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paolo
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28 Jan 2007, 1:40 am

We should take a diagnosis not as an empty label, imposed from an outside authority, but as one tool to interpret our life, a frame that separates the content of the picture from the wall where it’s hanging, a reevaluation of all your life. Pretending to be normal required a tremendoud effort: so your life was that effort, reality appeared to be your effort at pretending. But under it there was another unrecognized reality, hidden to yourself. Pretending to be normal was motivated by the real frustrated but undestructible need to mix with your kind, to be baptized into humanity. That happened in the wrong way, by accepting an obligation to feign normality and cease to be yourself. When you reintepret your life with the knew key, whole pieces of your life fall apart, Your whole your life seems to have been a hollow acting. But your real life has been that suffering hidden behind you acting.



goomba
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28 Jan 2007, 2:07 am

Interesting. I did a lot of acting, and I still do. It was constant outside pressures; to behave this way or that instead of my natural inclination. When I was a child, I was diagnosed with Autism and had these tantrums and various sensitivities. I got better at the social game and being more tolerant as I grew older.
I am glad I can modify my behaviour accordingly, but why is that? I'm wanting to be accepted or liked.
The first major depressive episode hit after graduating highschool. In highschool I was trying so hard to be liked, to get a friend and boyfriend, and to study hard and complete all my assignments and tests to the best of my ability. The teachers' praised my ability to focus and be mature (hint: you can't be immature if you don't open your mouth). But I know next to nothing about this world, and the more I try to learn, the less I feel I know. I still feel that all the time. I want to be successful, but then I think about how utterly clueless about the world I am compared to most people. Social networking, whaaa?
I am shy mostly because I am afraid of expressing myself and allowing all my quirks to be on display. Afraid of being the weirdo.
It's too much fear.



paolo
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28 Jan 2007, 3:58 am

We are generally born at odds with the world. At first we were brought to think, by parents, teachers ad peers, that we are wrong, and the world is right. But is it really so? It might also be so, in part at least, but to yeld to the world out of fear, out of the desire to please, out of an absolute need to be accepted, is wrong. To know, through diagnosis, what was the motivation behind your “pretending”, your acting, your falsifing yourself, your conforming, gives you a sieve to filter what was authentic of your actions and what contaminated by the desire to please. If I am weak, if I needed desperately some sorte of acceptance, I will find little to save as really “mine” in my deeds



goomba
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28 Jan 2007, 5:24 am

paolo wrote:
We are generally born at odds with the world. At first we were brought to think, by parents, teachers ad peers, that we are wrong, and the world is right. But is it really so? It might also be so, in part at least, but to yeld to the world out of fear, out of the desire to please, out of an absolute need to be accepted, is wrong. To know, through diagnosis, what was the motivation behind your “pretending”, your acting, your falsifing yourself, your conforming, gives you a sieve to filter what was authentic of your actions and what contaminated by the desire to please. If I am weak, if I needed desperately some sorte of acceptance, I will find little to save as really “mine” in my deeds

Hmm, I see what you are saying. And I think it's what I really needed to read. I've been battling feelings of shame since telling (or attempting to tell) my mother about Asperger's. Thanks for making the posts.