Autism and the lacking sense of self or who am I?

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Who am I? This is a question that a spiritual seeker constantly wonders about. Is the aspergers lack of sense of self a starting point into enquiry into his own self. Unless we feel we are lacking something very essential that is our sense of self there would be no seeking for our deeper self or our true identity. The NTs usually have a identity and aspies identity is loose. Are identity and self different?

I've spent the last eight years on a similar question and it's odd...it seems we do have a innate sense of Self. I am me, and not (you) or (you) or (you over there). And that sense of Me has certain innate traits and attributes. And it's somehow important that others recognize our sense of Self in a manner that matches how we identify. But when people have say, NVLD, pragmatic speech disorders, sensory disorders such as auditory processing and the like, those feedback messages get garbled. And without Theory of Mind, we aren't good at "guessing" what people's view of our Self might be so again, we are missing that feedback. Really, it's no wonder so many people on the spectrum don't strongly identify with a certain identity or other, but it is one more thing that sets us apart.

In my case this problem comes from not knowing I was on the spectrum most of my life and faking it to make it.

Actually a lack of identity and true self is a common trait in people with Borderline Personality Disorder.
But also can be the result of years of 'passing' (autistic person acting as a Neurotypical) The autistic person starts to feel uncomfortable doing the things they enjoy like stimming and talking about their special interest due to constant scolding from NT authorities. I know i feel this way..

Hmm I suppose I see identity and self as being different in that identity is often about how you see yourself fitting in with others, or with labels. So if you 'identify' as something, usually you see yourself as having a similar trait to others who identify as the same thing. As for self, that's more personal and doesn't rely on comparisons. It's about how you would view yourself as a human on this earth even if there weren't other humans around, if that makes sense.

That's how I've been thinking about it lately but no doubt I'll see it differently in the future.

But having said that, I consider myself to have a VERY strong sense of self, but not a very strong identity when it comes to seeing similarities to other groups, personalities, etc. I'm very very clear on what sort of person I am, but even if I was to say something like "I identify as an aspie", really I just mean that Asperger's explains a LOT about me as a person. I don't mean that I feel like I relate to other aspies. It's a personal thing so more a 'self' thing, I guess.

For a long time, as a child, I had a very weak sense of self. If someone physically near me got into trouble and was being shouted at by someone I would feel like I was in trouble. If someone near me was crying I would think something was badly wrong with me but didn't know what. If it was stormy outside I felt like I was a storm and if it was sunny I felt sunny inside my body. It's like my sense of self included my physical surroundings for a long time.

Now I have a stronger sense of being a seperate individual. I know what I like and what I don't like and where I end and the world begins. This really helps my functioning. However, if I'm feverish or very tired I easily fall back into that more 'undifferentiated self' mode. This has issues but it also has unexpected bonuses too.

For instance, spiritually when my self dissolves I feel part of everything and like everything is part of me. There is enormous peace in just being part of creation, of the ecosystem, of the universe.

Thanks for starting this post - it's really helpful to think about this again.

This is one of those kinds of concepts I really don't understand what is being talked about.

I think as a child , that's vulnerability and fear. But as a adult you overcome all these fears.

Autism and lack of self is not related.

it takes a lot of years to understand yourself , what attracts you and what's not. you are constantly learning more about your self.

The mask you wear that you let other people see.
The mask you wear to your family and close friends.
the mask that you see yourself in the mirror. and lastly the unmask of yourself that even you have difficulty to see the ugly truth

Ask your self who you are in the mirror and see if you can let the world see you as you are.

so at different phases of life there's a different sense of you and wearing different mask. so it's not people with autism that lacks sense of self!

What I may be interested is the true purpose of my life here. Or to reach enlightenment.

that's my 2 cents worth .

From my point of view I think autism and having a disturbance to the more usual sense of self is quite common. However I think it would be reasonable to call this a difference in sense of self rather than a lack of sense of self.

I think people who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) struggle with a lack of a sense of themselves. I get the impression from reading that folk with BPD have no strong central self and so kind of take on the self of people around them in a chameleon type way. So they behave one way for one person and another way for another person but have no sense of who they are, their self is kind of hidden or shrunk.

I think the disturbance or difference to the idea of self in an autistic person, for me anyway, is that more of what I experience is seen as part of the self. So rather than having little sense of self like someone with BPD an autistic person like me would feel that everything around me is part of myself - so there is a fullness and contentment in the self, a sense of being part of everything around. In natural gentle environmental conditions this is a lovely feeling - like being nicely full after your favourite meal but when the surroundings become chaotic and it's clear that this expanded sense of self is not under control it can bring massive panic and fear and stress.

The way I see it this way of thinking about autism provides reasons why autistic people can seem so self contained and can find such wholeness in quiet solitude and also gives reasons why autistic people cannot cope with certain environments. Like I said in my previous post though I learned to shrink in my self to be just the areas around my immediate body during my normal operating conditions and so understand what an NT person might talk about when they talk about their 'self'.

Sometimes though when autistic people are first learning how to behave in an NT world we do copy people to try to work our what to do socially. This can somtimes be misinterpreted as BPD but I think it comes from trying to find models of behaviour and social scripts, not from a lack of self.

My pleasure that I help you retouch your life. I feel wonderful to read such posts. I would like to thank you too.

I have the impression that :

NTs have an identity more by showing an image of themselves , and from other's comments, how they see them.

AS' have an identity more by doing, not necessarily showing, unless it is useful, with no interest in their image. At least, this is my case.

I think that Aspie’s identity is strong (especially when developping special interests), but from an NT external view, it can indeed appear very loose, as Aspies do not spontaneous share it and do not care much about their image.

Last edited by LaetiBlabla on 19 Feb 2016, 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I relate to this. Before knowing it, i knew who i was but felt that...there is something important missing.

This showing / doing distinction really makes sense to me especially when you talk about external image.

You're welcome. It's a really interesting topic.

Same, I don't really understand these ideas in general. I would like to though- anyone care to explain?
I mean I just feel like "I exist" and we'll maybe I haven't explored the philosophical side of this even or exposed myself to it. However I just don't get this idea it reminds me of when people say they feel more than one emotion at once LOL NOPE! Not me! I feel either sad OR happy not at once- which is why I found the ending of that movie about the girl with the emotions in her head... Inside out? That what it is called confusing- I was like I don't get happy/sad memories! Is this a thing? I never really identify with the normal trajectory of development of people either like I never felt like I even went through puberty until recently even though I'm waaaaay past that point. Just because now I feel like I'm changing and growing while when I was a teen I pretty much didn't change at all I didn't change my appearance or the way I thought at all from the time I was a kid I just got taller and my school clothes changed a little but I personally didn't change at all- which is why I could never also identified with other people in my life that felt like "adolescence was a time a tumultuous and accelerating development" <- more NOPE!
That didn't even really happen to me until almost after college! Which kind of freaks me out because I know it isn't very normal...

My understanding of the topic is simply :
If you ask an autist: "Can you describe yourself in a few lines?"
Can he/she do it?

Why are there caps at each word in the subject of the thread? I tend to think that caps are signs of some kind of self "showing", when not needed by grammar.

i like to write with no caps, sometimes.

This is something interesting that I read.


You're not the same woman you were a decade ago;
If you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year.
The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change.
If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves.
I celebrate that.
Honor it.
Hold it in reverence.
And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become.