Does your environment and experience influence you greatly?

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I find that unless something great happens to me, I cant talk positively. It seems that since only bad things happen, all I can talk about is negative things like my problems or whatever, which turns everyone off anyway. Is anyone else like this? How can I change this??

Yeah, I used to do that, and it really irks people.

I finally learned to make almost a game of it, and would try to find the bright side of whatever someone was saying to me, while stopping short of seeming unsympathetic or idiotic.

I guess the real key is diverting the topic away from you, and encouraging the other person or people to do more of the talking, and then responding in as positive a way as possible.

After a while you can make a habit of it, and stops feeling like an act.

I used to say the F word alot, but I substituted it for the word "awesome". so I say it out loud and it doesn't hurt anyone. if people hear me, then they think I'm being sarcastic.

You bet environment and experience influences me - because 99 times out of 100 that's all I have to go on, thanks to others by and large not helping me out with the knowledge I need. The result is that I do bend a few noses out of shape - but if I'm not getting answers that I can use to expand my knowledge base, what do they expect?

Another go way to make me turn off - especially nowadays - is to give "advice" that looks distinctly like telling me how to run my life. Or worse still just dumping all pretences and just doing it. Way to teach a person to hate!

I am unashamedly a bitter person. Some may call me twisted - but I don't agree. A twisted person commits crimes like the WTC, Bali, London, VTech, Port Arthur and so on.

That is the result of environment and experience for me. The trick now is to deal with it and get closure on it as best I can.

Yes, I find similar.

I have found that creating good things in my life meant I could concentrate on the good and interesting stuff, and pay less attention to the bad stuff.

So I would set myself tasks that were positive like tidy a section of the garden, learn a new skill, read an interesting book, learn a new tune on the mandolin.

Maybe something similar would work for you.

Best wishes

Robin

Thanks for that, QP - but doing positive things for me requires something I don't have enough of. Money. And to get it - well that's the reason why what made me bitter can't be avoided until it's dealt with.

There is the odd exception of course - but it only lasts so long.

Speaking for myself, books don't interest me and neither do new skills because I'm happy with what I have in that regard. And what garden? Believe me, things are very complicated under this roof and every time I do try and find something positive in what I do, there's usually someone waiting to throw a spanner in the works. Heck, I try to be positive in here and help people understand with my own experience to add to their knowledge - and what happens? People come along armed with the metaphorical spanner.

Sometimes I wonder if I can actually "win" something (per se)!

Of course environment plays a part.
Experience plays a part as well.
Let's be honest we are battling against it being aspies. Of course we are going to have to be more resilient and tougher. At the end of the day we are at a natural disadvantage.
An aspie on another forum started to have a go at me for being less functional than him. I laughed.
Who cares if he is more functional than me or I him. We are both less functional due to our condition than 99% of the rest of humanity and I am supposed to be offended and "haggle over functionality" with that dropkick.

So we have to be smart and work in strategies and learn to put up with the curve balls life throws at us.
Sure fight personal slights and discrimination, but you still have to make the effort if you expect others to.

If you give up on doing this and decide to go off into fairyland where you imagine you are an autistic superman overthrowing a society, then there is a word for that.

I think people on the spectrum should support each other, should give what strength they have spare, they ought to "gently educate" people about autistic and help demystify it positively.

We ought not become bitter and cynical

All of us have had bad experiences. Comes with the territory. We all need to move past these experience an get over ourselves in order to face up to the next set of challenges. Life was never easy and will never be. You need to make your own breaks or you will flounder.

Yes, unfortunately money can be a very limiting factor.

I am unemployed (living on state sickness benefits), so I have to be careful with money.


It is also very hard if you are living with other people, as their lives can impact on yours in both uncertain and negative ways. My only advice there is to try and move out, but I understand that is a lot easier said (typed) than done - there may be many barriers to living independantly of family or a communal house.

Do you study? If not, is there anything you would like to study? There may be a local class, or a distance learning programme you'd like to participate in. I am doing a degree with the Open University and find that gives me some purpose, and a positive focus.

Part of it is setting goals that I can achieve, rather than setting goals that are too long term, or just unattainable. And then when I reach the goal, letting myself feel pleased with it rather than saying to myself "Oh, but that was easy, it was only doing _____" and effectively discounting the success.



Probably not, if you see life as a battle against the people in your life that are difficult. You can't control their behaviour (nor is it right to try to do so). All you can do is control your behaviour, and change the way you react to circumstances. A win means different things to different people, and I don't know what you would count as a win.

