The need to "always be thinking".

Post Reply New Topic

Of course not. You missed the point. My point was that a lot of non deep thinking people have a false notion of what a deep thinker is. A parrot can repeat obscure facts/information and a computer can perform rapid calculations. Society seems to think that people who do extraordinary feats of mental calculation or can parrot a lot of information are "smart". Yet something that doesn't even think can perform these same feats.

I feel the same way too. People say I'm too tense. My friends tend to be the intelligent/intellectual/liberal sort (but not partygoers). I only found friendship in my late teens becase by then my peers became more mature intellectually. Still I can't discuss Dawkins with them. My thoughts tend to fly to solving hard chemistry problems, themes in literature and natural selection. Now my latest obsession is plotting in my future novel. I find these things relaxing.

Kiro: You CAN have a relationship. Of course the probability is less but going for talks/lectures on intellectual things might help. This guy and I were attracted due to intellectual interests. I told him about my AS and he's fine with it. But of course you should know each other well first and establish a friendship full of frankness.

you expressed that really well, I can relate to it greatly. I really hate all the little 'tasks' of life that can turn your life into a mundane series of doing nothing worthwhile day after day. It's not worth living. I have eliminated as many of those tasks as possible from my life. Some are necessary though. It drives me nuts when people tell me I 'think too much', I want to scream 'no, you don't think ENOUGH'. But I don't.

I also don't do any of the things NT's do that they seem to do just because or so they can tell other NT's they did them. I never understood the reasoning behind doing things just for the stories you can tell. Granted, I don't have many stories I can tell but still, I feel like I need a better reason to do something.

I'd rather think. When I was little I wanted to understand everything because nothing made sense. I was convinced it would help. Now that I am older I understand most of the things I was baffled about but unfortunately it doesn't help much because of hormonal drives and genetic programming, I don't think the species has much hope for change. Understanding came from years of questioning and study. Alot of people just wont do that though.

I know exactly what the OP means. I dont only derive no pleasure from mundane tasks, they make me feel as if it is minutes/hours spent I will never have back...I sort of feel drained and bored and frustrated and isolated all at once... I cant wait to get back to my interests again. I just need to be interested and thinking, forming opinions, creating with my mind, communicating in words.. I am just not a physical person, though I do like baths, massages and dancing at clubs, the dancing is a great way to observe the world.. but I just have the need to keep my brain active.

i like the quote

I find thinking is a curse and a blessing - I find that I am able to figure things out that many people can not - because I will ponder / dwell and really take the time to think about a thing. However, there are certain times when I wish I could just turn off the the thinking - like when it is a negative / stressful - people issue. Like an argument or similar - I can think/dwell on it for a long time.

I agree completely with OP and feel the same way all the time.

Personally, my mind goes non-stop about most anything it latches onto. It's hard to find "quiet time" inside my skull.

The "always thinking" thing holds true for me which is WHY I REALLY HOPE I can get back into College I'm constantly thinking of new ideas for class. Here's just a few.

1)A new paper on Lieing.

2) A speech about a family recipe (and bringing the food in aswell) (for speech class)

3) Speech about discipline (and roleplay it/act it out with a good friend)

4) Brain Anerism (I think this would be good for a Biology course paper not 100% sure though)

5) Basic study staying up and watch/analyzing a friend sober/drunk/hungover (24hr. watch)

6)advanced study : #5 BUT with Psychology background/degree and access to brain machines (MRI,fMRI etc.) to see the brain in action.

7) Advanced study fMRI/MRI etc. BUT this time do driving (they have simulators so put you into that.

Advanced study: videogames study social aspect and behavior NO not soccer game vs. GTA more Mario vs. sh***y GAME (Sonic 06 *insert game with bad controls etc. here*)

9) IF I get back into College get with said friend and help her do a paper over the summer break (for Fall semester and I do that brain paper so she can see a master at WORK!)

10) (When I write a paper it's like a business (writing department,grammar department,idea department,research department,typing department,FINISHED department) Turn in paper. (IMO most people are confused by papers and it's as if you have one person pacing back/forth in my brain it's a business and as the saying goes with jokes "I have 1,000,000 of them as you can see I have 1,000,000 study/research paper ideas.

11) MAYBE get with Friend on Thanksgiving and stay over then go Black Friday shopping. (yes I thought of this planned it now LOL! and it's May. I hope I can do the paper one so once again she can see a master at work!

(So yes I'm "always thinking" LOL!)

Same here, I wish I had a shut off switch for it sometimes. Especially when I'm trying to sleep.

I agree I feel awful if I go on and on say about the new HTC EVO 4G just the other day dad was like "I can't wait until you get this new phone so you'll hush talking about it." I was like oh. I feel so bad that they don't seem as intently focused/obsessed on something as I am. I find it sad and BTW I LOVE that Sheldon quote from that one poster! LOL!

I guess I'm somewhat different.

I can appreciate learning all about something in an area of interest. But if I try to think that way too much it just makes the thoughts jangle around my head in a thoroughly unpleasant and painful way.

I really enjoy activities where that kind of thought isn't required. My newest thing is a small model sextant just the right size to carry around. When I am waiting in a waiting room, I spin the scope around in circles, or move and look through the colored filters. I have a real sextant but it's the wrong size to take places with me.

Anyway, that kind of thing is much easier and more pleasant to spend my time doing than the kind of thinking required to ponder intellectual subjects. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-intellectual. And I have favorite intellectual interests. But everyone's mind is different and I seem to do best if I take that kind of thinking in moderation. And spend a lot of time absorbed in sensory stuff.

