Inadequacy/Missing something

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Oh, god, this gets SO f*****g frustrating. I'm constantly playing cathcup to movies and TV shows it seems like EVERYONE has seen but me. All of my friends have seen all these f*****g movies and TV shows, and a. think I've been living under a rock or somethig for not having seen them (My mother was living with a manaical conservative protestant for ten years of my childhoos, I didn't even have halloween for most of that time, and you expect me to have seen horror movies???) and I only have basic cable and people seem to think that not having full dable and watching all of these shows they, personally, value, is some kind of character flaw. Sometimes it just makes me want to f*****g scream. It's like I can't even carry on a conversation with people half time time because they've seen all these movies and shows, and they're either taking about that ro the good old times with their high school pals (of which I ahve none, i went to 12 different schools K-12)- I don't even have brothers or sisters! It feels like my life before college is a complete cypher, like I'm lacking a geniune past and all I have are some shatter bits of expereicne and pain. It feels like there;s nothing. It f*****g HURTS.

EDIT: It's not the movies. It's the feelings of inadequicy, like I'm lacking and stupid and missing somethign everyone else has. that's just an example of somethign that makes me feel that way. Movies, childhoods, s**t I know nothing about. See comments further down for further elaboration.

Last edited by Serissa on 23 Dec 2005, 8:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Everytime I say I dont watch American Idol I think people think I live on Mars.

I haven't watched TV for 20 years. Watching TV exceeds my threshold for BS in about 20 seconds. If other people don't like you for what you are...well...let em go F** themselves.

There are other things to talk about.

BTDT

Totally, yeah, people are way too dependent on their media.... and uh, while I can't exactly relate to all that other stuff you posted about, it does get annoying when people expect me to have watched X Y & Z shows during some period when I didn't really watch TV or movies (Alf being one example, some people in 7th grade were completely FLABBERGASTED when they found out I never watched that show).

Last edited by AbominableSnoCone on 23 Dec 2005, 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I hear ya. I hear ya.

I think I get what you're saying. This is the nugget right here, isn't it? It's not about TV or movies at all. It's about feeling like you have no past, when others do.

This is something I've noticed in other aspies and in myself. My hypothesis is that we don't build memories the same way. I'm 99% sure this is another major brain difference.

For example, my NT friends are always NUTS about taking pictures whenever they go on vacation. They are RABID about it.They tell me it has to do with preserving the memories and good times, etc. They seem to have emotional signatures attached to the past events, and they get restimulated whenever they look at pictures, mementos, and the like.

I don't get it. Neither do other aspies I've discussed it with. I don't mind pictures, but I just don't care. I always forget to take pictures when I go somewhere. Also, I don't find it interesting to go someplace merely so I can tell other people I've been there and "have the memory".


I stayed in one place growing up, and I'm in film, so I know movies like nobody's business and have a pretty settled history. But I still feel like I have no past and nothing to talk about in analogous situations to the ones you describe.

I go through the same thing. I don't really care much for TV and I don't even have cable. The TV I have is a busted POS one of my friends gave me - it's good for watching movies, but nothing else. When people try to make small talk with me and I tell them I don't watch TV or [fill in the blank with a popular show], they act like I'm from Mars. SO annoying. I don't feel like spending all that money on channels full of crap. It always sucks when I'm in a job interview and someone asks me what my favorite show is, and I stumble around like an idiot trying to come up with an answer.

It's funny you mention that thing about pictures, GroovyDruid. Most other people I know seem obsessed about taking pictures and "preserving" memories, and I've never really understood it.

But I don't think this is an AS trait by itself. At least for me, I had so few positive memories from middle school and most of high school that I tried to forget most of them and put the past behind me. The past couple years hold more good memories, and while I don't have many photographs (don't even have a camera), I will reminisce about past events with high school classmates, co-workers, former roomates, etc.

Maybe you're right that people with AS don't retain memories, but I think most of us just don't have much worth keeping.

The very reason I never bought my high school senior year book. I didn't have any friends there so why would I want to look in a book with a whole bunch of students I don't know?

Just take pride in the fact that you are moving ON with your life, and not continually flashing back to the past thinking about things that don't affect you right now

Exactly, though I really do think it's the 32 moves/12 school perpetual new kid thing and not a brain difference. that, combined with no "one" father figure and PTSD, and my past is pretty f****d up. And these kids have lived in the same place all their lives and don't know what it's like to pray that your dad stays away from home longer so you can have some peace while your mom prays your dad comes back so youll because so he doesn't hit you. I started being suicidal in FOURTH GRADE and had a passive death wish till very recently. Everything in my past, it seems like, is disconnected and/or painful. I don't have a hometown. I don't even have one particular school to go to on my 10 year reunion, and the school I'd most likely go to I a. didn't graduate from and b. would go so I could rub my success in the faces of my ex-enemies. It''s like I'm just lacking some component, and not having seen these shows or movies feels like a big part of it because that's what we talk about when we're not talking about "good ol' friends." It's like I'm missing something that human beings shuld have.

