Who has a "Self?"

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To perfectly describe who I am:

I am a fragmented soul who exists as many threads, weaved together to form one cloth.
This cloth is weak and has many holes in it, and because of this, the threads show themselves stronger than the cloth.
Any one thread can stick out more than the rest at any time, and the thread that is sticking out the most will be my dominant self.
I am this fabric, it is as broken and frayed as I am, with the focus on individual aspects reather than me as a whole. I am torn between all my dreams and how I will live out my life. I am the danilion blown into the wind, and spread to the world, a world in which I don't belong.

I am also emotionally unstable which doesn't help.

I guess I've really missed a lot the last couple weeks. Am going to read this thread through very carefully tomorrow.

This thread really goes to what I've been thinking the last few weeks.

I have real problems seeing myself as I have written elsewhere. Seems I have very limited range of emotions. Often feel just plain Blank.

For years when people would say to me "how ya doin'?" (again the shiver from placing three punctuation marks in sequence... what the ...!) my rote answer would always be "Just Okay". A better answer might have been "how the hell would I know?".

What do I have in my head? Lately "spork". All day long, "spork, spork, spork" Sometimes I say it out loud, more often I don't. Also "bork", and the last few days "spackle". I never thought much about this until recently. But now it occurs to me maybe others don't going around all day long saying "bork, bork, borked with a spork, spackle."

Been staring at the screen for approximately 10 minutes since the last "spackle". Can not organize my thoughts just thinking about this topic and its countless ramifications makes me want to pace frantically and flap.

five more minutes elapsed with no discernible typing occurring, despite super-churning mental hyper-locutionary sub/bloviating.

damn

This thread is hitting all manner of resonant tones within me. Memories are flooding back that I have not thought about since they actually happened. Especially that last exchange about being "GONE". How many times have I been there.....

One time I was standing in line to get into a concert. One of my favorite bands, and I simply had to be there. Directly in front of me was a man and his girlfriend. He was drunk and blathering on about nonsense to his girl, while I stood there, mostly paralyzed by anxiety and discomfort (I cannot stand being around drunk people; the unpredictability terrifies me). He suddenly turned around and attempted to include me in his drunken conversation. I was frozen. I could not speak. I stared at the sky and shut him out completely. I felt like perhaps I had merged with the stars. I was in space. Not in my body. *GONE*... This guy saw that I was not responding and gestured towards me, as if to snap me out of it. Still getting no response, he shouted in inebriated frustration, "This dude's got no personality or something?!?!"

I will never forget that line. At the time, I nearly agreed. Where was I?

In times of severe anxiety and stress, others have told me that:
-I'm like an empty shell.
-I come off cold, like a robot. Emotionless.
-I look ashen, grey.
-My eyes appear dead, like there's nothing behind them.

When episodes like this occur (especially loud, crowded social situations), I can almost watch my "self" separate and drift off. I notice a sensation of increasing physical space: I can be in a room in a house, yet my sense of proximity tells me I must be inside an airplane hangar or on a football field. I cease to hear what people are saying. My attention narrows and fixates on something visual or tactile. General numbness overtakes me and I proceed to "ride out" whatever is going on.

I used to firmly believe that I had "Depersonalization Disorder"... It fit all the symptoms I just described and made a lot of sense to me. But I never looked any further than that. As in, WHY was I shutting down like this in the first place. I had been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia. But these things didn't cover all the bases. I had too many behavioral traits that accompanied all this mental stuff.

My notion of "Self" has always been complicated by my propensity to copy others. I guess this relates to the "mirroring" idea previously mentioned. I change the style and content of how I speak depending on the people I am around. I attempt to take on an attitude and demeanor that I think will be acceptable. I always seem to say and do what I think others will want to hear and see. I want to not appear socially inconsistent, anxious and confused, which is how I usually feel. Inside, I am simply trying to relate to others, and get them to like me however I can. This has caused me endless problems. Because sometimes I succeed in getting others to like me, then they are terribly disillusioned later when they find out that my real self is not at all like the facade that I put up.

When I think about what my real self is, the image I get is one similar to the one that millie mentioned originally. Fragments. An accumulation of scattered pieces. Not an integrated, functioning, whole person. As far as it relates to being a person in a world of people, I feel like I am something of a vacuum. I have an empty center, sucking in all that surrounds it, in a vain attempt to assimilate and be a part of it.

My self when it is just for me is a bit different. The fragmentation is still there. And the intensities. Left to myself, I shift from one primary interest to another, neck deep. Working in the garden for an unbroken 7 hour stretch, trying to merge with Nature. Playing guitar for hours on end, cycling through repetitive phrases and scales, until it attains something of a meditative drone. This is very much of how I express who I am. When I am doing these things, I feel happy, vibrantly alive, talkative (usually to myself), optimistic, energized, powerful, WHOLE. I feel like myself when I am doing these things. I feel REAL. Then eventually I have to stop. And I descend back down into my cowering, unsocial, broken-up self. That's how I feel.

I suppose one of my goals in addressing all these things is to someday reconcile these two "selves". I want all the good and completeness I feel when I am alone to extend into my dealings with other people. Because if they saw that, maybe they'd want to be around me, and maybe I could have some constructive relationships in my life.

