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Ichigo Kurosaki

‘faking’ and ’tricking’ your mind

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You asked at the start about faking and tricking your mind - you didn't think it was possible or something that you would want to do - that's fine because trying to fake or trick yourself doesn't work.

 

But my question is - what is this all really about? Because you say on one hand that you want to learn - but then on the other there are obstacles at every direction.

 

It seems like your stuck in a deadlock over this. I have similar issues in my own life, and at some point there has to be a decision about what I'm gonna do about it, because sitting torturing myself doesn't achieve very much. Sometimes I might be able to find an alternative way, and others I have to change direction altogether (by weighing up what is and isn't possible), and other times I know I have things to do first.

 

What about you? What is really important? And can it be done? Or do you need to consider alternatives, change direction or do things first?

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darkshine

 

Thank you for your reply, :), and sorry for the late reply, :(, a lot happened over the weekend again, :unsure:.

 

You asked at the start about faking and tricking your mind - you didn't think it was possible or something that you would want to do - that's fine because trying to fake or trick yourself doesn't work.

 

Yeah, faking and tricking is certainly something I couldn’t do anyway. I’m not strong enough, pains are always brought to the surface with me, and I couldn’t control it even if I tried. Maybe it can work for some people, but I don’t think that type of approach is right for me.

 

But my question is - what is this all really about? Because you say on one hand that you want to learn - but then on the other there are obstacles at every direction.

 

I know what you mean, and yes, I do speak like that. Yes, I do want to learn, but it has to be in a way I can cope with. I think being able to cope with something is very important to those on the autistic spectrum. So, I need to feel that I can try before I attempt something. If it does sound achievable then I’ll try, but it has to be on a grounded level, so that I am not pushed beyond my own coping level.

 

It seems like your stuck in a deadlock over this. I have similar issues in my own life, and at some point there has to be a decision about what I'm gonna do about it, because sitting torturing myself doesn't achieve very much. Sometimes I might be able to find an alternative way, and others I have to change direction altogether (by weighing up what is and isn't possible), and other times I know I have things to do first.

 

That is the case, I am in a deadlock. I think that compromise is an ugly word when you have AS, we find change very difficult, and combine that with a trauma and past experiences and that becomes even uglier. Honestly, I think it being difficult is an understatement, -_-. I understand where you’re coming from, and yes, I fully understand, but at the same time, I really think I need guidance in a one-to-one situation where my anxiety levels will not, metaphorically speaking, shoot through the roof. I do want to learn, but at the same time, is there no way that I could achieve that without being subjected to greater harm in order to achieve that, without spending out a fortune? Is that so unrealistic, :unsure:? I suppose with the lack of support in this country for those with ASD, it probably is, :(, and I think I’m answering my own question here, :unsure:. I really hate this as this is exactly the reason why my mind has been in utter chaos over this ever since the 139a document came.

 

What I don’t understand is that I had the kind of education from behind my bedroom door on a one-to-one basis when I had the statement. When the statement ended the LA didn’t want to pay that any more, but yet I am entitled to help with education up till the age of 25. If that is the only way I can learn, and it proved it worked that way as I passed exams, then why couldn’t they do that again, instead of forcing me into a situation that I cannot cope with, and they know it?

 

What about you? What is really important? And can it be done? Or do you need to consider alternatives, change direction or do things first?

 

When I think longer and harder about it then I wonder whether online learning could be an option, but I need someone there in a presence that couldn’t see me and I couldn’t see them. When the tutors talked to me from behind my bedroom door, they were far away, but I could send things easily to them under the door. Being able to exchange things that quickly and efficiently online will be difficult, :unsure:. They’d also have to understand my difficulties and wouldn’t rush me and structured the lesson, or learning structure, giving me an open ended schedule so that I am not pressurised and a starting point; I find it really difficult working under pressure and find it difficult to start and end things. If it could match all of that then, maybe, just maybe, I could consider it. It would be a push, there is no doubt about that, but I may try to try it and see, but I wouldn’t be promising anything.

 

Best wishes

Ichigo

 

P.S. I’m really sorry about not replying to your message on the other thread, I have been having a lot of trouble trying to get my head straight over it, :unsure:. I didn’t mean to not write back to it, it is just very difficult to sort it out in my head, :unsure:. I tried tackling it, several times, but I kept losing heart about half way through, I’m sorry, :(.

Edited by Ichigo Kurosaki

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Self delusion is a natural defence we use to survive when we feel unable to deal with situations or wish to be involved with something that we don't understand or want somebody to believe we are something we are not.

