Is it harder for us to make conscious decisions?

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I've always felt like I was 'driven'. I never make conscious decisions. I do everything my subconscious drives me to do. If I need to do something, I need to spend time preparing my subconscious for it, or I might get all confused and disorganized. I'm not sure if this is just me, or if most Autistic people are like this too.

I think NTs are also driven by their subconscious, except that there is more harmony between their consciousness and subconscious, allowing them to behave in a more 'normal' way. They have a mixed advantage in not being able to tell the two apart.

With me, I am able to tell them apart. It breaks some of my functionality, especially socially, but it also allows me to see things in a unique perspective. I am able to understand certain things better than the average person, and develop some rare skills accordingly.

Am I talking complete nonsense? Can any of you understand what I'm saying?

I think it's a good thing....I'm the same way. I've always been very "driven" I do everything by my gut feeling and it usually leads me in the right direction. However, your right, in social situations the gut feeling doesn't always work fast enough I guess. Its usually just the big decisions that I do right. I'm really bad at quick small decisions. See now I'm confusing myself though. Is it small decisions that are subconscious or big ones? Anyways, whenever I'm making a decision that will change my life I always go with what my gut tells me rather that what's logical. Is this what you mean?

That's just seeing through the illusion of free will. I don't believe people really have "free will", but are driven by their subconscious as you describe. If we controlled our own destiny I wouldn't have such textbook Asperger's, the fact that I am so perfectly AS proves that all my life when I thought I was making developmental decisions it was my uncontrollable subconscious driving me. I imagine that every other decision works in a similar way

Qi wrote:

Is it possible that in fact what you are doing is planning what you are about to do before you do it without being fully aware of it, and that part of you that’s doing the planning is largely your subconscious and when you say
you are confusing planning with preparing? If so then the word “driven” would be incorrect to describe it. Driven would imply motivated but in fact all your subconscious is really doing is just planning.

I agree with you completely when you say:



However is it possible that the reason NTs have more harmony between their consciousness and subconscious is because their conscious and subconscious are far apart and not fully aware of each others existence and so not bothered as much? For example you can have two opposite (disagreeing) individuals in the same room as long as you keep a curtain between them.

When you say:



Is it possible that you too have achieved harmony between your conscious and subconscious by simply getting them closer to each other where both fully recognizes, understands and so tolerates the other?



If you agree with my conclusions then I understand exactly what you are saying. In fact I have been saying the same thing for twenty years now. Furthermore, if you agree, I would very much like to discuss with you another theory of mine where there are other ways in which functionality is broken in Asperger’s.

This makes sense to me, maybe.

I have a lot of trouble directly answering very general or open ended questions. This seems related to the way I process things subconsciously. My thoughts are always a bit scattered and unorganized. I have a real skill for intuitive inferences but the process of translating my intuition into something someone else can comprehend can be arduous. I don't naturally rank and order things in my head and rarely have specific examples of a concept right on the tip of my tongue when someone asks. Organized writing is also difficult for me since the process of choosing the order of sentences or paragraphs can seem very arbitrary and unnatural. My speech can be a bit weird too, somewhat more rambling and stream-of-consciousness than most people's.

I also think this conscious/subconscious divide is responsible for my executive function problems. I have a horrible time getting started on anything when I'm not in the proper mood. My mind also drifts like crazy if I get bored with whatever I'm supposed to be doing. I'm an extremely absent minded person.

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Concepts:

Conscious Mind vs Subconscious Mind

Decision Making vs Lack of Decision Making / Procrastination

The Sixth Sense (Hunches / Intuition)