4 ms·

I can make a list of 30 agenda items and then just don't do them. The emotional drive to motivate action is broken for me. I just do what I am interested in unl

I can make a list of 30 agenda items and then just don't do them. The emotional drive to motivate action is broken for me. I just do what I am interested in unless i am forced by some urgent external factor to do otherwise. I can prioritize and evaluate but I can't act on priorities except when urgent then its a day late and a dollar short and i muddle along through life. I think its lack of fear of consequences. Maybe i have Asperger's syndrome but i don't know. My experience has been Asperger's people are very emotional and attached to their special interests. I am not attached to anything. I am not materialistic. The main thing that drives me to muddle along through life poorly is a dull fear of catastrophic consequences if i just do nothing but read and post on news.ycombinator.com all day. Somewhat metonymous symbolic or facetious statement there. My feeling is I unfortunately have many of the emotional regulation deficits of a psychopath BUT I lack the history or bad motivations that would result in me getting in trouble. I really have a hard time caring about people including myself and I also don't care enough to want to harm people and am not needy enough to need to get something at their disadvantage. I find it is usually not necessary to lie and i see lying as necessitated by a weakness when I observe others lying. If I had a strong ego and strong needs then I could lie to get what I want but in most situations I don't. I do not think I have trouble reading people or with non verbal cues. sometimes I talk too much and am disinhibited but I don't think I have the social skills deficit that Asperger's people have. In fact I have such good social skills people usually love me at first but because I am not a team player and don't care about consequences I make subtle choices that result in people distrusting me in terms of "will he do this task reliably?" or "do his goals align with the team or does he just not give a shit?" Thus my masking is poor. I think I lack internal motivation and executive control to have a good mask. To play the game of life in a workplace environment. But I believe in contrast to Asperger's people I understand very well how social processes work as they are working. I am often not a great listener but can be depending on the person or topic. I think a lot of this is genetic. My parents are bad listeners and also have a degree of narcissism I do not. I have read the amount a person talks and interrupts others correlates with primary psychopathy and I think that is a strong genetic component in both sides of my family versus my experience with others. I often act altruistically because for me it is easy and I don't have an ego to protect. That's why people like me at first. I am open to everyone and treat everyone good. I don't usually get into conflicts with others unless they unjustly try to control me. Disrespect or being slighted doesn't bother me. In fact I am so laid back people often try to push me around. I am able to understand how people work internally but it is very alien to how I work internally and it shows through. Another part of it is socialization. Because of my social connection deficit, possibly latent social anxiety, and because of a communication disorder I have missed many of the socialization milestones so I don't have a common ground of a lived life to share with others. Like hobbies or family. My hobby is thinking and making things and fixing things and I have no family of my own. I don't care about social identities. I don't care about who someone I am working with sleeps with or what their politics or beliefs are or whats important to them. I find people have all these strongly held opinions about all areas of life. Likes, dislikes, pleasures, hates, that don't matter to me. That lack of content makes me hard for others to understand I think more so than for me to understand them. I think most people are living successfully because they choose a course through the options available in the world. I don't care and sometimes that on it's own alienates me or prevents me from connecting with others. Maybe it is Asperger's and refractory depression from pervasive isolation but i don't know. I have never felt emotional attachment to a political cause. I have never felt emotional attachment to most other causes. When i feel part of a group or that I can go somewhere with a job it inevitably rejects me over time.