It also feels like I don't have enough interests. everyone I know has something. Usually it's TV-related. comic books, one guy. Sci fi and philosophy, another guy. History majors, my god, they know everything about everything. I am TERRIBLE at history. I just get bored and don't absorb it. So, of course, I let people talk about things they're proficient in- but pretty much ALL THE TIME it's someone else's topic, or so if seems sometimes. And me? Maybe psychology. I absorb psychlogy information like a sponge. Maybe Stephen King. Maybe morisette- but I don't know much about either person as a person. ((And, of course, no nothing about music. I don't even recognize the first chords to "Smells Like Teen Spirit.")) It's like, screw history, I have to study- STUDY- contemporary culture.

And I know, really, I'm NOT stupid (despite what my typing would indicate- I'm on a different keyboard than I'm used to atm, still qwerty but a different angle, it's a mac); I get pretty freaking good grades in school and I REMEMBER stuff from classes (and drag it onto the boards and into the rare coversation I decide to be boing in), and my I.Q. has tested in a pretty decent range. I have LIFE SKILLS- I've ived on my own since I was sixteen, with parental funding.

and yet...

when I talk with my peers about "normal" things, I feel like the biggest f*****g idiot to ever walk this earth. And lik I'm just missing something and defective. It's just plain painful.

Hmm. It's not just an Aspie thing, or not *all* just an Aspie thing. There can be different means to similar ends. If I do take pictures, I do so because I might think the pictures are pretty in themselves, and I intend to enjoy them like a trinket, maybe use them for blog avatars or something. But I usually basically forget about most pictures, except those I use as blog avatars or desktop backgrounds. I virtually never take pictures of people. My Aspie friend is the same way...the people in his pictures are just part of the scenery. By contrast, a former college roommate plastered her walls with pictures of her friends at parties.

But this isn't to say I don't reminisce about good times with others at all. I just tend to do so by remembering the high points of conversations in my mind, and perhaps the rough likenesses of these people. This is most likely to occur shortly after an event. 5 years ago? Well, sometimes that will come up in a topic of conversation, but I don't think much of it. The past is just another subject to talk about, and usually not one of the most interesting ones either, unless it touches upon philosophy, neuro-psychology, or something else juicy. (For instance, analyzing my past in terms of the development of my current temperament and wondering why I seem more in touch with my inner autist than many other NTs despite none of the sensory overload or other distinctive cognitive-behavioral-perceptive stuff, enough so to have my Aspie friend wonder about me, and being able to see why he did when stuff like this is written on these boards. HOW do the different means produce similar ends?)

So maybe I'm sort of in between.

The combinations seem boundless when it comes to causes and effects in neuro-psychology.

I just want to clarify something here: it's not that I think aspies don't retain memories. They do. Some aspies have amazing memories. Some have photographic memories. Here's the crux:

I believe aspies may not reexperience memories in the same way as NTs. They may not have the same emotional "signature" on the memory, so to speak.

There's a recent clinical study that may back this up. At UCLA, they just found out through fMRI scans of aspies that the mirror neurons in autistics do not function as they do in NTs. Basically, the mirror neurons allow an NT to mimic another person's emotions by recreating (mirroring) those emotions inside himself. In autistics, the mirror neurons don't turn on when they should (anybody surprised?).

Now take that and apply it to pictures and memories. If an aspie goes back and thinks of a memory or looks at a picture, isn't it possible that he is, in a sense, unable to empathize/relate/mirror himself?

Again, to clarify, this doesn't mean aspies are completely without emotional memory, either. They remember emotions they experienced at the time. But when they look back, the emotional signature they pick up is not made meaningful by a feeling of deep connection with the event, nor do they experience the rose-colored hindsight NTs are so famous for.

If this is true, then one would expect aspies to be very good at remembering things objectively, and that has been my experience. I've had many aspies tell me that they remember what people said and what happened during a memorable incident far better than NTs around them. I've noticed the same phenomenon in myself.

This may be why so many aspies also look at their own history with such pessimism. They remember their true emotions without the maudlin reflection. They look at high school and say, "It sucked! I felt left out all the time! It was stupid!" Many NTs think these things at the time too. I've heard them say it. But later, the NTs buy the yearbook and sing about the "Ivy Covered Walls" and reminisce about how great high school was, how they were all young and full of promise blah blah blah.

Do you see how this works? The NTs must have the yearbook pictures to fool themselves later. They must have pictures of the vacation to look back on. When they do, they can fabricate meaningfulness that wasn't present at the time. They see a picture of their 18-year-old self smiling in a letterman jacket, and they feel warm and fuzzy, and their present emotions about that time mirror that picture, not the the reality, which was that their 18-year-old self was miserable and fighting a codeine addiction.

Aspies don't have to take the pictures, because they have no agenda with them. To my mind, that explains what you say here:

This is why I don't watch human shows.

I like the idea of emotional signature. It helps explain a lot.

I don't keep up with TV or movies but people don't bother me about it. Possibly because they perceive that I don't care what they think. I just don't. If someone tells me to see a movie I ask them to tell me about it. If it sounds good, I go see it. Otherwise I just hear the story and that satisfies me.