I can't stand my past. It sucks.

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I am 28 and I still think about it. It doesn't bother me as much as it use to though.

> I still don't have the social qualities needed to succeed in life.

I'm in my 40s and would probably be considered fairly successful in life from an outward point of view, but like you I do feel the past crashing down on me at times (like lately) and a sense of bitter regret and other upset feelings. It is very hard to learn what we need to know about navigating the social world.

I have been reading about this for a couple of days in a book by Valerie Gaus called Cognitive-behavioral therapy for Adult Asperger Syndrome on googlebooks. It's for therapists, so it's a bit of a slog, but it lucidly brings together a number of issues. I don't like that the therapist's view is, of course, that we are broken and need fixing because we are outside the norm and identified as so by the mainstream. However, that is the reality of how most of the world judges us. Anyway without going into too much detail, which I probably already have, I thought I'd pass on to you just a couple of the basic concepts as a possible starting point for looking further into solutions that have been proposed for our issues.

At the base, it's considered that emotions awareness and emotional regulation skills need improving in order to develop social cognitions (understanding social behavior) and to develop social language. I would like to see some good resources for developing these things myself as working on it alone has been very hard. Furthermore, I'd really like a face to face group to work on it.

Even more, like you, I would like to be able to forget about it all and move on to my own interests and be a hermit, but in our crowded world that doesn't seem workable as I cannot afford to buy enough space between me and the next person.

It's middle school that I wish never existed. I basically shun my past and don't forgive people who have wronged me. Some people tell me that's wrong, but I think I'm the better for it.

This is interesting.

I've been doing a bit of reading on CBT myself. I've been quite surprised by what I've found out. It seems that most people who seek help therapist (from what I've read in the case studies) tend to have a kind of "social grammar" that's people and feelings orientated. Lots of subtle facial expressions, touching etc. These people tend to say:

"I feel guilty about not seeing my daughter lately, our relationship has become more distant with me talking to my ex-husband more."

My family would never say this in a million years!
If they did it would be...well...weird.
We just never explicitly talk about relationships like that.
We didn't know we had to.
This doesn't mean we don't care: we care a lot.
We just try and muddle through as best we can.

My relations and I, seem to have a sort of task and object orientated "social grammar". Less non-verbal signals, less eye contact and more hand gestures. This kind of communication in itself isn't wrong, just different. If there's a dispute, we solve it with dry satirical humour: we never have heart to heart discussions, because it's just not like us. All social gatherings we have take place around a game or useful object. We show affection by giving objects or letting others join in with an activity.

This did come as a bit of a shock to me. It would also explain why they recommended that I did not seek help from a therapist by my family and I was specifically told by them, never to get over emotionally involved in other people's problems.

Most therapists, I believe, tend to lie on one end of the continuum and are strong "folk pyschologists" orientated and I'm probably close to the other extreme end and am a strong "folk physicist".

I can now kind of appreciate why these two styles would conflict cognitively speaking.
The therapist issues emotional support, but I want tried and tested practical advice that I can use in real world situations.

Hence this I believe this is why the simplistic: "How does it make you feel?"
Approach seems so incongruent and counterproductive for people like myself.

How is wallowing in negative emotions instead of tackling the issues in a positive and productive way supposed to help exactly?

I've been told by my family that this just exacerbates the problem and doesn't get useful jobs done. I think they do have a point. They aren't that fond of Soap Operas.

It's a case of emotional coping vs practical coping strategies.
I'm more suited to the practical, task orientated coping methods.
In my experience, therapists seem to offer much more of the former than the latter. Perhaps this is not surprising given some of their training and what's in vogue at the moment.

Last edited by AmberEyes on 30 Mar 2009, 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Do you mean most people ie normies?



If it works, it ain't broke, so don't fix it.
I don't think people HAVE TO talk about emotions or whatever. Personally, I need to, because my family was very negating and problems would be brushed under the rug only to reoccur. My husband and I enjoy using the tools of Nonviolent Communication to address our feelings and needs and make progress. It's comfortable and insightful for both of us. Different strokes.



I agree. I loathe those pat therapy techniques/phrases and with a mother who was a social worker and private counsellor, I probably hate them much more than you ever could. I have had the misfortune to go to several therapists, all useless. They don't necessarily give emotional support, either IMO.



