My biggest fear as an adult

Post Reply New Topic

I'm leaving for the weekend, going to visit a close friend who moved a couple hours away close to a decade ago (I still stay in contact with them pretty well). On that account I'm going to keep this relatively short. Sharing this however because I think it's a profoundly dark issue and while I hope no one else is dealing with it something tells me that's unlikely.

So here it goes, my biggest fear as adult - having my moral sovereignty hijacked by my environment (ie. survival) to where I need to go 'evil' to survive other people.

I say that with the following realizations:

- Life between NT's is already incredibly cutthroat.
- The usual ASD issues where almost anything we'd say instinctively is wrong.
- I mask well enough to where when I'm in those awkward 'en passant' situations and I don't look at people or look away, it's going to be taken as me snubbing them.
- If whole societal breakdown or revolution ever comes no one's going to have time for academic BS like the DSM.

There are probably other subtle reasons I'm worried but this but suffice to say I'm stuck with the sense that genes are far and away more important than people, individual complexities are such a waste that the inconvenient person just need to be taken out back and beaten with a shovel. Autism, like alcoholism, seems like one of those unusual cut-out disabilities or illnesses that one 'should' get their arse beat for - on principle - based on the frictions that it causes. Particularly if you read autism in the light of 'there are no hidden disabilities, just losers, weaklings, and screw ups'.

This is why I've been doing all the investing I have, really hoping I can buy some distance from the work world, govern my engagement with it, and make sure that whatever I'm doing it's not me getting thrown into the buzz saw or plastic shredder to pay my bills.


I'll be back Sunday to check out the comments (maybe sooner if I break out my work laptop over the weekend).

My sense of what life is or can be though right now - pretty f'ing grim.

That doesn't sound that much different from the feeling I lived with for years that there was this horrible person that lived within me that would do any sorts of horrible things if allowed out to play with little justification.

Honestly, this is one of those cases where going to a therapist is really called for as untangling this can be rather tricky. It's unlikely that you would actually do any of those things, but a professional would be able to help with it.

Personally, I found that the feelings were the result of trauma and when I accepted that I had been in a position that I shouldn't have been in I probably wouldn't have done it. I also placed focus on the good I've done and the lengths I've gone to to not do such things.

A quick update before responding:

Getting out of town was healthy. Got out with my friend yesterday, came back, had a cigar with him and some pretty strong edibles, ended up watching Black Adam, and one of the dynamics in the situation was that while my friend is much more the veteran pothead he just puffs a little bit here and there now (he's an > $80K per year IT professional so he's trying to keep life balanced as well as he can) I was actually in a position where I had a full edible, he had a half, and the half was hitting him hard enough that I was worried he was sort of in caution zone with respect to having / not having a good time. Now, he's also the guy who's much more the superior natural athlete, pole vaulted in high school, used to top out his governance on his sport bike regularly (187 mph), took me to an indoor mountain bike gym where he was hitting the single black diamond courses and handling them just fine whereas when I even tried a green course all hilarity ensued (the Trex bikes have this very odd hyperactive steering as well as painfully rock hard seats), and pretty much any athletic thing we got into he'd be better at it by a good order or two of magnitude than I was. He handled those situations graciously with me so I felt it was a good opportunity to be as gracious with him and instead of picking the itinerary of what we watched on Youtube or the music we listened to I let him run with his preferences.

He was working on a puzzle he and his son had on the floor before we threw on Black Adam (there were parts of that movie I really liked and parts of it where the suggested universe just didn't work) and while I sort of zoned into the moment on what's purportedly 20 mg delta 9 (feels stronger) I had some really important epiphanies about myself hit and I jotted them down on a note pad in my smart phone:

First note:
I play side by side but never 'with' people. I'm intellectually and emotionally there with them but not physically

Second note:
Also just think about how I don't really socially engage directly, because there's a fear that I'll lose whatever game it is so I opt out ahead of time until there's a problem. I think that's how I piss people off.

What that second comment looks like in practice - it looks like tons of constant micro-abdications by someone who's either a coward or just likes peace and hates competition (the two can really look similar to people, the second is morally true of me, the first is true of how my disability manifests) and only when I feel like I've back-peddled in a way that looks like it's started to arouse someone's urge to bully or dominate do I then go on the offensive a bit, take jabs at them, get a bit belligerent, the way a lot of people aren't narcissists but they get the power of the game theory in a narcissists toolkit and borrow those tactics when they feel like they've stepped into a bit of a pissing contest.

But yeah, I get the sense that my lack of Pankseppian 'play' in a direct sense bothers people and makes them feel like I'm snubbing them when the reality is more complex - ie. I'm on the spectrum, I'm neurodivergent, and in real-time, direct, and intimate play it's just much harder to mask my autism (which I have an obligation to do).

