Reflexions on being normal

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Since this is a forum about asperger syndrome i thought maybe someone will be interested in my journey from aspie to nt. I bet it's gonna turn into a huge wall of text, but i don't really mind if nobody reads it, mostly i just need to vent. Here are some of the highlights of my experience so far:

- My voice turned from monotone to multitone or politone, i don't know what the proper name is. This is one of the nicest things, especially when it comes to singing because now i can move my voice up and down just like the singer is doing and that is loads of fun. I have gone back to check some songs by aspies like The Vines and David Byrne and others and i noticed that they do sing with a monotone voice, it never goes up or down in tone, they just change the volume of their voice.

The weirdest thing is that I can't do monotone voice anymore, even if I try. I think doing monotone is as hard to me as doing multitone is to an aspie. I wish somebody researched this and explained how can a psychological condition block the tone of your voice like that. I did spend years as an aspie singing in my car, trying to move my voice like the singers were doing and i never got it, then i became normal and it just started happening.

- I started doing small talk. I mean, i haven't talked about the weather yet, but today for example, a men greeted me and I felt the need to say something funny to him, my theory of mind told me " if you don't say anything back he is gonna think you hate him". So I said something funny. Coming up with something to say is easy to me now, it's like having a part of my mind in charge of whispering lines to me and I get to pick the best line and say it.

- When I was aspie, i developed the idea that people were stupid, they had no good ideas of their own and I had to tell them what to do. Now I don't tell people what to do, I tell them what the problem is, I tell them whatever information I have and we use our intelligences together to find a solution. I don't do this on purpose by the way, I can't explain why it started happening. Now that I do have access to people's intelligences i have a better opinion of them, they have always been very smart, i just wasn't accessing that side of them.

- When I was aspie and i had to do something difficult or deal with a problem, my mind went like this: "ok, lets see, what things can go wrong here?" and i would start doing a mental list of all the things that could go wrong and thinking of how i would react in each case. I took on life like it was a chess game, planning 2 or 3 moves ahead.

Now when i have a problem, something difficult to do, my mind goes like this: "ok, i'm gonna go do this and if anything goes wrong i'll ask what to do about it". I am worried that i'm relying too much on people nowadays. I have this idea that there will always be someone who knows how to solve my problems. When i need something, i ask for help to as many people as possible. This is having an interesting side effect: wherever i go i bump with people that have helped me before and i'm naturally friendly to them. It's making me feel like the world is slowly filling up with friends, i'm slowly being connected to the world wide web of people. Very early in my research i discovered that asking favors was a key part of being social, and now I'm living it.

Another side effect is that i don't use my intelligence so much anymore, since i'm no longer alone, with hundreds of problems to figure out by myself. I am not sure if I will dumb down with time, that will become clearer in about two months when i get a job developing software.

- Masturbation has been the big bad side effect i wasn't expecting, since my visual thinking isn't as good as it used to be, my sexual fantasies are not as... vivid. As an aspie I used to read erotic stories but that isn't working anymore, I've been trying porn but it's not the same. Could it be that NTs never experience self-inflicted orgasms the way aspies can do? Did i mention the change in my sexual preferences? I used to be into sick stuff, all my fantasies involved blood, knifes, bullets and lots of screams, now if i try having a fantasy like that i start feeling sorry for the people who are screaming (my shiny new empathy kicking in), so now i'm mostly into vanilla sex, one on one, on a bed, i focus on the feeling of skin against skin.

- My habits are slowly self-correcting, it's gonna take a while for all my aspie habits to fade. I'm not rushing it, i'm letting it happen on its own pace. When I say I became normal, i mean that my head became normal, my life is still very aspie, my clothes are aspie kind of cloths, my allergies are still there, i still don't have a girlfriend, my room still looks like the room of an aspie... How long will it take to rearrange all those things?

- Eye contact started happening with no involvement from my conscious self. One day i was talking to a girl and in the middle of the conversation i started thinking that she was doing too much eye contact, that maybe she liked me, and then it hit me "wait a second, i am making eye contact too! when did this start?" I don't feel anything when I look into someone's eyes, and i mostly use it to feel connected to them, to check their facial expression, to let them know i'm interested in what they are saying. The memory of what i felt when doing eye contact as an aspie is fading, i barely remember it. i'm scared i won't be a good researcher of asperger syndrome in the future, i probably won't remember what it felt like.

- I endure loneliness better than NTs, i do get little moments when i think how nice it would be to go to someone's house and hang or be out there somewhere, but i don't get depressed about being alone, i'm still able to go see a movie alone or eat alone in a restaurant. But maybe that's a habit and not part of asperger, i remember i did feel uncomfortable the first times i went to see movies alone, years ago.