austin-cheney 1y ago
Asperger's people are just as emotional as neuro-typical people. The difference is that the inability to reason beyond first person pronouns is restrictive and that can be intensely frustrating. Asperger's people are also extremely prone to disappointment because in their mind they are always great. The reality is that of course Asperger's people are always great in their own mind, because they cannot introspect just like they employ empathy. The emotional drive to achieve task completion is broken because you lack the stimulus to do. You can pursue tasks because the busy work of task employment is stimulating until something more stimulating comes along. Then the task is abandoned and never resumed. People see this and think ADHD, a chemical defect, but its not. Its extremely low conscientiousness, a personality defect. That is why ADHD medication only provides stimulating side effects and does not provide solutions to the primary problem. Psychopathy is only tangentially similar. To be a psychopath you need to have to a defectively low level of serotonin, which you would be regularly depressed but also entirely without fear. Furthermore, you would need to be a sadist. If you are not a sadist you are not a psychopath. It is very common for people who have dangerous professions like police and military to have suppressed serotonin, due to conditioning from their professional which partly explains why they have a 4x greater risk of suicide. Asperger's people have an estimated 9x greater risk of suicide, because they also have a defect level of serotonin, but they have additional risks due to frequent disappointment and poor social skills. The way to learn better active listening for somebody with Asperger's is as simple as just stop talking. Seriously, shut the fuck up. This is going to be a very real challenge, but just try it. You will learn to read people, but it will be a challenge because you will have no interest in learning this without forcing yourself through extensive practice.
- morpheos137 1y ago
  Thanks for the response. My personal opinion is that for many aspergers people there is in fact a lot of overlap with primary psychopathy, i.e. affective (as contrasted to behavioral). You say Asperger's people can't introspect. I introspect all the time. Maybe i spend far less time than i should thinking about how others see me. I think that's a key part of my problem. I understand how I am. I understand how others are. But I don't understand well or have great visibility on how I appear to others from my (usually good otherwise) model of their perspective. That is something i should spend far more time thinking on. It doesn't come naturally to me to put myself in someone else's shoes looking at myself. I look at myself from the point of view of myself. And I look at others from the point of view of my internal model of them which is often superior in terms of predictive and analytic power. That is why I usually connect so well with people and they open up to me so much at first: because I appear understand them better than they understand themselves. I have difficulty seeing myself clearly through other's eyes though. It is as if I cognitively discard my part of the social equation. I don't feel disappointed often. I am not really even sure what the term means in terms of how it is differentiated from frustration. I am not suprised when things don't work out for me, in bizarre ways. I am somewhat of a sadist (and a masochist) in an abstract way. I like seeing how people react in all kinds of situations. I lack fear. But different from a psychopath I am not interpersonally aggressive and actually when interacting with people try to avoid confrontation unless it is clearly necessary or justified in my mind due to the circumstances of the situation. I do take risks and make mistakes more often than a typical normal range cautious person because, I think, I lack fear of consequences. Physical pain doesn't bother me much. I think because I am intelligent and introverted I am able to control myself in a way acceptable to society sufficient to keep out of trouble but still I am more subtly handicapped in life due to my affective deficit. Funny enough often I feel people interacting with me think I am a worse or more reckless or more dangerous person than I actually am. I am not some evil malicious mastermind. I just make bad decisions sometimes. But there are also limits to my bad decisions. The idea of harming anyone or getting involved in serious crime or taking great risks is alien to me and would provoke anxiety. It is alien because I don't feel the interpersonal anger or other drivers required to motivate such action. I never have. It would produce anxiety because I would see it as a kind of karmic debt to be repaid to my detriment, not due to empathy. But things like shoplifting an item by not paying for it at self checkout or borrowing an co-workers tool without permission wouldn't bother me. If i was in a relationship cheating wouldn't bother me as long as it is secret and doesn't effect other aspects of a status quo. I don't see things as black and white. I see malicious and violent people as bad and disgusting but if a person cheats or steals a little it doesn't bother me, if they are successful. I don't care about rules. My understanding is Asperger people are very rule oriented. I am not. I don't care about routine or organization. I can organize very well but not maintain organization over time due to lack of conscientiousness. I lack enduring special interests. I get interested in a topic for a couple days, weeks, months, then lose interest. I have an almost total lack of emotional empathy although i do feel i can cognitively understand and predict others perspectives. I think if i felt more pain or other emotions myself then the pain or other emotions of others would be more significant to me. Due to my lack of empathy I make choices and behave in subtle ways while not even trying to be malicious that result in people rejecting me over time. It is interesting you say lack of conscientiousness is a characteristic of Aspergers. I have not heard that. In fact I thought it was the opposite, that Aspergers people are so rule and routine bound that they miss the forest for the trees. Maybe I am wrong. I have moral values. Just not strong or complicated ones. I believe in good and evil and to me the key part of judging whether a person is good or evil is not their behavior but their core motivations. I believe good people can do bad things and still be good at their core as long as they aspire to be good. I think I am depressed often. But I do get a lot of things done just not the things I should do. It more manifests for me as pessimism and not trying hard enough. I don't usually feel sad. More frustrated. I am not sure what disappointment is as experienced by others. Maybe it is a mix of sadness and frustration. Anyway I agree with the other posters on my submission, i should seek therapy. In fact i was going to do that but can't now due to having lost health insurance from being let go from my job. Past experiences with therapy have not been very useful and if I am paying out of pocket I want something I can use.

