Names, places and association.

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Anyone find that if someone in your past has pissed you off or you've had a really bad experience with that person you begin to feel a resentment towards everything associated to that person, like for example if someone shares their name (and they may be perfectly decent folk) and you automatically take a negative stance towards them that they don't really deserve? Same with place names or anything really. Wondering if this is a shared symptom of AS or just my screwed up head

I get that way, if a certain hairdo or type of music reminds me of someone, who's done me wrong. I had a lot of my peers do me wrong, when I was in high school. I can't listen to a lot of music, from the very late 80s and the very early 90s, because it reminds me of those people, and I remember exactly how they looked, back than.

I automatically dislike and mistrust people with voices that sound like the voices of people who have harmed me in the past. But then voice is my primary means of identifying people so it makes sense to me that I would experience a strong emotional link like that.

O yes!

I'm currently playing guitar for a small band, and sometimes the singer sits in almost exactly the same posture as an ex-partner of mine - with a downcast head and a kind of depressed aura about her. She also lifts her head back when she sings in the same way as my ex did. I used to play guitar for my ex's singing - even the guitar is the same, and I do backing vocals just like I used to for my ex. Now, my ex had turned out to be an alcoholic nymphomaniac, so you might be able to imagine the inappropriate feelings of acute anxiety and hate that come sweeping over me when I'm with this new singer. She looks rather different to my ex but those few co-incidental, logically irrelevent attributes are enough to take me back emotionally to the intense pain I was in 39 years ago. But as I know what's going on, I'm able to consciously fight my completely inappropriate urge to avoid her.

I guess Pavlov would have a lot to tell us about this kind of thing. I haven't read him much, but I once had my own theories on how incoming sensations can trigger unexpected emotions.....put simply, if you feel a strong emotion, then everything you happen to be perceiving at the time will become associated in the brain with that emotion, so that if you get any of those sensations again in the future, the emotion will return, and the more of those sensations that happen to co-incide again, the stronger that ghost emotion will be. I guess it's a crude but valuable tool of the animal brain, which causes us to avoid past bad experiences and to repeat good ones. Human brains also have a strong cognitive faculty that can fine-tune the animal instincts and get more appropriate results.

[EDIT] It can be positive as well as negative - whenever I hear the sound of a slightly scratched vinyl record groove just before the music starts, I feel pangs of intense excitement just like the ones I used to feel when I'd get home from the music store and put on a new record

Yes. The person who did the most emotional damage to me was named Grace. Everytime I hear that name, I feel like cringing. I don't even like the song "Amazing Grace" anymore because it has her name in it.

Yes. Due to bad experiences with a couple of them when I was young, I am prejudiced against anyone named "Joe." If the person goes by "Joseph" or "Joey," then I have no problem, but any "Joe"s have a hard time warming up to me.

Also, thanks to a bad break-up, I can't watch any cartoons on Adult Swim (probably ever again).

Cheers for the replies folks, I couldn't help but feel wrong in a manner of speaking for feeling like that.

I agree with what ToughDiamond said about Pavlov and how it can be used in reverse but still I'd rather live without association and miss out on on the good parts than live with it, y'know?

Most of my associations that affect how I view people are positive. When a negative one comes up, I immediately recognize it as clouding my view of the person and disregard it. That doesn't mean it doesn't make me really bothered still though, but I don't let it affect my evaluation of the person. It really bugged me when I had a crush on this girl with the same name as the ex. After my break-up with said ex, I was suicidal, so this was kind of a problem for me. Maybe it had a negative effect of a positive evaluation of the new girl too. Lol, I don't know....

These associations are too valuable to me, and actually often more practical than these, although those tend to go more unnoticed, because they end up making more sense. So no, I can't really see why you'd want to get rid of them.

yes.

i will stop engaging in certain interests because my association with someone in re the interest is so strong. or get rid of objects for the same reason.

after a breakup five years ago, i got rid of a guitar, my car, my bed, and stopping playing another instrument later realizing all were due to being unable to eliminate the association with my ex.

i guess this is how i personify someone: by attaching the person to ideas, activities, and objects.

i also find it interesting that these sorts of questions are often phrased "is this an AS thing or is it me?" i always wonder about this as well. i have no idea, but i have observed that the tendency to perseverate on things to an unusual degree is quite common among aspies. also the burning desire to understand the meaning behind something. so it may very well be that everyone does the same sorts of things, but it is the aspies who need to exhaust the possibilities of meaning behind it before being able to move on. ... as if it becomes a special interest.

does that make sense? everything is a puzzle ... answers! answers! (of course, we all have different answers, so sometimes asking doesn't help)

Absolutely YES.

For me it happens most often with surnames (not so much first names). If I've had a hurtful experience at the hands of someone with a surname it triggers an involuntary negative association.

It doesn't make me prejudiced as such, against other people with the surname. What does happen with me is if, say, I'm otherwise sexually attracted to someone, if I find out she has a particular surname any sexual attraction will automatically vanish - an involuntary response, but then I'd get on perfectly well with them platonically perhaps. Otherwise, whether I'd get on with a person socially etc. isn't affected. It's just sexual attraction that seems to be affected.

It isn't always necessarily triggered by a hurtful experience either. Sometimes it's the surname of someone who's been in authority over me (not necessarily hurtful). It's all quite complicated to explain.

Similarly, places might trigger similar responses in me if something hurtful's or something else has happened associated with there.

Example 1: I was really attracted to an actress having seen her once, until I found out she comes from San Antonio. Once I knew that, I suddenly wasn't attracted. I've been to San Antonio and got in bother with the police apparently for the sake of it.

Example 2: Google Street View: as we all know there's a privacy issue, it's just that some countries and places have reacted to it more abusively than others, as seen on Street View images with lewd gestures, etc. My image of some countries and places has been traumatically abused as a result.

another similar thing i do is that i have trouble with anyone who has a name the same as someone in my immediate family. i could never date someone with the same first name as my brother or my father, for example. it's not anything to do with negative associations, it's to do with some oblique association with incest. ridiculous, but there it is.