Theory of my own Mind

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Do I have a grasp of my own mind in the past? It is different to that of grasping someone else’s mind since it is a mind that I myself have experienced. However, this is important to pursue because if I come to similar conclusions about this and then discover that these conclusions lead me to claim deficiency while other people see no difference to their own experience, then this potentially invalidates much of my existing thinking of theory of mind. Definitely throws it into question.

So this is very pertinent. Do I have a grasp of what it was like to be me in the past? As I try this out, I realise that there are two ways of getting into my past mind. There’s re-living the emotion, and there’s remembering the intellectual thoughts and perceptions of the moment.

What do I mean by this? Well, it’s emotions vs cognitions I guess. I can remember being in a party recently and feeling uncomfortable, and yet when I analyse this I realise that it’s the thoughts that I mentally spoke to myself in my head that I’m remembering. In the same way that tears indicate distress, sadness or something similar, certain thoughts (spoken in the mind) imply a mental state, and it’s in this way that I can access how I felt. I remember the mental dialogue rather than the feeling.

How can I test this against other people’s experience if it has taken so much unpacking for myself to become aware of it? This is going to be tricky.

I do not feel much connection with the past me. Perhaps that's part of the reason why I find it nearly impossible to hold a grudge, since there is a perceived level of dissociation between who we are now and who we were.

Have you read Temple Grandin's book Thinking in Pictures? It contains the best discussion I've found of issues like the ones you are discussing, and I can't recommend it highly enough to people with autism who are trying to figure out how our brains work.

I think you will find that people on the spectrum may experience the past in very different ways. I remember mostly words, pictures when things are important or repeated or I have a strong sensory experience. I remember my emotions sometimes.

I bet some people experience things exactly as you do, and I would ask that you continue to write about your insights.