I guess I "fixed" myself...

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I'm a 20 year old guy who was quite recently diagnosed with Asperger's. Peculiar thing about it is that it was almost all through retrospection. Because, for lack of a better explanation, I have remedied myself of almost every unwanted aspect of the condition. My psychiatrist led me to believe that I am some kind of outlier, that she hasn't met anyone in the 1000+ cases shes had a part in with the same kind of mental structuring in place.

I am extremely curious as to whether or not there are any other sorts of cases that are similar. When I read the forums here, I see a lot of similarities in demeanor and behavior with my state of mind from when I was extremely young 'til about 15 or 16, when I instituted a whole bunch of convoluted BS that apparently did the trick for me. I could go into detail if anyone is curious, but I really must stress the "convoluted" aspect of it all.

I want to hear from any one else if they've had any significant success with self-improvement, dont be shy!

Well, I never officially found out about my AS until a few years ago. Over the years there have been things that I really wanted to do, such as get an engineering degree, work in the field, etc., but I had most of the usual AS related social issues, self esteem issues, depression, etc., etc. My response was pure and simple force of will. I used the brute force approach on myself and forced myself to do what was necessary. The downside of this is that I needed a LOT of solitary downtime just to keep myself together. Somehow, I was able to keep the meltdowns private and no one knew about them. Unfortunately, these tactics were only partially successful and I encountered many problems along the way. Most notably, I abandoned virtually all of my few personal relationships and to compensate for my perceived lack of ability, I worked myself so hard that I ended up flat on my back in bed for two weeks suffering from exhaustion and several other medical problems. However, failure was not an option and I kept pushing myself until I had accomplished what I started, a degree and a good job. The job required a lot of social interaction, but by then I had learned how to appear at least semi-normal, although I was always considered to be a bit "different." And, yes, I still needed a lot of solitary downtime. For that matter, I still do even though I am now retired.

I would like to hear about some of your convolutions and how they helped you.

I ran away from home at 13 and was orphaned at 15. I lived in a car for months and had to assimilate or die. Before that I was considered an introvert and was a straight "A" student. I was even pushed ahead two grades in Jr and High School after starting first grade at 4 ( you could do that in the olden days). I would have graduated at 15 if I hadn't run away.

In grade school I was made fun of mercilessly, they yelled names at me, they threw rocks at me on the way home, The school asked a high school student to walk me home. It was brutal. In order to "fit in" when I reached Jr High I started imitating other girls, I read etiquette books and read the Sears and JC Penney catalog to get a sense of fashion. I actually lied about things to sound interesting. It wasn't until a few years ago that I decided that I would learn to accept myself as I am and it was such a liberating experience.

I know how to act now even though it takes an enormous amount of patience. I know how to feign sympathy and empathy even though I don't really feel anything. Although sometimes I can forget and it shows. The thing that I never understood about myself was that I can shut out other people and smile at them when they intentionally try to hurt me. I work with two highly menopausal women who get their jollies by ragging on anything and everything. Unfortunately for them, my boss loves me. I am so much more intelligent and experienced than they are. He knows I am obsessive when it comes to what I do and even in my interview they asked me to basically find out what was wrong with "this" and not only did I find what they had noted, but I found a major flaw the others hadn't. I have been doing this ever since. I guess you could say that I made my job my special interest rather than make my special interest my job. This has made me a highly valued employee and I get paid better than most.

That's just some of the ways I have made myself "fit in".

I will only go briefly into it tonight, I do have get some sleep for tomorrow, but it should give you a general idea.

I had the same issues I see that everyone on here has. As you all have experienced, its almost eerie how similar some situations and mannerisms were to myself.

I did have some benefits that really tipped the scales for me, though.
When I made an oath to myself to achieve happiness at any cost, I had to use my strengths to nullify my weakness. I realized I needed to make what was supposed to be subconscious conscious. I created a second level of cognition saved entirely for objective assessment, reading social cues, prioritizing things I would normally let slip away. It took years for this to even become functional, I would say it dominated my mind for a long, long time. It's an exhausting task, even for one day, to carry it out each and every day was so draining on me that I continually had meltdowns, outbursts, and the like. I wasn't going to let any of it break my resolve. I would keep this second line of thinking as a separate entity from my usual behavior. It allowed me to become extremely introspective, to objectively assess myself based on a daily playthrough of my day. I would see where issues lie, not allow bias from emotions or moods interfere with what truly went on. I think of it as binary thinking, I would allow myself the normal thought process I was born with, yet I would allow the second process to continually observe and take in everything. I eventually kept gaining social skills from mimicking and impersonating what I had observed in others, I pieced together the personality I wished to make inherent. I had to stay on my toes constantly whenever out of my house, I had to have one string going on with my daily life and generally performed the way my mind normally would, the other making damn sure there were no slip ups, and if any occurred, made sure they would happen only once. Nothing was subconscious, I brought every minutiae of my thinking and behavior to the forefront, and left nothing I saw as a flaw unaddressed. It literally was just a case of "fake it til you make it". eventually all these small things really are as close to subconscious as they will ever get to me, I don't even think about how to behave anymore, I become friends with everyone I meet. I'm seen as quirky, because I made sure to keep what I enjoyed about my condition, but I have no issue with putting people off at all anymore. I have close friends I genuinely care about now.

