The Most Dangerous Thing For A Person On The Spectrum is..

Post Reply New Topic

Bullying
Hyperfocus is a strength in making the autistics productive and knowlagable but it can also make us dangerously unaware of our surroundings and our bodily needs.

Raleigh's answer wins the thread -- words to print out and frame, seriously.

Society's ignorance.

being left to my own devices for too long.

I want to be left alone, but if somebody doesn't step in things get very dark/self-destructive very quickly.

I may have to change my answer. After all, the meteor is a pretty statistically rare situation. But gamma rays are a continual threat. One step out of our ionosphere and we're toast. Existing on this planet is terrifying! How does anyone remain calm?

Well, my mom always told me that people study you like a snake. They size you up and see what you're capable of. And when they see that you're vulnerable they strike. Generally with people there are different times where one could fall vulnerable like after a death in the family or after a bad break up. But when autistic people its a perpetual vulnerability because we don't always pick up on the intentions of people I know I sure don't anyway. I can barely perceive when someone doesn't wanna be bothered with me so because of that I always have to be on guard.

green0star, yes, this part particularly: "But when autistic people its a perpetual vulnerability because we don't always pick up on the intentions of people." This is the same for me.

I think we can learn to get more aware; I have more awareness of this as my life has gone on and my trust has been made a fool of, but it still feels like, as you say, a perpetual vulnerability.

It's always really there and always needing to have the guarding against it "topped up" is what I find.

Belief in religion is an unwavering obsession with what is lacking.

But I don't understand what is has to do with the title of the thread.

Q) The Most Dangerous Thing For A Person On The Spectrum is..

A) When the lights go out, because without light there is no spectrum.

.....To think that being on the Spectrum is a death knell to potential and accomplishment.

Couldn't agree more, I was saying the same thing in a different way.

This can go for NTs as well, it's not totally exclusive to Autism.

Ruminating over things that happened in the past, and all or nothing thinking.

Those two things steal joy from the present.

My husband ruminates over every indiscretion that has happened to him. From age 4 to now. It's all like insects in an amber mala prayer beads. He picks over each situation, relives it, gets into a huge funk that lasts for days. Some of it is he didn't understand the situation, and misread it totally. Also everything is weighted the same. The boy who shoved him in line in 1st grade is rehashed the same as that idiot boss who got him fired.

Also with my husband it is all you are right or you are wrong, except when it comes to him. Lol... People do crappy careless things. They don't think. It wasn't a calculated, I'm going to make you pay type thing. My husband sees everything that was bad or wrong done to him having this whole horrible back story to make his life a living hell.

So all that negative stuff taints the present. Yes, I have had horrible, sh***y things done to me. Some of it was people not thinking, and the unkindness and hurt came from that. People aren't perfect. People can be jerks. I am sure I have jackass things to people. I can't hold people to perfection, when I am nowhere near perfect. Then things that people do that are out right awful and cruel. Like the high school teacher that raped me twice. I could drag that toxic waste around in my head, but what good does it do? He was never prosecuted. Never held accountable. Every moment I think of that as*hole, it's stealing my present.

Life is short, and this maybe the only now I may get. I don't want the pass dragging down the good I have now. I wish my husband can give himself permission to release emotional part of it. You can forgive (let God, Karma, whatever sort it out, nothing I will think can change it), and not forget. I can remember the rape, but when I think about it, it doesn't have that emotional bondage over me anymore.

I've seen ruminating and rigid thinking steal more happiness from people than I can count.

is to not realize that the past is the past, and that you must learn from it, not cogitate over it constantly. Obsessing over the past endangers your future.

"If infants had the typical adult concept of failure, after failing at the first few initial attempts to walk, they would never learn to walk at all"

Can everyone telling others off (because that's basically what it feels like) for ruminating over past things also please understand that:

A) some of us who tend to do this aren't actually living every moment doing it, it's just something that comes up intensely WHEN it does come up. Not all of us are constantly doing it, it's just more intense WHEN it comes up.

B) It's WIRING. It's very hard just to say "Yes it's not helpful, I'll just STOP this now, job done!"

Don't you think those of us who have a naturally wired tendency do try to combat it? I know I do my best. It is something my vivid memory ability can make happen but you are assuming things when you extrapolate from that that THIS is ruining my life. Who said it was? Lots of things make my life "not a picnic" but who said I don't try not to let them, and who said this happens 24/7?

Did ANYONE say they are cogitating "CONSTANTLY" in this or the other thread where I know this has been discussed recently?

Some of you are ASSUMING a hell of a lot just because some of us have mentioned that we have the CAPACITY to hold onto stuff, because our brains work that way.

You are assuming that means we're doing it around the clock. Stop assuming crap.
And stop being so damn sanctimonious about stuff that some people can't help and YOU guys think they're just doing it to be doing it.

Seriously though it's like you guys are telling someone who has blue eyes to just have brown ones. It's not always a thing that can be just instructed "don't do that."

Edited for a missed word that changed the meaning of a sentence structure.

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 17 Sep 2016, 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wiring is a reality I share and there is no intention to deny it at all on my part. It was the exclusive assumption of hopelessness that I was actually referring to. Perhaps that wasn't as clear as it might have been.

Getting lost in an obsession.