- I'm going thru a "picking up the pieces of my life" phase. If more aspies become normal i suspect they will go thru this phase as well. It's like there are a million things that you've been wanting to get done for years but asperger got in the way and now that i can do them, i am doing them, and it's a lot of things, it's gonna take months to get them all done.

- Like my signature says, i feel like i ain't changed, somethings have changed but i haven't. It's like aspergers was something that was put over my innerself but it never touched that innerself, and now that asperger is gone, my innerself is still the same, i like the same songs as before (although now i get into a dancing mood more often), same movies as before (ok maybe now i enjoy romantic movies that used to bore me), i still have the same opinions, i take the same decisions, i like the same quotes, love the same foods, the same books... my taste in girls has changed though, i don't like aspie girls the way i used to.

- Did i mention that i feel like dancing very often? and i dance normal, and i enjoy it. When i was aspie and i had to dance, it was like... torture, something i had to endure and pretend i was enjoying it at the same time. And i didn't dance well.

- Theory of mind is the coolest thing ever, it makes socializing as easy as walking or breathing. It's a delusion that tells you what the others are thinking and how they will react to whatever you say or do. It's a delusion that assumes everybody is normal, and that is it's big flaw. Theory of mind doesn't work when you are with non-normal people. With them i best turn it off, ignore it and check with my intelligence before saying something.

- Sensory issues are gone, cloth tags are not a problem anymore, i don't feel them, i didn't even notice when i stopped feeling them. It was 2 days ago that i noticed how good i am now at filtering background noise. I can't tell if being touched still bothers me... sadly i haven't been touched lately.

- I sleep much better now. It could be that being less sensitive makes it harder to wake me up and therefore i sleep better.... or could be that since i am more active i get more tired and sleep better. Either way, i didn't know this kind of sleep existed.

- I'm not afraid of heights anymore. I stand on the edge, look down and don't feel anything. I'm not saying that that is a symptom of asperger, just that it was a surprising side effect i got when i went normal.

- I can't play movies in my head anymore

- By the way, i still line up objects why has that persisted? i wish someone could explain to me.

absolutely not.

Well congrats. I must say I skimmed. (tl;dr you know..) But *ahem* I'm into some pretty sick stuff as well.. But I don't want it to change.

What did you do to make this change? Were you actually diagnosed with Asperger's before? It's believed that our brains work differently, and I'm not so sure that we can change how our brains have developed.

And how exactly did you switch from Aspie to NT? I doubt that modern science has yet devised a way to so dramatically alter your neuroanatomy. You don't just magically develop empathy, if your mirror neurons were nonfunctional before I doubt that could suddenly have started working.

I'm not really interested. I'm quite happy, being an individual.

NT is a journey, as much as a destination. You're learning to cope with the symptoms you've had before, probably more successfully than some. It's very commendable, and you should keep with it.

Hey, that sounds like me up there! What was the catalyst for all this? For me, it was friends and drinking, I'm durious about yours. I still don't have the eye contact thing going on yet, and my empathy just started creeping in the other week...which I don't like.

Hallelujah and pass the beans.

I believe I have changed a lot from the time I was a child. However, I don't think I became "normal." I think I just grew up.

We all learn from experience. That doesn't mean we succeeded in re-wiring our brains in the shape of an NT brain.

Well I don't know if you were an aspie or not in the beginning but we do learn skills, we just develop them more slowly, sometimes painfully slowly; some change is not impossible.

I don't want to worry you or anything fernando but I was totally convinced that I had become neurotypical and even maybe had not even been on the spectrum. It ain't so, it is true that I have progressed well, even the psychologist told me that, but apples don't turn into oranges - you are an apple or you are an orange.

Your post is interesting, but you really can't "stop" having Asperger's. Either you didn't have it before, or you still have it now. I'm not saying that I don't believe that you made all the changes that you did, I'm just saying that it's quite possible to have been an NT the way you were before, or to be an "Aspie" the way you are now.

No, modern science hasn't... and i don't think it will. Did you know that man invented the wheel before science was born? Science isn't the all powerful force you think it is and cures don't always have to come in pills. I didn't use science, i discovered that your movements are connected to your psychology, if you move like an anxious person for a few days, your psychology becomes permanently anxious, it learns to stay in that state. The second time i got cured I just spent two weeks moving like a strong person and my anxiety ended, i became normal. And i can go back to aspie if i move like an anxious person for a while (took me 1 month and half when i did it). There are some genetic symptoms, the ones that make it a heritable condition, but those aren't many, i'm still identifying them. The anxiety, social and sensory issues where definitely psychological.

