Self punishment or self denial to make yourself learn

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I've just read the thread on self harm and wanted to start a new thread with my comment as it didn't really fit in there.

Sometimes I get so annoyed with the things that I do, or don't do, that I will self punish in order to make myself not do it again.

For example, if I forget to take a sweater with me when I leave the house, I get very very tempted to not go back and get it and make my body feel the cold. The uncomfortable feeling of being cold *should* make me remember my sweater next time. I don't do this however because being cold might make me sick or catch cold. It's really tempting though........

Other times, if I leave the dinner on too long and it becomes overcooked, I force myself to eat it anyway. Perhaps next time I won't leave it on the burner so long because theoretically I *should* remember how disgusting my dinner was last time and I won't want to have to eat it all burned up again.

I tend to write myself a lot of notes because I am very forgetful. If I need to take something with me, I write it on a post-it note and then stick it to my keys. Works well! I suppose no matter how annoyed with myself I become for being forgetful, I feel I will never ever change so I need to help myself by writing notes everywhere.

I used to do hard punishments on myself as a kid and my mother would put a stop to it. I once opened my bedroom window so I'd freeze to death (not literally) and my mom came in my room and closed it and said it was very unnecessary to do that.

I am also aware I'm lazy so I have my bf get things for me and do things for me so now I'm starting to not ask him anymore unless he offers to get it for me. Right now I'm too lazy to go to bed because I am too busy with South Park and I'm tired but I don't want to sleep. Plus I'm thinking about posting my next chapter to one of my Benny & Joon fanfictions. Damn it, I've been so hung up in South Park, I haven't had time for Benny & Joon. I even spent a few hours playing the video game I didn't go out to shop for things I need but oh well there is always tomorrow. Hopefully I will be motivated to go out and not be so lazy.

We are so forgetful and don't learn from our mistakes because we mentally drift far too often than most people do. It's like we're really not here at the moments where we need to learn and remember. (A constant state of drunken-like daydream) I still do crazy things to help me remember. Most of the time they work. I will have to F'n hurt myself if it comes to forgetting those things necessary to protect my kids but you can't let them see you get heavy-duty with yourself...you'll scare the gibblets out of 'em! It will stay with them forever. Better to consult with others for more reasonable ways to remember stuff but i understand your impatience with yourself. God knows, I've dun lost all patience with myself. I ask Jesus to help me often and he does. Sometimes you have to turn it over to a higher power with a lot of notes strategically put around the house to help you remember to do things. Notes even to "Go and pray".
Therapy may help because this sort of behavior is coupled with OCD. I wish i knew what meds might help but meds can be tricky, scary things. God knows we are not lab guinea pigs. I even feel sorry for them!

I always punish myself for mistakes. Even if someone else made the mistake and I got messed up for it, I punish myself because I allowed myself to listen to them and fall for their "traps". It even comes up all the time when I have "memories" in my head, where in order to get rid of the memories, I have to talk them out loud, just to get rid of them. Usually the memories are events that were caused by other people, where I made the mistake allowed myself to fall for the "traps". I guess it is my brains way of teaching me to not fall for it next time. But do I listen, no, because of this pleasing thing that comes along with Asperger's, which makes me feel even more crappy. The sad thing is that people take advantage of it plus with me blaming myself, they got away with with messing with me and yet I am the one who got in "trouble". It really sucks so bad that it just makes me want to withdraw even more.

I struggle with punishing myself, I just wouldn't harm myself though. I think it all stems from my earlier school days. In elementary, I seemed to be the only highly-functioning aspie in the A.I. room so the teachers would routinely push me as hard as they can for me to succeed, and they would get on my case every time I screwed up, even going so much as slapping me upside the head. And the irony is that I used to be a carefree, fun-loving child before this started happening to me.

That went on through middle school, where the pressures to succeed started adding on. During my last year in elementary school, my teachers took me on a tour to the middle school to get a feel for it, and they ran off at the mouth bragging about my intelligence and apparently the A.I. teachers at the middle school took it that I was a supergenius. So they signed me up for advanced classes and each time I flopped, they got on my case hard. One of the teachers even said that I was lazy. What's screwed up about that is I didn't say a word when the elementary teachers bragged about how smart I was because I actually believed it. I mean, I am smart, but I am not smart enough to be in some advanced class immediately on my first day let alone first year.

And then in high school, things got even worse for me when my A.I. teacher would actually make me out to be "Mr. Perfect" and try to convince me that I should be a role model. They thought I was so perfect that they thought I would never curse (which I do sometimes, I just don't do it profusely) or that I would never harm a fly (in which I would probably hurt someone if it came to me defending myself or if I saw an unnarmed man robbing my house, etc.) and that I'm all Mr. Friendly and gentle-like (Most friends I did make in high school were not because I spoke to them. I usually kept to myself and people liked me because I was a good sketch artist, and while I don't think that anything's wrong with being gentle, I personally don't like to be that way because I would want to be able to raise my voice or speak out and be honest if need be). I told them one day that I wanted to be a hip-hop star and what's the first thing they tell me? "Don't curse on your albums, please". I went through all that garbage just because I was a messiah to those A.I. teachers. They all thought I was the great autistic hope, both academically and socially. Ugh..........

And if that wasn't bad enough, I would end up meeting people younger than I am by chance and then when their parents see me, they want me to be their mentor and role model and all that other crap. Just because I behaved well in social situations doesn't mean that I'm freakin' Superman!

Because of all that, when I graduated, I started taking life super-serious. I never really smiled or laugh in public. When people joked with me, I'd look at them like they were nuts. Ever since those days of being brought up in perfection, I was never the same coming into adulthood. I began thinking that showing that I was human by making mistakes, as well as having fun or emotions was being soft. Whenever I failed in something personally, or if I can't help my mom with something on the computer, I start getting mad at myself and start cursing myself out in my head, hoping that it will make me more better in focusing. I'm still struggling with that and this, among other things, may have caused me to be diagnosed with clinical depression during my junior year in high school. I'm getting a little better, but I still have a long way to go before I get back to my old carefree, fun-loving self again.

Sorry for the long post but I had a lot to get off my chest.

yes i self punish myself but i do by slamming my head into anything.

_________________
Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated

I tend to mentally beat myself up whenever I screw up, or whenever I think about a time when I screwed up. I've been getting a little better about not being so hard on myself lately, though.

both generic and specific self-harm tactics and releases have been a major feature of my life since childhood.
Fortunately in the past ten years I have managed to get a handle on it all and can now open the door to a life of minimal self-harm (comparatively speaking...but throw me into the general population and i would probably be labeled both masochist and persecutory sadist. I am neither...just ASD.)

I have the same problems. I was forced into perfection, but even worse, I was forced to understand other people's feelings and/or forced to go out of my way to "please" other people and they were very nasty to me if I did not succeed. I have Asperger's and I do not have the ability and lack the skills to understand, empathize and sympathize with and for other people. I also do not have the ability to do things and/or have other people depend on me for things, especially their emotional and/or "special" needs, like an illness. This got worse when I was an adult because I was forced to live in a group home with disabled people with autism and behavioral disorders and I was forced to use these lacked skills to be with them. I was also forced by staff and the agency and my family to do everything for everybody. I was not allowed to care about myself and that everyone else's needs came before mine, even if my needs were more important. This is where I sacrificed my health and well being because everyone else's needs were more important than mine. This caused my anxiety and depression.