Going from one form of "self"to the other

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Sometimes in one moment I can go from this super mature controlled person giving great advice and really helping my friends and then the next minute I just change and become this little tiny toddlery kid who just wants to be held and rocked and told a soft story. I usually go into little kid mode if I am confused or scared or overwhelmed emotionally and these emotions can come up at any time even without warning. Unfortunately this little kid side of me stays hidden most of the time since it only feels safe enough to come out when I am alone or with one other person in my family. Sometimes when I feel this way when others are around I can also be "mature" pretty well at the same time for them so that no one can tell how I feel inside. Does anyone else have these moments when you just go from one form of yourself to another like this?

You seem to talk about a side to yourself as though it has it's own feelings rather than it actually being a feeling or group of feelings in it's own right - your other side can feel unsafe all on it's own. Or did I take that the wrong way?

Yes, I'm exactly like that myself.

I theorize your mature self is maintained by your academic intelligence (IQ), while the "little kid" inside is a manifestation of emotional (social) intelligence "less than average".

I suppose this is common in Aspergers because we often have high IQ and low emotional (social) intelligence, but I can only speak for myself.

As you describe it, it almost does feel like you have two distinct personalities, the mature, clever one and the little kid.

It can feel strange to "put on" the mature personality when you know you are also the little kid.

Ditto here. I think you phrased that rather aptly.

That is a really good question. I am not really sure. I have to think about that and see what I come up with. I tend to think of it as two distinct sides of my personality or of who I am because they are so different from each other. But maybe it is a group of feelings in its own right. I'm not sure.

This makes a lot of sense. And I am glad to know I am not the only one!

Savvyidentity, I just realized something very interesting and even quite powerful as I was thinking about your question. Since I did not know I was Aspie until a year and a half ago, I had to learn to deal with a lot of this stuff completely alone. I actually learned how to have the ability to separate the two sides, the mature side and the kid side, and keep them independent of each other and actually use the mature side to comfort the kid side sometimes when it is scared or confused. Does anyone else do this? So in a sense, it is like having two separate and distinct personalities, each with it's own feelings, I think. It's not like schizophrenia though, I know people who have that and this is different.

Last edited by skibum on 07 Aug 2013, 7:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

Me too (:

With well-developed academic intelligence available I find the best way to emulate emotional (social) intelligence is to tell yourself to "serve my self-interest", which includes cooperating with people when this serves your self-interest (family, friends, coworkers, etc.).

That's a cool way to think about it.

At least it makes socializing much more bearable for me, i.e. faking social intelligence.

It doesn't work with love, however. You have to actually feel it when it comes to love.

i never vary in my moods or attitudes. i feel like i have a rapidly spinning subconscious gyroscope that ensures that i always remain in the same orientation perpetually.

i had a friend who was (and still is) a girl who's inner experiences went from one extreme to another in about a 2 week cycle.
in one mode, she was busily working on solutions to the worlds problems, and she was confident that her efforts to consider the plights she wished to ameliorate would result in tangible solutions.

i was always unimpressed with her rabid "race calling" style narration of her thoughts. she was also quite physical and she sometimes disrobed while she was talking.

then, 2 weeks later she would ring me from the bowels of despair and ask me to tell her any reason that i can think of that she should remain alive. i always said "because i like you and the world would be less without you in it".

but i felt so sorry for her. she was not one single identity like i am.
i feel completely stable, and she could not predict in what mode she would wake up in after her sleep.

another superfluous statement would be that i feel like a gigantic grandfather clock whose pendulum was never pressed into action.

i am always the same me (except if i am sleep walking).

it would be scary to wake up tomorrow and be a different person than i was the night before.

Well I didn't want to assume too much but this article is why I asked:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditio ... y-disorder

It just seemed to me that you described there being another person in you with their own feelings. But you seem to have a very emotional nature so I thought that may be part of it too. I remember you describing sets of emotions before, but maybe this is a coping mechanism if you came up with it on your own. Maybe work on combining both modes so it's all just part of a distinct personality

I'm not a therapist or anything though so maybe take that with a pinch of salt.

I just read the article and it is very interesting. I never knew about this condition. I don't have any memory loss though and I don't think that it is an actual different identity, I think it is probably more like two extremes like Qawer was saying. When I am in one "mode" I am fully aware of the other and can easily go back and forth. Like if someone enters the room and needs something, I can in that instant become "mature" and take care of them. Or maybe it's a bit of both, it is very interesting to think about. Sometimes I feel like "kid mode" gives "mature mode" a break so that it can rest a bit and not overload and crash so easily or so often. It;s almost like a release. When I get emotionally really stressed or overwhelmed, I almost always go into kid mode. I think that it is hard for me to show that when people are around because that mode is when I am most vulnerable. But I think it is more like Qawer said because it is more an emotional thing I think than an intellectual one.

B9, It sounds like your friend overloads and has a system crash every couple of weeks because she is so charged up and it's overwhelming for her.

I don't really have the little kid mode, but sometimes I have already figured something out and how to deal with it, when something went wrong or someone said something that was hurtful, and then suddenly hours or sometimes days later my emotion will arrive, and I will feel numb and depressed for a few hours until I found something to distract myself, and then its gone again at least the extreme manifestation of it.

Maybe the same process manifests itself in you in a far more extreme version of it.

I get delayed emotions too. Sometimes I will get emotions come up from stuff that happened years ago as if it were fresh. And sometimes like you I don't get hit with the emotions as the even is happening but later and usually they come when I am alone and feel like it is "safe" to feel them and be that vulnerable. I can be extremely emotional, not necessarily on the outside on the inside I can feel emotions very very deeply and very powerfully, and sometimes it seems like the emotions I feel are too strong for the actual situation. Some people had made me feel bad or even "guilty" in ways like they would say that what I was feeling was inappropriate, or not right when I was growing up for feeling things as strongly as I do so I learned not to let it show.

Skibum,

I think we have to go into "kid mode" once in a while because it is exhausting to keep up the "mature mode" continually, for the simple reason that it really is quite consciously we are going into "mature mode", i.e. through academic intelligence (IQ) (just like you said yourself).

I believe the "kid mode" is the "real you", the "mature mode" is more an academic practical construction. Or said differently, if the world did not require you to be in "mature mode" you'd likely prefer to stay in "kid mode", because that is the natural emotional state. At least that's how it is for me.

If I stay in "mature mode" all the time, life stops making sense. Life only makes sense through emotions. With Aspergers those emotions are often those of the "kid". Let it thrive.