Since I have often read about behaviours I thought were crazy sh!t that was specific to me here as common autistic behaviours, maybe someone can shed some light on this, because it's starting to scare me.
I know obsessiveness and autism can go together, as in special interests and intense focus on those areas to exclusion of all else, but this is different.
1. I don't obsess about these things because I enjoy it. It is always negatively obsessing about a narrow handful of issues.
2. It repeats. Over and over, like Groundhog Day, the same content almost word for word, the same thoughts being expressed about the same problems. No resolution or linear progression of processing is ever made, it is just wallowing in the same few petty problems continuously.
3. Scarily, I have no memory of having done so before. I developed the tactic of typing out the thoughts when they start spinning, and there can be pages and pages of obsessing about the same few issues, then the next day, the same obsessions again, and I have no memory of having had the thoughts before or of writing them out. I used to be a blackout drunk (sober these days) and that always scared me. Snapping back in and having no idea where I was, what I'd done or who I'd spoken to, finding reels of notes everywhere that made no sense. But there was a chemical reason for that - I was drunk. It's common. I'm stone cold sober now, but these obsession episodes behave exactly like an alcoholic blackout. I'm starting to be hesitant about talking to people about my problems, afraid that I've said the exact same thing to them the day before, and I can't remember. And obviously risk coming off like a complete nutjob. In the rare occurrences where any resolution is reached, when the obsessing starts over again, I completely forget that it was resolved. I have no other memory problems which would indicate a cognitive problem that I know of, though even scarier, I may not remember if I have.
4. I can't understand or process emotional states, and I believe the obsessiveness and amnesia may be linked to said emotional states. For example I somehow managed to snap out of it enough to cheer myself up, and the moment my mood lifted, I was perfectly able to recall that I had in fact got a response from the doctor I had been harassing for an answer in one of my obsession issues, weeks ago. The moment my mood improved, part of my memory came back and I was able to think clearly and recall again.
Anyone have any insight into what is going on here? What would you do about it in my position? The mind and the integrity of it are important to me philosophically. And I think I have grown up enough to acknowledge that I am bound to fall short of my own expectations, and blindly denying I have any psychological issues does not make it so. If this is something going haywire, I would rather know about it, and assess the options for dealing with it promptly and completely.
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Alexithymia - 147 points.
Low-Verbal.