I also notice that my mechanical attention is really bad. I can think quite deeply and profoundly but not on quick timescales, rather if I come up with something quick it's probably something I already thought out. If I hear complex board game directions most of it goes in one ear and out the other (sadly - same with work meetings when client, speaking NT, go all over the place and cover five, six, seven baskets of information without laying out their central theses - I can't hold it in mind or pay attention well whereas other people can).

So the good news - if I'm right - I might know what's causing the bulk of my issues now in a way that, before, I had inklings of but I just didn't have an adequate and concise way of capturing those inklings in a sentence or two.

Even if I can't change these things about me, if they're almost hard wired at this point, I can at least compensate for them in a much more direct way. I remember another time, last summer, where I was out at a show with some guys (most of which I didn't know), took too big a rip off my friend's vape pen (no tolerance back then), coughed for five minutes straight, had reality strobing, and by the time we got back to his place and had a bon fire and one of the guys I didn't know that well yet was going through all the effort of starting a bon fire in a portable holder, trying to find wood, and I sat there like a bump on a log because I could barely move or talk (was more focused on just not doing a face plant into the ground) I felt like a useless piece of s---, like really embarrassed like he was doing all the work while I sat there and took, and I started feeling at that moment almost like a black hole of self-centeredness. Clearly that was an experience dialed up to 11 but - the signal I felt was IMHO completely valid and this time around, ten months later, it came back to me in a much more processed, articulated, and actionable format.

First of all - real sorry to hear about that. I went through something almost identical to what you're talking about between 2018 and 2019 where I almost got smashed like a bug at work (collective bumbling to the point where my parent's son almost got composted by bad luck). I had some quite frightening internal stuff came up, dealt with it for the most part, but I realized the only way to deal with it was to attenuate it over time as the trauma moved further behind me (and I spend much of my teens, even twenties and a spot in my 30's talking to counselors so I knew the ropes of how to treat the situation).

My OP concern was much more the 'If people are going to treat me like I have no right to live - how will I survive, not get murdered or just smashed irreparably, without needing to become a horrible enough person that they actually fear me?'. I have to hope that I do have more options than that, I'm hoping that those two observations I had were important and valuable enough that they could actually help get me through this.

I'm reminded of that Mighty, Mighty Bosstones song, "The Impression That I Get." You're a fortunate guy who's led a fortunate life, all things considered. But, I think that if you found yourself under really dire circumstances as an adult, you'd have the ability react and rise to the occasion in the manner you'd choose.

It's really more the early ACE's some of us experience at young ages that shape us at our core and, as such, are harder to overcome.

But, if you wouldn't live up to your own moral ideals in some way, my guess is that you'd analyze the situation a great deal and wind up punishing yourself to such an extent that your penance would more than make up for it anyway in the long run.

Good points and I'd agree with all of them. Also long time no see! Let me know how things have been when you get a chance.

What it's been like lately - it seems like approaching and passing 40 the pressure is to wear this cast-iron psychopath mask, to not do so is a display of 'weakness', and I'm realizing that it's just not in my genes let alone in my preferences to want to bother screwing up my wiring to make that happen. Technically I'm lucky that I was able to wring as much as I have out of myself already to have it be 'I'll play respectfully but don't push me', and that required some pretty rough things in my 20's.

This whole thing really has much to do with the developmental level so many people are at as adults. I saw it when I'd visit some friends who were living down at OSU, hanging out with undergrads, and even back then at age 26 and looking at them as 18, 19, etc. I felt this pattern of behavior and energy still coming off of them that I hadn't really felt (or acted out) since grade school, it was like just taking that childhood energy and instead of digest it into an adult form it was just being loaded up with popularity and status-chase. It's like instead of growing out of a limbic frame a lot of people just pour psychopathic traits on top of it through adulthood to make the mix more formidable rather than doing any real self-integration.

I've been investing a lot lately and my hope as been to do well enough with that in a few years time to put the work world at arms length and chose my engagements rather than 'need' them for the money.

Something else I'm not sure if I told you about but back in 2012 or so I had my first inklings of kundalini awakening, that has been with me off and on, was really hitting manic from 2019 to 2021 (high trauma period as well), it's a dance I'm navigating on top of all of this and trying to figure out just what can be made of it because there really isn't a lot about it in the medical literature (some suggestion that there was an author named Lee Sanella who wrote a book on the topic for medical professionals) and life has been on drift in some weird ways - such as living at home still and not having any plans for the future that seem solid enough to trust. In one sense it feels as alienating as one would expect reality to be if it were just reductive materialism, but at the same time it's got a lot of strange internal things vying for my attention and not in the most cohesive ways.