Compulsive shoplifting associated with AS
I have that feeling too, though I don't shoplift
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Later on I read that compulsive shoplifting was associated with ADHD and Aspergers.
I need help. I don't want to steal anymore. I can't get therapy, and this is the only place I could turn to.
what type of things have you stolen from stores and what's your secret to not getting caught?
Can we enumerate "something else" ideas here? Because replacing shoplifting with something else sounds like a great idea, but I'm not sure what else gives you a good adrenaline rush, besides things like extreme sports or a horror movie. I sure wouldn't recommend self-injury, drugs, or unsafe things like driving fast.... while those will give you a rush, they're also pretty damaging in their own ways.
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Thinking, and doing are two completely different things. AS may cause the intrusive thought ie, Thinking of shoplifting, but actually carrying out the thought is something that most aspies wouldn't do.
I wanted expensive jeans so bad i planned stealing them for a week. today i pulled it off. 2 pairs $50 total value. i feel somewhat bad about it and in shock i did it. now i don't know what to feel about my new jeans.
I have PDD-NOS btw. i even looked the employee in the eye's while having friendly conversation. not really nervous at all. sometime in the last few yrs i developed no remorse for doing bad things. my old therapist said he thinks i have ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) that stinks. I think i'm done with stealing. except on filesharing
I shop lifted from 17-18 and I will tell you the secret of my cure...I got caught when I was 18 and realized that it could go on my record...the record that someone who you want to hire you might see in a background check. If you take over a certain $ amount ...and I did that day, it could add up to a federal crime . The only way I avoided that was I had removed all the tags from the items .
Why did I do it ? I was nieve and thought...who is it hurting, the stores have insurence for it . What I didn't know was people like me actually caused stores to charge more...so every body was paying . My other reason was even worse....My parents kicked me out at 16 and I was mad at them . I was mad at "society" for letting them adopt me and then abandon me. I was mad at my peers for making fun of my poor girl clothes . I was mad at the whole world for not living up to my "expectations" of a nice friendly utopia and I wanted to punish them all by not following their rules .
Maybe you need to look at what/who, you are mad at and see if that is causing the impulse ?
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I shoplifted once, got caught and went to Youth Crisis, a program for juveniles who shoplift or get caught doing other similar things. Going to Youth Crisis meetings and completing the program (which consisted of me and my mom going to these meetings every week at a Youth Crisis Center) meant it not going on my record.
I realize how naive I was since what I shoplifted was makeup and it was worth a total of five bucks! I got caught shoplifting five dollar (combined total) mascara and powder, if I remember correctly, and had to go to Youth Crisis for that. I don't even know if that would have gone on my record anyway, since it was only five bucks and so very petty.
At the time, I couldn't tell that what I had taken was petty. That's what was so weird about me. After I got caught, in my mind, it was the worse thing anyone could ever do. I don't think I was well connected. I had very little understanding...not even getting, at the time, that what I took was worth only five bucks.
I never tried to steal anything important. The reason I stole the makeup was because my friends did it and I copied what they did. The only friends I could make at that time were what most would consider "losers", honestly, no one else wanted to be my friend, everyone else seemed to despise me and didn't even want to be seen in my company. Like most teens, I really craved friendship. So, when I found others who weren't making it in life, like me, I became overly dependent on my relationships with them.
The Youth Crisis program was, pretty much, group therapy. There were fifteen teenagers in the group. All had stolen major items too, except for one who came from a wealthy family and stole a pack of cigarettes.
It's just so silly. All that drama over a pack of cigarettes or makeup. Some of the participants in Youth Crisis had stolen expensive watches, one stole a car with an expensive television inside, which he didn't know was there. It was on the floorboard in the backseat.
Imagine me in this same group after stealing something that was worth only five bucks? At the time that didn't register with me. The people in the group were nice enough and I was used to being treated really horribly by nearly everyone and this was so different. I was so needy for this kind of experience, I didn't consider the differences in what we took. If I did, it didn't really sink in. It didn't register completely.
The city must think the shoplifting isn't about us getting stuff, it's a symptom of inner turmoil, so they tried to help us figure stuff out, like, our emotions. Most meetings were spent talking about emotions. The woman who conducted the meetings tried to build up our confidence. She was really cool. Much better than any teacher I had in high school. In fact, she was one of those extremely rare individuals who wasn't negative or cynical, but actually wanted to help people out.
At the time, I was under the influence of a group of miscreants and I was very dependent on them, very clingy with absolutely no self confidence. I couldn't take full advantage of the Youth Crisis program. For one thing, I was very mistrustful of adults. I wish I would have had the desire and confidence because I now think the program could have been more beneficial if I would have tried harder to talk to the woman conducting the sessions. I talked to her some because she was very nice and understanding, but I wasn't honest about my problems, fitting into society, finding a job, having a place to stay. I didn't talk to her about these problems, just about the homework assignments, and what was talked about during meetings as a group.
It did me some good. It did stop me from shoplifting and made me realize making those kinds of choices were not in my best interest.
People are trying to understand why they do things, and the Spectrum is wide.
If you look at the official DSM for AS you see it is very narrow in scope. Lying, mass school shootings, homosexuality, etc are just people looking for excuses for their other issues.
I think you're right, there is no point in things like kleptomania being associated with AS. AS has become a catch-all for all kinds of bad behavior. Those with AS have problems enough without others adding the stigma of other kinds of anti-social behavior to it.
I'm wondering at this point if shoplifting is a misguided fairness tactic on an aspie's part. Namely, it's not fair that a store gets to have so much stuff that it does nothing with, while the aspie doesn't get to have one desired item. So it doesn't feel all that wrong to take that item. Because it's not stealing; it's "fairly" transferring something from an entity that just holds an item its possession (the store), to someone who will derive genuine happiness from it (the aspie). Probably not unlike the redistribution of wealth during revolutions in France (1789), Russia (1917), and Cuba (1953).
Come to think of it, it's exactly how I felt. I viewed all stores as colluding with my parents to keep popular (read: pricey) toys, Gushers, Doritos, and such, permanently out of my hands. So I dreamed of "redistributing" a small subset of those things from stores to myself. It didn't even strike me as stealing, because I viewed stores as the "bad guy". However, I also knew that the society frowns on shoplifting, so the all-encompassing fear of getting caught---and I knew I will get caught---kept me from trying to "redistribute" toys and snacks.
Aspies (who are not comorbid with ADHD) suck at shoplifting.
But NTs and AHDHR's excel at it, and the latter are thrillseekers who are second only to sociopaths in being drawn to criminal activity.
If you want an adrenaline rush to substitute for shoplifting join the US Army and be a paratrooper, and help save the rest of us from Al Queda/ISIS.
I think compulsive/addictive behaviours might be more difficult to break for some people on the spectrum. I don't steal. About 8 years ago I did though but quit because I was getting better at it with time and was aiming for taking phones but I thought if I fail I will be in prison and if I'm successful I don't think I could stop.
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