There is a lot to be said on this subject but there is a very simple solution, always be honest with yourself, it doesn't matter about the reason keep to the truth you know yourself better you understand whats important theres nothing to confuse the mind and don't be swayed by anyone who tries to tell you different.

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The perfect response LL, and it's so easy too. :)

If we're not honest with ourselves, we are betraying ourselves and falling short of our human potential. And let's not forget that it's not only Aspies who fake it. NT's do it in a much more ambitious way, and NT society as a whole is built upon dishonesty - one reason why it's perpetually struggling with its own demons.

Edited by Mihaela

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Hi LiveLine and Mihaela

 

Thank you very much for your responses, :), and I apologise that it’s been such a long time since I’ve responded to your replies, :(, I’ve not been on the ASD forum for a long while now, I’ve been busy trying to set up a new blog (https://livingwithasandspd.wordpress.com/) and Twitter account (https://twitter.com/toshiroh9). I’m not all that fond of Twitter as I find it very difficult to condense my writing into tiny little sentences with abbreviations, which is why I’m using my blog to channel my larger pieces of writing alongside.

 

Self delusion, yes, this is a very interesting subject. The idea to ‘mask’ yourself to ‘fit in’, trying to be ‘normal’, ‘mimic’ neurotypicals. I have never understood any of those quotes, and I’ve never wanted to live by them. I am true to myself, I stay true to my values and principles. If my autism isn’t understood by those I’d be supposed to be ‘mimicking’, I wouldn’t want to be associated with them. What good is hypocritical people that say one thing one minute, and completely backtrack on every word they’ve spoken the next.

 

In fact, it takes me back to my first ever forum thread on this forum, My Battleground Puzzle Mind. At the time I was friends with a neurotypical, writing to her on Facebook at the suggestion of my mother’s, a friend that I spoke very briefly to towards the end of primary school. I was in denial of the fact that she was friends with a bully of mine, a bully connected to an emotional bullying incident that cut me very deeply at my young and impressionable age. I saw her posting on Facebook about going on a trip with this bully and her brother. What I meant in the beginning of my forum thread was my mind and heart conflicting with each other in knowing what to do about the idea that my friend and this bully were friends. Since that time, for months, I put the idea to the back of my mind. That was a bad idea, but then I had no choice. I was alone, and I still am in many ways. I had to hold onto that friendship because what else could I do? I just began explaining to her the bullying I went through and how it affected me. She told me that bullies grow out of bullying, but I was expressing to her that it isn’t always the case, after all what about criminals and MPs? Do they care about people, or the damage they are causing to many people’s lives? No. However; I could tell that she couldn’t understand what I meant, -_-. Basically, it was earlier the following year that I found a following message on Facebook that my bully cooked my friend a meal. To me, this had many inclinations, and I just snapped. I felt this immeasurable intensity build up inside of me, much like the pinnacle of my breakdown at school. I needed to tell her about my bully, but I was so emotionally charged, I pinned the blame all on that one bully, when I reflected later, he wasn’t the only one in that class involved in that emotional bullying. Looking back on that class, I can reflect a lot was due to the fact that I switched classes to the last one in primary school. Someone I briefly spoke to from my class later on told me that she knew I was bullied, and she only saw me in that class for two years. How could she have known? The class must have been told before I switched classes that I was being bullied, which must have been the reason why I was so badly emotionally bullied on that very last primary school year. It left me with a scar, and a scar that lingered, off-shooting into additional emotional traumas.

 

Anyway, to get back onto the message that I sent my friend, I never received a response from her, instead she wrote to my mother and she was blaming my autism for taking it too seriously. I was shocked and taken aback by those words. She told me in her previous messages that she didn’t judge people on their disabilities, so what was she doing accusing my autism? Talk about betrayal. Since that time she never wrote to me again.

 

Our friendship spun one whole year, and ironically it was snowing at it’s entry and its departure. The gentle flurry becoming ice cold landing into my soul.

 

These are the types of people we should be ‘masking’ ourselves to ‘fit in’ with, trying to be like them, to ‘mimic’ these neurotypicals? You cannot be sure who is genuine and who isn’t and when you find that people are outright hypocrites, it can take us a very long time to even work that out. Too long as far as I’m concerned, -_-. Why try to ‘fit in’ with people that are deluding themselves into thinking the world is a bed of roses, when evidence has proven the contrary? Delusion can only lead to destruction in the long term. You can ignore an issue for only so long before it comes back to bite you where it causes the most severe damage. Be that in terms of social interaction or the country and worldwide issues.

