Steve Pavlina revisited his idea about ordering things from the universe.
A few years ago when he talk about this subject it felt a bit out there, so I didn’t take it very serious. But this time he said something that actually meant something to me.
“What would happen is you order a meal at a restaurant and changed your mind before you have gotten it?”
His answer was that if you keep changing your mind you will never get any thing to eat.
That struck a note with me. I realized that this is something I’ve been doing the last few years. Maybe even on purpose.
For years I’ve been dreaming that I would like to have some friends in there early twenties.
I’m not quite sure why. But mostly because I can relate to them.
People my age are usually in a relatitionship or want to be in a relationship and I don’t want to be in a relationship.
Actually I would want to be in a relationship but I’ve found that being autistic means that my ideas about relationship differ from most non-autistic people. So to get a relationship I would have to find a gay guy of my age who’s also autistic.
What are the changes?
But anyway. Back to friendship with gay or straight guys in there early twenties.
15 Years ago I had three friends of that age.
One after an other, spanning about 6 years.
But after the third I stopped trying to find new friends.
It took too much out of me.
I felt as though they didn’t play by the rules and that I had to fight constantly to get them to visit me.
After six years of fighting with people who where supposed to be my friends I just gave up.
But now I’m starting to understand how the world works. And especially how I work and how autism influences the way I deal with friendship.
There are two main differences in the way I deal with friendship.
The first is that I don’t have as much need for close contact as non-autistics do. And secondly rules are far more important to me then to most non-autistics.
I like to be in a friendship where I see a friend every 6 to 8 weeks.
But of course to non-autistics once every 6 to 8 weeks means a very shallow contact. Which means that when I try to get them to visit me they sometimes have other priorities.
15 years ago I felt trapped by rules I never understood. But now I think about them I realize that those rules aren’t that important.
Are gay people allowed to befriend straight people? Of course they are.
Are people in there late forties allowed to befriend people in there early twenties? Of course they are.
The strange thing is that I actually know quite a few guys in there early that seem to be friends.
For years I’ve been wondering why it is that a guy in his twenties would want to befriend me. But I’ve concluded that it might be because I’m truly interested in them. Maybe it’s also something about needing a father figure.
Until now, though, I’ve hardly ever followed through. Mostly because I have been distracted by exactly the problem Steve Pavlina points out.
I feel like I’m in a restaurant with thousands of interesting dishes. I’m having such a hard time deciding which dish I’m going to sample that I never try any one.
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Accepting comments selectively
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 26, 2008
Dealing with anger by selectively listening to comments.
The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:
One of the assignment of CBT two weeks ago was to find the psychical sensations associated with feeling angry.
Seeing as how easy it was to find the psychical sensation associated with feeling fear I didn’t expect that to be very hard. But it turned out to be impossible.
Although I’ve been angry several times in the last two weeks I never noticed that I was angry until the anger passed. So I did notice that being angry causes you to raise your voice. And I noticed that I have trouble expressing myself when I’m angry. I kind of loose the ability to talk.
But I don’t know how it feels.
Talking about this with the psychiatrist, he suggested to investigate whether I have some thought or feeling just before I get angry. So if I can’t recognize my anger by the psychical sensation I might at least be able to recognize it by the thoughts I have just before.
That assignment turned out to be far more easier then I expected. You would think that if you aren’t aware of your feeling of anger you wouldn’t know what happens just before you get angry. But that turned out to be obvious.
I’m always commenting on myself. Or actually I’m always imaging people commenting on me.
Turns out that when I imagine someone talking me down, I feel scared. When I imagine someone giving me a comment in which he tells me that he didn’t listen to something I had to say, I feel anger.
After I found that, I figured I should go to the next level. Knowing what scares and angers me, I should be able to avoid getting those feelings altogether.
But I’ve tried for years to stop myself from imagining people who are commenting on me. I’ve never succeeded and I really don’t know how I could. Further more the comments I imagine that people are giving me are based on comments I really get from people. They frighten and anger me just as much when I get them for real as when I imagine it happening.
Thinking about something a Steve Pavlina says somewhere in his blog: You can decide for yourself which comments have meaning for you and which don’t.
Sometimes people are only commenting because it’s easier for them to let you do the work then to do the work themselfs.
I decided to only accept two kinds of comments:
This is the point I reached last wednesday. After living with these rules for two days it seemed as though all my problems were solved.
I came across several situation where my feelings about myself improved significantly after using these rules. Some of those situations only existed in my imagination while others were actually happening.
The most important one was when I told my father that I had found out that something I used to fight about with my mother really wasn’t my fault. Most autistics have this problem.
But he didn’t believe me!
That horrified me until I realized that it really didn’t matter anymore. This isn’t something I can change, whether he believes me or not. It’s not my responsibility to decide what he believes. And last but not least I been living on own for the better part of 30 years so he can’t really hurt me.
I really expected that this would be the end of my problems. That I would stop talking to myself and start drawing and writing art reviews again.
But it didn’t. The talking to myself has actually gotten worse. I can’t find the energy to draw and to write reviews. (Although I will be publishing the blog carnival next wednesday.)
But the anger and the fear are gone!
I just have to figure out what’s next.
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