austin-cheney 1y ago

Asperger's people are just as emotional as neuro-typical people. The difference is that the inability to reason beyond first person pronouns is restrictive and that can be intensely frustrating. Asperger's people are also extremely prone to disappointment because in their mind they are always great. The reality is that of course Asperger's people are always great in their own mind, because they cannot introspect just like they employ empathy. The emotional drive to achieve task completion is broken because you lack the stimulus to do. You can pursue tasks because the busy work of task employment is stimulating until something more stimulating comes along. Then the task is abandoned and never resumed. People see this and think ADHD, a chemical defect, but its not. Its extremely low conscientiousness, a personality defect. That is why ADHD medication only provides stimulating side effects and does not provide solutions to the primary problem. Psychopathy is only tangentially similar. To be a psychopath you need to have to a defectively low level of serotonin, which you would be regularly depressed but also entirely without fear. Furthermore, you would need to be a sadist. If you are not a sadist you are not a psychopath. It is very common for people who have dangerous professions like police and military to have suppressed serotonin, due to conditioning from their professional which partly explains why they have a 4x greater risk of suicide. Asperger's people have an estimated 9x greater risk of suicide, because they also have a defect level of serotonin, but they have additional risks due to frequent disappointment and poor social skills. The way to learn better active listening for somebody with Asperger's is as simple as just stop talking. Seriously, shut the fuck up. This is going to be a very real challenge, but just try it. You will learn to read people, but it will be a challenge because you will have no interest in learning this without forcing yourself through extensive practice.

morpheos137 1y ago
Thanks for the response. My personal opinion is that for many aspergers people there is in fact a lot of overlap with primary psychopathy, i.e. affective (as contrasted to behavioral). You say Asperger's people can't introspect. I introspect all the time. Maybe i spend far less time than i should thinking about how others see me. I think that's a key part of my problem. I understand how I am. I understand how others are. But I don't understand well or have great visibility on how I appear to others from my (usually good otherwise) model of their perspective. That is something i should spend far more time thinking on. It doesn't come naturally to me to put myself in someone else's shoes looking at myself. I look at myself from the point of view of myself. And I look at others from the point of view of my internal model of them which is often superior in terms of predictive and analytic power. That is why I usually connect so well with people and they open up to me so much at first: because I appear understand them better than they understand themselves. I have difficulty seeing myself clearly through other's eyes though. It is as if I cognitively discard my part of the social equation. I don't feel disappointed often. I am not really even sure what the term means in terms of how it is differentiated from frustration. I am not suprised when things don't work out for me, in bizarre ways. I am somewhat of a sadist (and a masochist) in an abstract way. I like seeing how people react in all kinds of situations. I lack fear. But different from a psychopath I am not interpersonally aggressive and actually when interacting with people try to avoid confrontation unless it is clearly necessary or justified in my mind due to the circumstances of the situation. I do take risks and make mistakes more often than a typical normal range cautious person because, I think, I lack fear of consequences. Physical pain doesn't bother me much. I think because I am intelligent and introverted I am able to control myself in a way acceptable to society sufficient to keep out of trouble but still I am more subtly handicapped in life due to my affective deficit. Funny enough often I feel people interacting with me think I am a worse or more reckless or more dangerous person than I actually am. I am not some evil malicious mastermind. I just make bad decisions sometimes. But there are also limits to my bad decisions. The idea of harming anyone or getting involved in serious crime or taking great risks is alien to me and would provoke anxiety. It is alien because I don't feel the interpersonal anger or other drivers required to motivate such action. I never have. It would produce anxiety because I would see it as a kind of karmic debt to be repaid to my detriment, not due to empathy. But things like shoplifting an item by not paying for it at self checkout or borrowing an co-workers tool without permission wouldn't bother me. If i was in a relationship cheating wouldn't bother me as long as it is secret and doesn't effect other aspects of a status quo. I don't see things as black and white. I see malicious and violent people as bad and disgusting but if a person cheats or steals a little it doesn't bother me, if they are successful. I don't care about rules. My understanding is Asperger people are very rule oriented. I am not. I don't care about routine or organization. I can organize very well but not maintain organization over time due to lack of conscientiousness. I lack enduring special interests. I get interested in a topic for a couple days, weeks, months, then lose interest. I have an almost total lack of emotional empathy although i do feel i can cognitively understand and predict others perspectives. I think if i felt more pain or other emotions myself then the pain or other emotions of others would be more significant to me. Due to my lack of empathy I make choices and behave in subtle ways while not even trying to be malicious that result in people rejecting me over time. It is interesting you say lack of conscientiousness is a characteristic of Aspergers. I have not heard that. In fact I thought it was the opposite, that Aspergers people are so rule and routine bound that they miss the forest for the trees. Maybe I am wrong. I have moral values. Just not strong or complicated ones. I believe in good and evil and to me the key part of judging whether a person is good or evil is not their behavior but their core motivations. I believe good people can do bad things and still be good at their core as long as they aspire to be good. I think I am depressed often. But I do get a lot of things done just not the things I should do. It more manifests for me as pessimism and not trying hard enough. I don't usually feel sad. More frustrated. I am not sure what disappointment is as experienced by others. Maybe it is a mix of sadness and frustration. Anyway I agree with the other posters on my submission, i should seek therapy. In fact i was going to do that but can't now due to having lost health insurance from being let go from my job. Past experiences with therapy have not been very useful and if I am paying out of pocket I want something I can use.