I can now "jump in and out" of autistic mode

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I have now achieved so much understanding of myself that I can now consciously "jump in and out" of autistic mode.

In autistic mode I believe the thoughts in my head to be reality. There is a filter from the world as it is to my perception of the world. It's not like I don't see what's in the world. I do. But it is processed and analyzed in my mind, and only after that processing and analysis has been done do I get an impression of the world. In this mode all impressions are always interpreted. It goes through some "modelling" before it becomes reality, for instance that things are either black or white so they should be perceived as such. I'm "in my own mind" and "not in the current moment". In this mode I can figure out complex math and perceive details very well. In this mode I have to consciously make qualified guesses about other people's minds based on models and earlier experiences. There's no intuition about other people's minds.

In non-autistic mode there is no filter from the world as it is to my perception of the world. I'm in the world. The only truth is what I sense around me. My thoughts are merely something created in my brain, which is a physical object. There is no reality in my brain, reality is outside my brain. The world is not analyzed according to any rules or models in my mind, I see things "as they really are". There are no mental interpretations of things. In this mode interpretation is done by instinct. I'm "in my body" or "in the current moment". In this mode it's much easier to lead a conversation. In this mode I have an intuition about other people's minds based on their body language, the vibes they send out, etc.



I suppose this is because some Asperger people are half autistic, half not.


I'm curious whether you guys are also able to consciously "choose to be in one of the two modes"?

Hmm. From reading your whole post I can't help the feeling that you're describing depersonalizing more than autism. Has anyone ever said you have Depersonalization Disorder (DPD)?

The reason I ask is depersonalizing can turn itself, or be turned, off. When you're in "autism mode" it's always from sunup to sundown, from waking to sleeping. It cannot get turned off. Maybe DPD is one of your co-morbids?

Asperger people are autistic. The distinction was about early speech delay. Aspergers people didn't have it.

I heard an Australian specialist named Richard Eisenmajer who runs an ASD clinic in Melbourne answer the question "What is the difference between Aspergers and High Functioning Autism?" with "The spelling of the words"

I find the rest of your post impossible to imagine and hard to believe. It sounds delusional, but if you can change your cognitive style so completely, that's very cool.

The explanation seems implausible, too. You attained this remarkable ability by having understanding of yourself? I understand quite a bit about myself but it doesn't help at all. The best I seem to be able to do with it is to work around the things that are most difficult, but to just turn them off? Wouldn't that be nice.

Asperger people are autistic. The distinction was about early speech delay. Aspergers people didn't have it.

I heard an Australian specialist named Richard Eisenmajer who runs an ASD clinic in Melbourne answer the question "What is the difference between Aspergers and High Functioning Autism?" with "The spelling of the words"

I find the rest of your post impossible to imagine and hard to believe. It sounds delusional, but if you can change your cognitive style so completely, that's very cool.

The explanation seems implausible, too. You attained this remarkable ability by having understanding of yourself? I understand quite a bit about myself but it doesn't help at all. The best I seem to be able to do with it is to work around the things that are most difficult, but to just turn them off? Wouldn't that be nice.

Asperger people are autistic. The distinction was about early speech delay. Aspergers people didn't have it.

I heard an Australian specialist named Richard Eisenmajer who runs an ASD clinic in Melbourne answer the question "What is the difference between Aspergers and High Functioning Autism?" with "The spelling of the words"

I find the rest of your post impossible to imagine and hard to believe. It sounds delusional, but if you can change your cognitive style so completely, that's very cool.

The explanation seems implausible, too. You attained this remarkable ability by having understanding of yourself? I understand quite a bit about myself but it doesn't help at all. The best I seem to be able to do with it is to work around the things that are most difficult, but to just turn them off? Wouldn't that be nice.

Actually that's exactly how the guy in this video explains AS, and it's how I have explained it. I think it's a good explanation.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbgUjmeC-4o[/youtube]

Richard Eisenmajer was the guy who diagnosed me with Aspergers back in 2000! Don't think I've ever heard his name mentioned by others before now.

I agree about different mental states, although I'd say mine are more complex than that - definitely in part because I have bipolar as well which warps my thinking processes and perception of things.