I don't believe I ever claimed science to be omnipotent. In fact, I think my previous post would imply the opposite. Further, I somewhat doubt the method you claim to have used. I'm not really sure what exactly you're babbling about, though, so I can't say much more at this point.

Are you now able to understand sarcasm and nonverbal communication better? Do you get more jokes and laugh more than before?

What do you think it was that caused you to change?

Here's my ranting vent:

There was a time in my life I felt I was becoming more myself somehow.. My hands were flowing with grace, not constricted.. I didn't feel the fear I had felt before, I opened up. I was working at a restaurant at the time where the owner was also the cook and very violent-tempered.. At one point, I remember being so open with my new-found unshielded self, when I was going to pick up a meal for someone and suddenly, this huge, greek man looked through to my open soul with a murderous rage and completely blackened eyes... screaming loudly through me.. I shut off... that was it.... I was probably late picking up someone's dinner plate.... I never had that feeling again though.. not really.. except maybe after drinking alot..

Later that same evening, I had to get very hot potatoes out of the oven to give customers, I knew they were as hot as they always were.. so hot that you could barely touch them, just for the second to put them on the plate.. After being yelled at with that deep murderous, violent rage by a huge intimidating man, even my physical feelings shut off.. I picked up the potatoes and felt nothing.. no heat, no burning nothing... I casually put them on the plate, while others were barely touching them as they were burned.. I even held the potatoes for a long time ---- feeling nothing.. and I wasn't getting blisters either.. It was as though everything about my physical being shut off... my soul even... I was never the same again..

It seems like there was another time I opened up and I was practically raped.. The only few times in my life that I have opened up with people and shown them my soul, they have attacked me with rage.. No wonder I stay to myself, enclosed in this shield once again.. I have been diagnosed with NLD and told my another clinician that they would have diagnosed me as mild Asperger's...

I don't understand this stuff.. and don't really know what I was experiencing at that restaurant.. Whatever the case, it's too bad that I couldn't have been in an emotionally safe environment to just take that time to be myself and open up.. I had been closed so long.. and then to suddenly be attacked again.. well...

The few times I've opened up at a soul-level, I've been visciously wounded.. no wonder I don't want to be around people much.. The only person that was helping that I showed my soul to was a therapist I had, but I moved away from that state because I had been threatened and robbed.. I haven't been able to find any therapist here that will return my call and who knows about Asperger's or NLD.

My confidence is horrible, I'm afraid to open up with anyone.. and all they do is attack anyway.. maybe because I'm a fun target now.. but sometimes I really feel angry myself now.. I've been used, set-up, imprisoned, robbed, attacked and everything else by people.. I doubt I will ever open up and show any kindness to any of them again really.. I feel that they only want to use me now.. or cause me pain.. I have lost the ability to trust anyone. I wish there was some magical "cure".. Maybe if I had of gotten more time to build strength before being slammed so visciously again..

What happened to you in between the times you felt more "normal"? Were people cruel to you and this caused you to shut off? I'm not even sure what I experienced was "normal".. it was just a lack of the usual fear associated with it all.. Once I was hurt again royally, the fear and repression returned all over again...

I don't ever want to work for an abusive boss again, or abusive co-workers.. I sometimes feel like everyone abuses me and they don't even know me.. No wonder I don't like to leave the house much anymore... I think a person with NLD or Asperger's has to be Extra-strong spirit-wise to endure all the abuse and still be able to open up their soul to someone.. it's probably not even possible in the majority of cases.. But I get what you were talking about.. the soul was still intact.. Sometimes the fear insulates and protects like a shield, but a person can't emotionally grow that way.. I still think it's a neurological predisposition for Asperger's, autism and such..

Having the strength of spirit to deal with the symptoms and have a sense of confidence and love for oneself is a really difficult feat in the face of all the daily opposition.. I wonder if what you are describing is a form of confidence? that makes the symptoms not seem so troubling? and with confidence, the anxiety isn't as crippling? Granted, there is alot of anxiety that goes along with AS -- If a person could get rid of that, then life would seem alot more tolerable even with the symptoms and difficulties understanding people sometimes.. It's important for anyone NT/AS alike to avoid emotionally damaging people... it just seems AS people attract those types like a magnet.. we're an easy target... If I could avoid those people long enough, I could rebuild my strength and have a sense of confidence again.. maybe..