There is simply to much to say on this topic. I need to stop now. I'll revisit it in a while.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=1351349

this is just any link on what i am referring to, upon googling [iacoboni mirroring]

i am sorry, i had intended earlier not to mention simply 'mirroring', as to be regarded a 'genuine', real, not-just-mental phenomenon, but to explicitely mention the mirror neurons already picked up by Utah Frith

i had/have no time to read this particular artical, but it will get anyone going

Iacoboni (2008) also states lab evidence for the existence in the brain not only of mirror-neurons, but also of super-mirror-neurons, which i then would prefer to call META-mirror-neurons (or at least: for the time being i desire to use that for my [abstract] image-of-it-yet-to-become.

the MNeurons apparently are located in areas that control specific functions; it has been seen (by accident) that monkees not involved in what went on at the time (they the witnesses of human (inter)action, but linked to be scanned, while passively watching, DID activate the MN in the area controlling motor function, without this leading to motor function

there IS measurable activity involved in merely passive watching: WE, humans, actually (partially) LIVE what we see: this is involvement, this is identification, this is not THEORYofMind, this is COMMUNION of Mind, this is enpathy, this is actually feeling what someone else is feeling; this is not theory, nor is it 'reading'of mind....
that is what WE auties do

implicitely this also means that there is scientific evidence for the so-called 'intentional fallacy' in human sciences not being so fallacious at all
[btw; this fallacy is strikingly similar to the 'observer's whatshammacallit' which in my mind directly echoes (mirrors abstractly) towards relativity theory and even more so to quantum mechanics

at a certain abstract level, all these things, these structures of thougt are structured very similarly, that can no longer be dismissed for mere co-incidence


quest.ion now becomes, what about these MMNs (the meta's)

and this is where i will propose a direct relationship(noteventhat) between personality, self, language (as a 7th (meta)sense), and society/culture

there are philophical possibilities also for linkage to say Jungian thought, although i am very hesitant in wanting to take this to let's call it age-of-aquarius jibberish (and with that: please believe that i shall still have to regard my prejudice and recognize there may just be sommething in all that jibberish yet

you may have noticed a deep funnedness for jibberish in me -
that would be me my ironically self-mockering self & myself,thx

wow, this thread has really spun and evolved into something very complicated, but i will try to follow as best i can..

maybe its just that we do not know how to draw out what is important/core of ourselves
and so we end up listing all our aspects?

also, maybe we are just to close to the core of things as we see detail and not wholeness,
so if looking at the world we would see countries and such and not a planet like NT's would?

maybe we draw our own self into what we connect with and so we change very much accordingly,
like you say Millie, you change according to your interest.

like i said with my lighthouse illustration, i think we choke (for the lack of a better word) on detail allot of the time, but being a curse it is also a blessing, i guess it all depends on how you view it all and what you want from life ect....

[quote="sunshower"]

This, I thoroughly understand. My obsession with nature comes from this type of walking, where I observe the details around me, often the texture and shape of leaves and plants, which makes me understand the eternally intricate detail and complexity that most people seem to just miss. It amazes me, it is almost like a religious experience. [\qoute]

i have the same thing, it got me very interested in religion, but i have found that i am not religious the way religions are religious, i think i just appreciate nature and detail much better then most people...it makes me happy when i get into this mood and i feel safe and more complete then usual...

I’ve just been doing some very basic background reading on the concept of the “self”.


Hume’s definition of the “self” in his “Treatise of Human Nature”:

“When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on one particular perception, i.e. some particular memorial content or another, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception.”

In Hume’s definition, he believes that the “self” cannot exist without a continuous stream of sensory input and or remembered experiences. He does not seem to believe in an ego self as such, but in transitory glimpses of sensory experiences.


According to the Buddhist definition of the “self”, however, the “self” can exist in a sensory vacuum: consciousness is not defined as a stream of sensory perceptions. The “self” is defined as a state of being without reference to any sensory experiences. This is similar to the concept of an ego.


In summary the “self” is:

Hume’s definition: Sensory input required

Buddhist definition: No sensory input required


I hope this makes sense.
I’m not an expert at this.
Please feel free to correct me if any of this seems wrong.

it does to me, amber eyes. thanks.
i suppose that is what i mean when i use the term "relational." to a point.
my fragmentations exist in terms of also having many, many different types o handwriting to voices to ways of writing - which may be appparent to some of you here. these presentaqtions are often sensorially related. most people i know have nowehre near this kind of complexity. perhaps the only other place i get a sense of the intensity in others and the sense of fragmentation is here on WP. that makes me feel very very happy actually.

now all human beings have this to a degree. but i think in me it is far more detailed and pronounced and rather similar to what acacia was aying earlier. i see it a very much in keeping with a kind of social echolalia - whihc i have read about in some of hte more interesting AS literature (the more recent stuff and not the tired and old DSM-1V - which isn't adhered to like gospel as it is in some areas i the U.S>).

i do wonder if this fragmentation is part of having AS. not in everyone, but many are agreeing with it. and even though one can get a sense of the internal self - for instance in nesh's case - what she also describes is a fairly clear dissociation from it when other human beings are thrwon into the scenario> (probably not her husband and her childm but others....)

dissociation or fragmentation can occur because of trauma. but this is not what i am talking about.
or perhaps, for AS people the fragmentations/dissocitations and atypical presentations of self are a result of "trauma" - but trauma that is a consequence of livign with heightened sensory and mental processes that make one's relationship with the world far less even-keeled and homogeous than others. i am only surmising here........