If I had to classify autistic thinking from non-autistic thinking then for me autistic thinking occurs when I am not in this world at all - like I am literally living in the immensely rich, detailed, 3 dimensional imagery inside my head - almost like an ongoing daydream. When I was young this was at least 70% of the time. I was seeing but not seeing. My body was still functioning in basic ways in an automatum sort of way (but more complex things I was unable to do, which resulted in severe clumsiness, injury, putting things in strange places, not registering what people said to me/not understanding instructions ect.). When I read books it put order and direction into this world in a delightful way, so I read books almost constantly, every spare minute I had (I would even read a book during the process of putting on my school uniform). But my external world awareness suffered immensely, and I did not learn things I should have learned had i had ongoing external awareness.

These days when I am by myself I slip in and out of "autistic thinking" - so my awareness of the external comes and goes, but when I am around other people I have successfully trained myself to be "in the world" - so I am nearly always aware of what's going on around me. In this state I'd probably be similar to the non-autistic state you describe, such that some social calculations have become automatic, but sometimes I do calculate things consciously and I may briefly become completely unaware of the external while i am in the process of calculation (as for me it is very visual, I make sense of complex situations through visual analogies and symbolism as well as words).

In terms of bipolar it does two things: it messes with both my autistic "internal world" thinking and my "external world" thinking, and it causes a constant "stream of consciousness" to run inside my head (basically I hear my own voice speaking constantly - either in exact replica of what i am saying or my thoughts put into words). I don't remember having this stream of consciousness as a child, so I believe it may have developed as a result of the bipolar. When I become hypomanic or especially as I get closer to mania the stream of consciousness becomes faster and more complex (layered) such that I'll hear several voices at once/my own thoughts spoken in my voice and in the voices of other people I know, as well as random bits of music constantly playing in a repetitious loop. It can become very noisy.

With internal world thinking, when I go "down" my internal world can turn from a joyous place into a dark sort of hellish place, with explicit and graphic violent imagery, darkness, closing doors, things like that. I don't have control over it such that I can't change it back or turn off the violence or the darkness, which sometimes can flood my mind, like living in a nightmare. In the external world, ironically enough, it forces me into the internal world more frequently and easily so it becomes a struggle and a challenge to stay outside of myself (which I try to do because the internal world is a horrific place). But when I am external my thoughts, perception of events, and decision making, become warped by irrational paranoia, anger, and hatred as well as despair (suicide can sometimes become very attractive. The idea of oblivion becomes extremely attractive as my mind doesn't associate it with "breaking the rules" and it doesn't seem to have consequences. Plus it does occur - before meds I would sometimes pass out into this sort of oblivion state of sleep, it was deeper than sleep, I'd wake up and my entire body would be shaking). I try to stay as rational as possible, and I try very hard never to act on my thoughts when I am in this state.

When I go "up" it somehow seems to fuse or overlay the external and internal worlds in bizarre ways, when I'm on a more extreme high they can become almost indistinguishable, everything seems brighter, richer, more complex, and infused with euphoric emotion. I don't have the focus/lose the ability to stay either external or internal for any period of time. I'll be seeing things externally but my perception will be "enhanced" through internal symbolism and imagery. I will generally assume that I am in the external world most of the time, but my ability to translate it speeds up, so I become able to translate much more complex social situations using internal interpretative methods described earlier way, way faster, so I am seeing dual overlayed realities - the external world with people speaking to me and the internal world of stream of consciousness and symbolism rapidly making sense of the changing situation. I find it much harder to explain this state of mind, I think because of the way it causes a loss of clarity and a massive increase in thinking complexity.

I may repost this under the AS/bipolar section of the forum to see if it relates to anybody else's experience. Good topic, thanks for that.

I thought the autistic people were suppost to have no filters and the NT people had them, you have it the other way around. In my mind half autistic would mean meeting only half the diagnostic critaria.

I have no idea how "half autistic half NT" would work, or what it's like to have non-autistic thinking, or to be able to change how my thinking works. I can't even really describe "autistic thinking" because I only know how I think and generalizing that to others wouldn't work.

