What Am I

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I have too much time on my hands and spend too much time thinking, for sure.

I'm trying to keep busy. I've been accepted as a volunteer at the Museum of Health Care in Kingston, but have yet to be assigned work. Probably not until after the Festivus celebrations are over. In the meantime, yeah, I have to come up with more things to do.

I think you are right. Analysis and calculation came about as a survival mechanism. This mixed with feelings of alienation causes the "cold" feeling.
I will talk to the doctor about it.

to both of you, if you don't mind me asking, was there a trigger for your psychotic depressions? perhaps the death/loss or impending loss of someone close to you?

For me, I think it was my parents' divorce. I was 4 years old at the time. My mother and I moved to a different province and I started school. I started behaving obsessively and self-injuriously soon after. At 10 I was depersonalizing and dissociating and suicidal.

That is a HUGE amount of change being forced on to your life, and would certainly explain the brain going into a major defensive mode to try and protect itself from even more harm.

I don't know if this is of any use or not, but my own observation suggests to me that the protection mechanisms can do a decent job in the short term, but when applied over a long period of time can become quite destructive, as in mostly self-destructive.

I'm trying to analyze different ways that the mechanisms at work become harmful right now, but here's one as an example:
The filtering, displacement, delayed affect, or suppression of emotion that protects you from the intensity of real-time feelings that seem harmful, ALSO result in the suppression of things that can be helpful, like being able to experience pleasure or happiness, and result in anhedonia which can become extremely unhealthy.

Another example is that filtering/suppressing emotion can severely sabotage social interactions which are already a huge challenge for an aspie. This leads to a snowballing effect of increasing isolation.

How to fix it? I'm still trying to figure that part out.
I think awareness is good first step.


What I describe above is extremely common with military members, especially those that get deployed into remote and/or dangerous locations. The protection mode is necessary in order to survive, function, and complete a mission. Many people come right out of them mode when they return, but some do not, especially if they deploy several times. Detachment from emotion and inability to experience pleasure from things are early signs of this.

That sounds like Complex PTSD.

I'm #fckd.

I will have to try to overcome these things on my own. I asked about ptsd at my intake interview in August and was dismissed. She asked if I had experienced a traumatic event. I had just told her about several, but I guess they weren't what she had in mind.
I'd like to make my life somewhat worthwhile. I know I'm an older and late diagnosed and damaged. But I'd hate to think it was a total waste of time.

It's not a total waste of time, though it might seem like that sometimes.

You have lots of knowledge which is valuable--to yourself and to others.

I do harbor great quantities of minutia.

Which I think is really cool!

Some people say they want to leave a legacy when they die, or have done something meaningful withe their life. Me? I would like to go out with no trace remaining that I had ever existed. I don't want to be remembered. I would like to die in some distant place where no one knows who I am. John Doe.

I don't need a legacy, but I'd like to have some good times. My life feels like a long trip that has gone horribly wrong. I'd like to salvage something out of it.

You still have at least 40 more years to find enjoyment.

If I were you, I would adopt the "enlightened" hedonist approach: enjoy yourself, while not stomping on other people's toes.

I have a sister, who for all the wrong reasons, is constantly seeking approval and recognition. Always telling everyone what a good person she is. How she volunteers at the job kitchen, helps handicapped and disabled people on her job. Telling us how everyone at work is always telling us how kind and compassionate she is. Thing is, when she is not around handicapped, disabled or people at the food bank she is bad mouthing people on welfare, people on disability, unemployment, food stamps, etc. Everything she does to "help" the needy she does for recognition and status. She wants the community leaders to think she is a big shot She doesn't care about anyone but herself, really. She has alienated herself from her siblings all her life, is in a continuous hot cold relationship with mother and her own children, all grown with their own families barely speak to her. Everyone who really knows her, people who should count, refer to her as evil biotch. She is the poster child for bipolar disorder, is probably 100 pounds overweight, is always trying to BS us about her Dr. praising her excellent health all the while constantly complaining about her ailments and disturbances. If she is the picture of perfect health, why does she have to see her Dr. 4-5 times a year. Selfish, arrogant, conceited and delusional.

Moral of story, most people perceive this "I" we are talking about differently than we perceive ourselves. Good rule of life. Never praise this "I', leave the praising to people who are unbiased. This "I" will always lie to itself.

Maybe we are all delusional when it comes down to it when I observes I. At least a little bit. humility is underrated.

And anyone who self identifies as being "humble", well, isn't describing ones own self as being humble actually a tad bit hypocritical?

I feel like that too.
Intensity of trauma would be proportional to individual sensitivity, and so is a relative thing.

The woman doing the intake may have dismissed PTSD but others may take your experiences more seriously.

I got an interesting book from the library: "Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorder", edited by Christine Courtois and Julian Ford.