And I do see what I do when doing that as a kind of thinking. But it is so completely different from more abstracted thinking that it doesn't even translate well, and definitely isn't the sort of thing that leads people to feel disconnected or like they're thinking too much. Doesn't feel like "thinking" at all.

But definitely different. Some people feel like they can't stop thinking. I feel like I can't sustain that kind of thinking long before various unpleasant kinds of shutdown occur. It's not that I "don't think enough". It's just that my brain gravitates to different things. If not all those things involve standard thinking, doesn't mean they're inferior. I get plenty of meaning out of direct interaction with objects around me and that usually fills my awareness more or less completely (unlike people here who find that doing the same thing leaves all this idle space in their heads).

Wow, it's nice to see so many other people who think too much.

"Without that kind of stimulation my life feels completely empty/meaningless and all I can think about is suicide...the world doesn't really give one enough time to think or enjoy thinking. People are forced to work at least 8 hours a day and then when they get home there's chores and errands related to keeping up the house, feeding oneself, etc."
This part of what you said really worries me--if you're feeling suicidal, GET HELP NOW.

It's also really important that, to the greatest extent possible, you arrange your life in a mentally stimulating way. Some people can handle a boring job; it sounds like you can't, and I couldn't either. I'm planning to be a professor because I love research, learning, and teaching, and I'm likely to work with others who feel the same way. (Well, more likely than most other jobs, anyway). Yeah, there are chores and errands...I know someone who does them while listening to books on tape; he also watches courses on tape while exercising. There are a surprising number of meals that are reasonably healthy and simple to make for yourself, and as for cleaning the house...well...unless you're giving large dinner parties, it's probably sufficient to have walking space on the floor, and have the kitchen and bathroom not be a biohazard. ::waits for NTs to jump on me for daring to advocate a messy house::

"In order to be happy I always need to be thinking/analysing/studying something that interests me. ...Boredom or mundane tasks create a mental vacuum in which negative energy surfaces from within...I have a thirst to understand and without that thirst existence is meaningless to me."
I can relate to EVERY WORD of this. If I'm eating by myself, I often can't concentrate on eating because I have nothing to occupy my mind. I have to start reading, or checking the messages on my phone, or planning what to do tomorrow, or SOMETHING. Then I realize it's an hour later and I've eaten about two bites. I have been labeled both gifted and ADD. The drive to learn, understand, and question I associate with giftedness, the inability to go without mental stimulation for 2 seconds I associate with ADD. The combination caused me to be severely depressed during my one year in a traditional public school classroom, the worst year of my life.

"don't think being "deep" is predicated on having an above average brain power. It's more of an emotional thing. It's the quality of always wanting to know "why" and deriving pleasure in searching for the answer."
Yes. Before and during college, I have mostly been in classes with people who are academically successful and probably have high IQ scores. Very few have been interested in asking "why" in class, let alone outside of it (my teachers have a difficult time even getting my classmates to answer questions, and I'm always one of only 2-4 people who care enough to keep a discussion going in a seminar). So yes, one can be smart without being deep. I don't know if one can be deep without being smart; it depends on how you define smart.

No one's mentioned the WORST part of thinking too much, at least for me. I start questioning myself: "how do you know this is true?" Cue argument with myself that is almost impossible to end, even though it gives me no pleasure. I want my beliefs to be rational to the greatest extent possible, but I also know many things in life (such as human psychology or morality) are too complex to be reduced to something I could justify rationally, so I'm caught between these two beliefs and it's uncomfortable. I've reduced this problem by choosing not to think about it and just living my life (this took a huge amount of time and effort, as I basically had to retrain my brain; I'm still working on it). I spent a few months immersing myself in meditation, kaballah, "be here now," etc. a couple years ago, and that's really helped me let go.

The other thing that helped was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vdlEcWxvM I used to be incredibly socially awkward because I thought so much I just couldn't bring myself to say anything at all. I would just hover awkwardly around the fringes of things. I thought so much and acted so little that I often felt a sort of depersonalization, like everyone else was real and I wasn't. My mom used to say, "you have to kick the ball." Eventually, I started telling myself that. The depersonalization, and a lot of the awkwardness, are now gone.

Thanks to everyone who's replied so far. I'd like to keep this thing going. Unfortunately I don't have the energy to add much of anything at this moment. I'm getting a little depressed.

Marshall my advice is just to hang in there and get some professional help. You're only feeling the way you are because of a chemical imbalance in your brain.

Of course. I realize this but there is no easy "fix" for me. I've been dealing with a very long term depression. I've tried so many drugs to treat it that I've lost track, yet none has been a magic bullet. I can't even be certain whether the effect of any particular antidepressant I've tried over the years has ever been anything more than the equivalent effect of a sugar pill. This is why I wonder if I'm not dealing with a typical "serotonin deficit" induced depression but rather something more entrenched within my core personality, emotionality, way of thinking/being etc.

I should probably start a new thread discussing the topic of mental inertia and lack of motivation for ordinary "life activities". I feel this is a core factor related to my neurological difference but I don't see much discussion or knowledge related to it in the literature. Inertia isn't even listed as a symptom of autism spectrum disorders in the DSM, yet it's probably my #1 issue, the one thing I find most difficult to cope with.

Everything the literature talks about with regards to the autism spectrum is related to social deficits. It's as if they think that if we can "learn social skills" we will somehow be perfectly identical to NT's. They seem to neglect the emotional differences that make existing in this world so unbearable for people like me. I don't think the reason I find social situations difficult is because I "lack social skills". The real reason I find social situations difficult is that I seem to get very little out of them emotionally and thus it's hard to motivate myself to improve. I just find interacting with people dull for the most part. I only feel better when I can find the right people, people who can stimulate me, but that number is very slim.