What is meant by therapists saying that autistic people having "no filters" is not the literal interpretation of "no filters" but means autistic people say exactly what they are thinking and say exactly what they mean. I think what the OP is trying to say is that he is "translating" what other people are saying to him into "autistic language" (eg. using mental models to try and make sense of it), which is a different concept.

So a person with autism, when trying to understand what other people are saying to them, may picture it in mental models of some sort, for example images (eg. this is what Temple Grandin does). It's like thinking in pictures - translating words into pictures.

Eg. if somebody says to me "I want a hug" in my mind I see a visual movie of myself giving them a hug. This can also cause confusion, eg. when I was 10 or 11 I went to a therapist because of the severe bullying I was experiencing at school, and she told me that I kept "beating around the bush" and "couldn't see the forest for the trees".

An image of myself hitting a thick leafy bush taller than my head with my hands in the middle of a large forest appeared in my head, so I felt very confused by this as I didn't understand how forests and bushes were related to me being bullied. I think at the time what the therapist was actually trying to say was that I was considering particular details or or times when I was bullied in isolation rather than looking at what all the different bullying events had in common, which would supposedly explain why I was being bullied.

The difference between viewing the world with autistic glasses and not is about putting yourself "in center".

Non-autistics only care about information that are relevant to themselves. This does not mean they don't care about others, because others are "quite" important information (all depending on who the person is). Autistics "care" about all information, also information irrelevant to themselves. That gets extremely overwhelming, and that's why we have to retract to our own minds and "shut down" to the outside world. The result is ending up day-dreaming/thinking all day long, not being present in the world.

yes agreed, unless the OP has just come up with a way at explaining something that sounds clear to him/her but obviously different to others,have seen many a explanation of autism and thought wtf?,everyone has a different way of looking at things and that includes the way we interpret them to.

however,the OP isnt diagnosed acording to profile so its also possible they are not autistic.
OP really needs to be doing some hefty research on their developmental history,starting with parents,relatives, family friends,teachers [if possible],school reports to get an idea what were like from baby age onwards.

all aspies are autistic,half autistic woud define those who are not able to be diagnosed in any form on the spectrum but they still do have autistic plus NT tendencies.
all aspies have the capacity to learn coping skills to help them adapt to life,some are able to do this more than others,they may be able to operate with an NT mask but their autism is still visible to others on the spectrum and those who work with us.
some aspies feel they cannot relate to those of us with classic autism; regardless of level of it, and refuse to be seen as autistic, however its because they are at such a high functioning level; this gives them the ability to adapt to NT life better,it doesnt remove their autism theyre just able to relate to NTs better than us.

+1. We may be able to become more present in our environments and function in a more acceptable fashion within society, but this doesn't remove the autism.

Qawer, I think I know what you mean but my interpretation of it is perhaps slightly different.

In my view, what you describe as autistic and non autistic thinking both rely on models. The difference is that the level and complexity of those models are different.

Take for exampe the following situation. You are sitting at your desk at work one day when someone approaches you and begins shouting at you. Here is how I believe the different patterns of thought would process it.

Non autistic processing
Relevent details: Loud tone of voice
Irrelevent details: Everything else.
Conclusion: Person is angry
Computation speed: Very fast

Autistic processing
Relevent details: Tone of voice, eye expression , body movements, what you already know about this person, what the person is saying.
Irrelevent details: Inanimate objects in the room, what the person is wearing
Conclusion: Person is angry
Computation speed: Slow

So I think what you describe as "seeing things as they really are" and "being in the present moment", is really just allowing yourself to interpret the world using less complicated abstractions. I agree that it seems possible that some Aspergers people could learn to do this.

I think you're right about this. Using less complicated abstractions often helps a lot. Seeing the "big picture" is often just about focusing on the right things instead of everything. But you're right that in the end they are both models. It's strange it's impossible to be in the world without an interpretation technique at hand.

It's interesting because although I am very high functioning I've found I've nearly always been able to relate to the things low functioning people have said as I've experienced the same symptoms but to a much lesser degree.