CBT is about coping with emotions and with the world and is meant to be very practical. For people like you who are not full of overwhelming emotions and do not have related issues in their lives, it is no doubt irrelevant. I dislike some of the pat answers given by CBT, as well, as it is biased toward the norm, as if different thought is wrong thought. Keeping in mind here, CBT is a broad area with many variations of application within it, and I am certainly not touting it, though I found some insightful things in that book.

Well, they seemed like so called "normal people" from the limited description anyway!

When I said that I read about CBT, I meant to say:

I read about CBT and many other kinds of therapy such as reflective listening, DCT etc...

Sorry for the confusion. I lumped all the therapy styles together in a rush which was a little sloppy of me really.


But the main point was, well yeah.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

I just find it strange how some people believe that they can read your mind when they don't...well...live in your mind.

I know that some people I know just pooh pooh emotional exploration and call it "soppy", but exploring emotions can actually help people...

People who's brains are wired to anlayse and deal with very complex emotions and relationships.

You'll be okay (I hope).

Exactly the same happened to me and 6 years on it's still hard to get rid of the memories. No, I haven't had many happy moments in my life, so thanks for making me feel worse. College sucks.

Most people seeking relationship help for existing relationships, from what I read, yes.

I think there's a cultural clash here somewhere.

Now I come to think of it, I did read a couple of older case studies about people seeking help with social situations because they felt isolated. From what I read, these people tended to be older males who were engineers and wanted companionship.

One guy said that he was upset that he couldn't join in with one group of people because they ignored him. The guy revealed that he felt lonely and wanted someone to talk to.

In the end, the therapist suggested that he find another group of people with similar interests to him (computers etc.) that he could talk to.

The therapist also said that the man was "stuck" at the "child" stage of development and needed to "move on" to the "next stage" to overcome past suppression by his parents or something. I didn't understand all of the theory, but there seemed to be 3 stages mentioned: child, adult and parent. To be assertive you have to be at the adult stage or something. It was quite an old book in print before 1990. These ideas are probably somewhat out of date, I also couldn't find any concrete biological basis for these ideas either. I think that some of this stuff is a load of unhelpful, impractical non-sense that skirts around the main issues.

But, I can't help but wonder...

AS wasn't mentioned in any of these case studies.

I notice that these men didn't talk like those women who wanted help with existing relationships though...

One thing that helped a little is I did move away from where I grew up. I still have the bad memories though and for a while, I didn't think much about them but lately, I've been thinking about them again, alot. I'm not sure what to do about it either, even though alot of what caused it, including my siblings and parents, are pretty much out of my life now.

Grades 8-12 were the worst years of my life, I was constantly harassed, by both male and female students, for a variety of reasons that didn't make sense, and my parents thought they could lecture or punish the behaviors that supposedly caused all of this out of me. They didn't understand why my sister never had these problems but I did. Of course, they were usually on her side, but rarely on mine. She knew they'd back her up, but not me. They took her out of schools for lessor reasons than what I had to deal with. I sometimes think if they'd transferred me to another high school, my life might have been better, but I don't know for sure. I know if I'd gone to public school, I'd have ran into the same people who made my life a nightmare in 8th grade, and not sure how another private school would have been.

I was also abused at home by siblings, and of course my parents supported it, thinking being pushed around by my sister and physically and verbally abused by my brother would do me some good.

It all left a lasting impression on me. I didn't date anyone until I was 29, but did eventually get married. I've always kept things bottled even now, perhaps that's why I obsess about the past, I bottled too much of it up over the years. I've thought about getting counseling, but never have.

Getting over the past isn't easy, especially when you see reminders of it from time to time.

There's a lot to be said for just trying to let go of the past, instead of replaying it over and over in your mind and obsessing about upsetting events, hurtful comments, hardships or whatever.

You cannot change your past.

So just let it go.

You do, however, have control over your present and future.

If you keep obsessing about the past, you keep it in the present, and you prevent yourself from moving forwards, because you're always stuck in the past.

Whatever happened in the past needn't dictate what's going to happen in the future. You can just decide that you're not going to let that happen, you can do your utmost in the present to move forwards, make positive changes, refuse to be dragged down by your past.