Best wishes

Queerpuppy

Governments the worse, for throwing spanners in the works, now been waiting 6 months to get in a residential collage, & now after an assessment & the government bringing out the new get people of the benefits schema, where the doc who was they was talking through me to my social worker, & twisted his review in his own words like

( Are you afraid or anxious that work will make your condition worse or bring it back? he ticked yes & I don't even agree to that, he also made up his own mind in a 30min interview to fill in the other stuff. ) Now I got a letter saying if I become sick in the next 6 months that I can't claim SSP or what not. ) ( Last time I looked I still am. )

I stay in my room 24/7 nearly, he took the fact that I can go out in my jeep alone, as been able to go out alone ( a jeep is an extended cage, It stops people from coming near me ), if I could go out alone why the hell do I have a social worker with me, ( He ticked Yes as I can go out alone ), then answering the phone & taking a message, ( he answered yes ), because I have a mobile phone & it's only in case I break down so I can phone my mother or mums boyfriend. ) ( & no one else has my number not even my Social worker, because she can't guarantee me that she will use the same phone. )

Now I guess This has to be attacked now, since now I am unable to go to the res collage, & that was going to be this month sometime, Mind you I should expect it as they screw overweight people over when it comes to they surgery for gastric surgery. Why would my doc at a mental health centre be wanting to drug me back up If I am not sick, Behaviour therapy, could do with other stuff too, hell I probably done more work than they done, by providing tones of infrmation about me, if that is not enough for them to help me, they either that **** at they job or just out of the loop of current research...

Really I just feel like sticking a pen in these paper pushers that screw with people's life’s in 30min interviews, & fill in a form wrong... So now either I will miss a slot in the res collage & have to wait another 6 months, or so, or just give up on it... I just thought it was pointless since ill be going to a Res collage that provided everything in one package. & maybe they would be better at they jobs...


Bet shaw trust are going to be **** after all the work they done to get me into interviewing & forcing the 4 places to fill in the damn forms faster. since it took 3 months just for that.


Anyway Yes it is hard to think positive when you ask for help & they more screw balls than people who can do the job... They blown my steam on it , think I might look into truck driving as most of the time your on the roads ( plus right now they is a shortage ), if this does not span out...

Hey there Logitechdog,

Not being able to claim SSP means that if you get sick within 6 months of signing off sickness benefits, you are entitled to go directly back onto whatever level of beneft you were claiming before you came off them.

It's an incentive for employers - they are less likely to worry about taking you on if they know they aren't going to foot the bill if you get sick again.

I was with Shaw Trust a couple of years ago and had to go through all this.

best wishes

Queerpuppy

Uh, the only other person in my house/home is my wife. Moving out? Erm.........



No, and besides I don't have time. That's how my life has developed without a job - I fear boredom. So I immerse myself in my interests. My Wiki is a big one - there is a truckload of work to do on it still, and I had a major setback over the weekend when I lost a large slice of the next upload when my datastick collapsed on me. Add to that (at present) a wretched house move!

Then of course there are the other domestice requirements!



I've had success - 18 years as an Australian rules football umpire. Success is gauged by getting to umpire a grand final, and I umpired five. And it wasn't easy, because it should have been more (one time I was blatantly robbed but I got over that). The best part about that was it was within a special interest as well (football).

I've also had success within the world of pro wrestling. Don't laugh - because it's a special interest as well I get a big kick out of that. I have been battling a major setback there - which was my own fault - but I'm almost back to where I was now, and hopefully soon my heel manager character will be back on the show again sometime in 2008. I'm looking forward to it. It's great fun!



The people I fight against are the ones who make my life difficult - and (this is important in the whole scheme of things) do it intentionally for a laugh, or they are the decisions makers who have the power to dictate terms to me to the extent that Aspie traits are completely ignored and in fact are openly discouraged. Routine and autonomy for example. Plus (and I've mentioned this a lot) a senior medical officer for the government - known as the CMO - labelling me unemployable.

So controlling my own behaviour generally doesn't work. Especially when those same people exist within my special interests (this applies more to the wrestling that the footy but there have been bad apples in both) - because moving on isn't an option without dumping that special interest. And I'm sure you would understand that.

I don't fight against people who aren't important in that scheme of things. The most I'll do is blow off some steam - either where they are or elsewhere (either on my Wiki or on one of my blogs) and then move on and ignore them. Just now - I've put another one to pasture right here on this forum. In this case I blew off the steam here.

As far as the right to to control their behaviour is concerned, actually if they try to control yours I think it's actually fair to restrain them or whatever. If they aren't - then they aren't important. For example - I think I would have every right to control a stalker. And I've done that as well, and it scared nine shades of cow manure out of the moron. It served him right as well.

It's amazing just how much contempt there is for a complicated life. I make no bones about it - mine is complicated. And yet so many NT's (and even a few Aspies) think they have a simple solution and bawl me out if I don't take it. You are one of the few people who has shown consideration - and I thank you for that. It's a breath of fresh air!

A lot of disasters happened around me in within a few months. There was an arsonist setting fires to apartment buildings around me. Then one small wooden apartment building next door burned down and killed everyone in it except the cat. I saw a pedestrian get hit by a motorcycle and die. My roommate almost got raped at knifepoint in the alley in the middle of the night but my dog and I chased him away. The arsonist cops heard the noise and came into my apartment to take a report about the attack.

When people called me on the phone for chit chat, I had things to say because of all the disasters. I didn't hate talking on the phone for once in my life. I wondered if I just liked talking about disasters. I wanted more things to happen. Then I realized that it was just that I wasn't struggling to interact. I had something relevent to say for once.

I do think environment and experiences influence aspies a lot, as I could experience.