending and breaking emotions or trying do splinter a square peg to dust so it fits into a round hole, your often doing very damaging things to other structures that feed you the motivation and power to be dynamic in the first place - thus you remain stuck in old and unhelpful patterns more easily without any clear way out and your own efforts reinforcing the lock on the door. Hence, if my desire to grip these emotions and aspect of self gets too rediculous and too counterproductive, I could see where I would be forced to either resign them or spiral down the drain while gripping onto them all the way. If that point comes that I have to go that way I guess I'd have to be ready for it, there would be no other choice, but it would quite sad and quite a loss (I guess I'd have to really push myself on atheistic convictions that nothing matters anyway and that treating certain things as sacred is my sickness? It could soften the blow perhaps).


I suspect that, without doing that meditation directly, I already have a process similar to this. Anything that drives me crazy about myself or that I don't understand, I try to pick it off element by element, isolate each element, and understand where it comes from. Of course things come to light slowly as, no matter how cognizant or self aware a person is, it typically takes external events to create contrasts and awareness. So that's pretty much where I'm at. I think I'm starting to have those proper contrast experiences that I need to illuminate my inner self but, in the meantime, I have to admit, I am going through a bit of a scary period because everything about me - from the foundations up - is starting to shift and reconfigure, and while I'd never run from change (that's technically the way of death, especially if what you have right now isn't working) but, when its this drastic it can be quite intense.

That could also be the intensified sensation of fading or losing identity that I'll get, because my subconscious and conscious mind are likely making some heavy novations to their current contract with each other.

Nothing like starting out the New Year by sorting through the psychological flotsam and jetsam built up over years past! Kudos to you for tackling these things head on, instead of trying to push them below the surface and pretend they are not there, like so many people do. That right there demonstrates more courage than most 'everyday' people can muster.

Sorry that you are dealing with so much right now, TechStep, and sorry that I am not well-qualified to give you advice on any of it, but feel free to PM me if you need someone to talk to.

You never know when tipping points like this will come along. I did spend a lot of time simply trying to divert my attention away from it simply because I had no answers and it seemed like the better alternative to despair. Right now though I'd say I'm pretty certain it is what I estimated earlier - possibly a major overhaul on how I see certain fundamental aspects of life. Its going in that direction naturally but, like any time when your foundations are up on blocks, its quite eerie for a moment or two.

I think you mean that you are happy for a perspective that's very different than your own?



That's a very good way of putting it. I shall remember that. Yes, untangling yourself from yourself so you can get a good 'look' at yourself, and change yourself.

What's TM? Transcendental Meditation?



Okay, I understand. Sounds like you've been through some tough processes already.



Yeah, I can dig it. I think it's evident in your communication style; it's very complex.

So, maybe your current 'crisis' if I can call it that, is somehow about reconciling yourself to being apart from the mainstream, but also finding a way of satiating that hunger for - I don't know what... comradeship?



Mmm, well if you know the superego is crushing you, then it's just a matter of brokering a new deal with the bastard Or add a new voice, a more supportive one. This might sound stupid, but at one point in my life I invented an 'imaginary' friend... not exactly that, but similar. Anyway, I imbued her with a supportive personality rather than a crushing one, and I consulted her to see what she would say on certain things.

If that makes no sense, check out this very short video, it might help.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eiAt_22js4[/youtube]




Mmmm... sounds like some kind of self identity problem; you're worrying about losing parts of your self that you consider sacred. How about re-framing the way you see it; changing yourself doesn't have to be a one way process. You can experiment with being a different you, and if you don't like it, you can go back, or try other new things. I think it's natural to fear change, but if you're not entirely happy with things, it's definitely worth taking some chances.

If it helps, you could make a record to refer to. Write a document about the person you are now. Write another about the person you'd perhaps like to be. See what can be done to bring the two together. Or maybe not the person you'd like to be, but what you'd like more of in your life, and see how that can be achieved.



Mhmm, yes that does sound a lot like a psychological Vipassana meditation.

By proper contrast, do you mean, getting a sense of seeing yourself clearly? I think other people can give us this, but we are not very good at reflecting true images unless it's asked for. It can be painful.



Sounds like you've got a 'dark night of the soul' thing going on? My best advice is once begun to finish quickly. Don't be afraid. Move forward, no benefit from hanging around in the dark.

Good luck. I've tried to be helpful. Hope it works out!

More that I'm as opinionated as anyone else and that it takes deliberate effort not to give knee-jerk responses.


If I tried to give a better analogy, I'd suppose that emotionally a bit more pure and have a tendency of even taking very worldly things and using/spinning them off of sort of a spiritual/celestial pivot.


I know for certain that this is a portion of it, but also I'm feeling like certain things in my life haven't worked and its figuring out how to change my internal structure to be able to get what I want - going forward - while shedding as little as possible of the self that I like, perhaps as it goes on finding ways to reconcile the new parts in with the old.

Another thing I'd say - I have great difficulty making changes unless those changes sink in in such a way that my subconscious understands or is willing to see as important enough (regardless of how much my conscious mind might rail on it to do so at times).


I actually had a dream earlier this year that involved me dealing with my super-ego or, technically better said my chief of internal/external security. Needless to say we were forging new tools together via reintroduction by a third party who got me in to see him, the meaning of the dream was that I was being allowed to have changes that I had wanted for years prior to that but simply couldn't get in to access that part of myself. I thought these tools might have been my ability to chase down practical interests more rather than just work on my 'act'. Now I'm starting to wonder if this situation is part of it.


I guess I'll try to demystify the way I said that a bit (I feel like such a horse's ass when I realize this is happening - unfortunately its a complex topic which may be why I'm even a little worse than usual here). You have part of that right, what I mean is that many of your internal traits are invisible to you, ie. they won't be triggered by life or be visible to be viewed or even noticed by you unless your in very particular situations that will draw on an angle of thought that you never typically have any external call to use. Its only then that you all of a sudden may have an emotional or psychological reaction to something that you never would have seen coming and find yourself very confused on why it happens - thus you're forced to think on it. Having what I see as a lot of roadblocks in life I tend to crave those moments because they're opportunities to actually see what's wrong and fix it, its not to say that the process may be too slow and that my life could still pass me by, but they're opportunities to lessen the likelihood of things ending that badly.


Lol, trust me, I'm not emo like that. The only thing I care about is getting it done right so I don't end up back here later.