To give you a real example, I was physically abused as a child and ended up in care as a teenager. Lot of the other kids were in care because of even worse issues, sexual abuse, crime, drugs and so on. Statistically speaking, young people who've been in care are more likely to leave school without qualifications, to become involved in crime and to end up on drugs, homeless and/or in prison.

I was lucky that I passed a few exams (I got good grades, but didn't do anywhere near as well as I might have done), but you know what I wouldn't let that hold me back. You can always find ways to improve your prospects, take evening classes, try to find a job that will provide training. Do a summer school or other short course or training programme. If you can't get a job, and can't afford to go back to school or college, you can maybe do volunteer work to build up work experience.

It takes longer, of course it does.

I mean, I sometimes think about how differently my life might have turned out, I think of some of my classmates who passed more exams, who went on to college and university while I had to work to support myself, and if only I had the same support from my family then I might have had a brilliant career in engineering or something. But then again, I think maybe if I just wallowed in self pity and thought my past sucked, I might have ended up on drugs or in prison.

It's entirely up to you, as to whether you can on letting your past suck you down and hold you back. Only you can decide, y'know what? Fu(k it, I'm not going to let my past dictate my present and my future. You can make little changes, you can make an effort, try to improve your prospects in some way. But you've got to make it happen. It's not going to happen if you just sit there saying my past sucks. It's only going to happen if you make it happen.

When I went to College, I mistakenly assumed that everyone at College would be like this guy:

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/se ... edcom_tech

They weren't. Most seemed pretty miserable, normal, unanimated and bogged down with paper-work. I never wanted to hang around stressed out, miserable, boring people ever. They are a drain. Negative people are probably the worst. Some people I just couldn't connect with at all.

The thing is, I used to do presentations like this guy. I had similar enthusiasm and mannerisms. When I was a very little girl, adults in authority were worried about me because I acted like this. They sent me for AS assessment because I'd lecture everyone everyday about the things I loved. And when I did comment on the horizon or recite a television show, I was told to "shut up". I'd come to school with my hair unbrushed and invade people's personal spaces. They wanted me to learn "proper social skills" and "Stop acting like a daydreaming idiot". They also wanted me (as a girl) to be able to socialise within a fixed set of a criteria.

The crazy thing is, some people at Secondary School were actually intrigued by my style of delivery. They liked me waving my hands and pacing about during speeches. They liked the random references and obscure metaphors. They thought it was charming and delightful. They were also amazed at how I could alternate between very serious and to being very comical. Just like the astronomer guy in the video...

When I moved away from there, some people said that I was just "arrogant" or ignored me outright. Some people said that there was something very wrong with me.

Why the extreme difference in reaction?

Is it because I'm female and people expect all females to brush each other's hair and play with dollies or something?

How come the astronomer man survived so long?
He's had a good life: klein bottles, Moogs, teaching kids...

I still want act like this guy because that's how I used to behave in the past before others trained it out of me.

I don't honestly see this guy being shunted off to counseling or social skills sessions or being asked how things "make him feel". They let him get on with whatever he does because he's very good at it.

Gosh, I never needed to talk to those middle aged women asking me what I felt or badgering me to "play properly" with the other kids.
No.
What I needed was an eccentric mentor who was passionate about technology and science, and would teach me everything he knew just like the guy in the video.

I still want to gad about on a stage somewhere, maybe with corn-flakes in my hair wearing an awful jumper with baggy trousers and talk about random technical fields I've worked in; and be brimming with enthusiasm, switching from topic to topic at lightening speed. I could have wonderful fun if I found the right understanding environment where I could work alone and help people too.

Now all I've got to do is find the right fields to rattle on about...
Oh and a place that accepts me for who I am where I feel included...

The thing is, these days people in my country expect presentations to be regimented affairs and to fill in tick boxes on SATs tests and want people not to be "silly", especially women for some daft reason.

While I'm alive and there are people like this astronomer man in the world, there's hope...

I will keep working on things until something does happen.

I have 40 years to look back on and say, "What the hell?" In addition to the many faux pas of AS, I have my bipolar history to look back on. It isn't easy, esp. now that I've been stable for 2 years and getting help (support, social skills training, occupational therapy, etc.) for AS.

It's a real shocker to look back but it feels so much better to look forward.