But yeah, that's a SUPER general intro to what I did. There's so much I wish to make coherent I am thinking of just writing what is essentially a dissertation on myself

i have gradually been fixing myself all my life. i have always had empathy, but have not always known how to show it. i've mostly learned to think before i speak and how to express empathy from watching others. i've had a wide variety of life experiences to draw on. i learned to do small talk after the age of 50.

this 'second layer of cognition' sounds familiar to me, although i didn't conciously create mine, i thought it was a general AS thing...
i too have many convoluted systems in place and almost 'fixed' myself, although both my NT and my ASD friends seem distant at times, i feel like i do not really belong in either of those groups...

In the past, I've compared myself to Master Blaster from Mad Max. I feel like a small, "aware" part of myself is trying to keep the rest of me, a gigantic, awkward child, in check. I basically gave myself anxiety to try to hide the ASD.

I have had varying success in covering up aspects of myself I disliked, or that I felt others disliked, but recently I've gained a fondness for just being strange. I'm not like other people, and I don't want to be. I do want to be able to communicate with them when required, so a lot of the anxiety sticks around, but the biggest aid I've found is just to relax, and to not worry about social interaction. Yes, misunderstandings are frequent, and yes, it's a little embarrassing, but if you act like you're not embarrassed, you really don't feel so much so.

The secondary cognition does have its stranger points though, I often get deja vu of having deja vu (I've had this deja vu before...), and I've thought about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking, and even further than that.

It ultimately seems, to me, that both hemispheres of my brain are active, but not communicating properly. My left hemisphere tackles external problems while the right is focused inwardly, watching for mistakes in what the left side is doing. I have learned how to relax my brain, one hemisphere at a time is easier than both, and to focus either side internally (focusing the right side outwardly is still difficult) with interesting results. I have so far been able to release adrenaline, DMT, testosterone, and other chemicals on command. I can also "flex" one hemisphere, forcing it to work faster, but this tends to make my brain feel as though it is swelling up. On one occasion, I actually forced my heart to beat on command, but I immediately felt a very unpleasant sensation along with a strange sound in my head, and have not attempted to repeat this.

those are quite a lot of cognitive abilities; i did not reach such a level of control yet.
i did find myself able, however, to control my bodies 'emergency status abilities' at will (slowing down percieved time, doubleing/tripling musche power, running on internal oxygen to eliminate the need to breath shortly...), comparable to a shaolin monk.

also, i have been able to tune my hyper and hypo sentisivities both up and down; stretching my hearing even further or "pressing the mute button" has become daily practice, and i can upgrade my resistance to pain and cold to a near immunity, especially helpful in situations where light touch is common.

thirdly, i seem to have learned the ability to send my primary cognition into meditation while the secondary one stays active, taking over the thinking process i want to focus on; basically disconnecting the entire world without needing to empty my mind, allowing me to solve problems with even more focus then when i am working on my obsessive interest
this same ability has helped me in some other times, the most recent one is also the strongest effect i have observed from this skill.
i came home from a birthday party, drunk and fully overloaded, only just managing to delay the meltdown to the moment i reached home, when i noticed the window of the living room was kicked in; my secondary cognition then started to work, disabled the drunk, overloaded first one. i really just fully sobered up and got awake; checking if anything was missing, asking neibourghs if they heared something and warning the police and housing company.

of course, doing this made the meltdown i got when i got to bed a lot worse, but i did manage to function better then i'd normally do while in the worst state i could be, ignoring an active meltdown.

Although I still struggle with anxiety, obsessive thinking, and low self-esteem, I have learned and even mastered most social skills. Most of it was self-taught by reading everything I could on AS and pushing myself to improve the things that i wasn't so good at. As well, I firmly believe that as an autistic kid, I processed the world differently, having extreme sensory issues that gradually faded away and disappeared altogether a few years ago.

I can blend in successfully with most neurotypicals, save for certain kinds of people who I become very intimidated by. I have a good sense of what other people would find strange or awkward, so I simply have learned to hide all these parts of myself. It sometimes gets annoying, though, as I have hidden them so much that I have no idea what my original behaviours used to be. A bit of it has to do with my extremely high sense of self-conciousness...I screwed up so much socially as a kid that I became vigilant and hyper-aware of my social skills as an adult. The downside of this is that I am plagued with daily bouts of anxiety and am easily stressed. If I could go back to the time when I was fully autistic and not aware of my behaviours, I would.

That's just me though. OP, I would be interested to hear your story of how you overcame things.

I don't think my second layer of cognition is well-developed. The only person I can use it on is my mother, some of the time. But it will be fun to try it out on others.

I just be myself, work on overcoming executive function issues and not get so upset when I make a mistake or have to step back after pushing myself too hard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY9b6jgbNyc[/youtube]

Its sorta how my life is

Analyze this: ?"#&%(=?*'###########)! !!

Attention! ...only possible by using your so-called second layer of cognition.