 

At the loss of her friendship, I felt this sudden heart-wrenching pain inside of me, it was greater than the meltdown I experienced the first time I found out she was friends with my bully. I went through a much more intensive meltdown. This was because I was trying to hold myself, trying to explain my experiences to this friend in an attempt to try to show her the power of my bullies actions on me were. She couldn’t understand any of it, and the subject of emotional pain, especially when I found it so difficult to open up about at the time, telling a female friend felt like social suicide to me, -_-. This was all because I tried to control myself and express parts of what happened to me to my friend, but no matter how hard I tried, she still blamed my autism.

 

Self delusion didn’t help me with my Facebook friend, it only led me into further destruction. I want to find more like-minded people, not try to meld my mind to ‘fit in’ with others. I am not ashamed of my values and principles, I wish to pursue them and find others that feel the same.

 

There is a lot to be said on this subject but there is a very simple solution, always be honest with yourself, it doesn't matter about the reason keep to the truth you know yourself better you understand whats important theres nothing to confuse the mind and don't be swayed by anyone who tries to tell you different.

 

Yes, I agree, I’m always aiming to be true to myself, even at the expense of losing that friend on Facebook. It took me a whole year to work out that she wasn’t true to herself, even her messages to me at that point completely changed. It was like I was talking to a completely different person. The truth is, and I’ve said this before in several places, is that too many people are wearing ‘masks’, when what lies beneath is something far more sinister. This is what has caused me so much trouble in the social world. What lies beneath each ‘mask’? Who truly cares, who truly understands, who would truly be interested in writing to me? These are all fundamental questions that I’ve tried so hard to find the answers to, and why should I have to spend so many years just to work out a simple fact? True or false, which is it?

This is what takes me right back to my emotional pain when I was 13. After I was bullied in primary school, when I was 10, I was called a ‘creep’. It hit me like a sledgehammer, and I died inside the moment that word was uttered. I couldn’t talk about it for many years, but the moment I turned 13, something totally unexpected happened. I was confronted by three females, one of whom told me one of them liked me. After that emotional bullying, I was going through so much pain, I didn’t know truth from fiction. I couldn’t tell if these females were teasing me or were genuine. l just dismissed them politely. I thought it was all a dream, and that it never happened. That was until I was cursed two more times later as I came into contact with the female that liked me on two separate occasions. Both of which surrounded immense anxiety and I couldn’t go up to her, nor express my thoughts as my anxiety was through the roof. The reasons why I look back and consider that she may have liked me is her reaction on those two occasions. The first time she was shocked to see me and made a mistake in her bank clerking job. The second time she was sitting a long way from me, and she was waving at me, smiling, whilst I had my back to her. I didn’t even notice her until I turned around.

True or false, how could I have known? How could I have known after I was emotionally bullied that someone truly liked me? I was bullied so much, I never even thought anything like that could ever happen to me. It did, but I totally missed it, and it has never left me. I used to constantly say, “You’re an idiot!”, every time I’m worried about emotional issues. Not to mention, I have immensely painful triggers on the subject of emotional feelings.

About confusing the mind, I’ve become all too aware that there are organisations running in this country and abroad that are doing just that, confusing the mind, sending out misinformation, confusing hypnotic language, not to mention the sheer amount of trolls across the social networking websites all designed to sway our thoughts and values.

 

The perfect response LL, and it's so easy too. :)

If we're not honest with ourselves, we are betraying ourselves and falling short of our human potential. And let's not forget that it's not only Aspies who fake it. NT's do it in a much more ambitious way, and NT society as a whole is built upon dishonesty - one reason why it's perpetually struggling with its own demons.

 

Mihaela, you’re absolutely right. Unfortunately, there are too many people out there that believe that they have to ‘fit in’, yet you should know within yourself what is right and wrong, and not be influenced by the mass media culture, in whatever it’s forms. It doesn’t matter what the latest trend is, if it involves something that stands against what you know deep down is common sense and what is right. Allowing them to alter your thoughts and feelings turns you into a robotic zombie without a thought of your own. I do not wish to be a sheep led by shepherds, rather the outsider who knows that delving into the herd will lose your own identity. To the mass media and trends, not to mention the elite in general, see us all as numbers, purely statistics, rather than a human being with a voice. Be a voice, show people that you’re not a zombie, at least that is my aim. To prove that I am true to myself, to prove that I don’t live my life through falseness. I do not wish to conform to the status quo, I know I need to question it, analyse it, and work out what is truly going on.

Edited by Ichigo Kurosaki

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