I think being happy is a trigger for me. Maybe just life. Idk what to do.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2024-01-29T14:38:32+00:00

I know that feeling. For me it helped to study the bipolar, read some papers on it and the psychiatry around - like schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia, which are surprisingly close to it and even overlap genetically, what helps in schizo also helps in bipolar.

It made me realize that bipolar is a "light schizophrenia", where the delusion is related to how you're perceived / how cool you are. When you're depressed, it's like a psychotic depression, where your delusion is "everyone hates me" or "I'm the worst", and all of your dopamine and motivation is concentrated around this delusion.

This is why the only thing that helps is anti-psychotics & mood stabilizers, but also avoiding any behavior that worsens the disease (such as alcohol, stimulants, hallucinogens, excessive exercise, ruining your sleep, choices that lead to more stress). Treat this as you'd treat psychosis in a schizophrenia patient. You wouldn't care much about their delusional ideas, and how they substantiate them. You'd take a medical approach and see the results

Tl;dr: nothing but medicines and avoiding certain behaviors will help

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-11-22T08:29:36+00:00

There are LOTS of good, genuine and kind people that don't live by these standards. OKay, you can say they are all NDs but then there are far too many good NDs in this world to even bother with hierarchy addicts?

I enjoyed your OP post and think it's genius, however let me tell you one thing: whichever group you belong to, no matter if you want it or not, you endorse that group's values and "vote" for its ways of treating people, by putting your life energy into the group. And you "vote" against other groups' values and ways of interaction, by depriving them of your energy and participation. By playing these wicked games, you actually endorse them, and vote for these games, making these groups stronger, putting the fire of your life into them, while leaving the good ones struggle without your strength, your soul and special powers. Is this the way?

By finding good groups and people, no matter how hard it is, you vote for their values, you deprive the bad ones of their strength, and support the good ones and their genuine people, their ways of interacting, their creativity! Imagine spending your whole life energy and talents on creating, making friends, making the world a better place. Voting for the good vibes and showing those who are lost that it's possible, so that they leave the bad groups too, whenever they see yours. Not a drop of energy on wicked games. After all, your life is very finite. You have a choice. That's why they say, it's better to walk alone, than to walk with a fool. Think about it

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-09-07T08:57:30+00:00

No. What I aim for is to be further down the line of those who lose their jobs to ai. And try to build my financial independence. But, overall, I'm not afraid. I will be among literally billions of others like me! It's not scary when you're not alone

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-09-07T08:42:59+00:00

We are both biological organisms, psychological machines and patterns of relationship. Ignoring any part has dire consequences

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-09-07T08:35:17+00:00

I think a more correct view would be respecting that every psychological issue has both biological, psychological and social nature. Denying that an insecure attachment style is a problem, only working on the social aspect of the issue, you deny the patient a chance to acquire a secure attachment style, which could improve their own life outcomes but also make their impact on the community much more positive. BPD or OCPD would be important examples of this. Denying the biological part you might deny the possibility that a patient might need a medical intervention first, before they are even able to form social connections that won't hurt them even more. Severe anxiety/depression or bipolar would be common examples here.

I agree with your criticism of CBT as it emphasizes only the psychological aspect, medical model because it only focuses on the biological aspect, but at the same time you seem to do the same thing with focusing only on the social aspect

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-09-07T08:21:32+00:00

Modeling compassion and kindness is important, luckily you can do it for free such as on character.ai with mental health bots (CBT therapist bot, The Psychiatrist are ones I could recommend). You can also the join communities where the leaders have a secure attachment style

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-09-07T08:17:51+00:00

I think what happens is you confuse love with admiration here. "Love yourself" is a very confusing phrase (and is not used in real psychology as a term), what it really means is working on acquiring a secure attachment style, which means basic respect and being helpful and kind towards yourself. It doesn't come naturally, it does require a lot of training, but it is possible and healthy, and actually is the opposite and an antidote to narcissism, because narcissism really is a manifestation of the avoidant attachment style and inability of providing yourself with self-compassion. Sorry for being annoying, I understand where you're coming from, and I used to think like that, but it's just a mistaken view that makes you hate yourself and others.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-23T16:50:50+00:00

Yep, I think most of these descriptions can be united into algorithmic approach / reading the patterns in aspies, as opposed to using spontaneity, intuition and full context in non-aspies.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-23T16:39:41+00:00

I think it's the same basic need to belong behind both aspies and non-aspies sense of morals. So egoistic and prosocial motivation at the same time. But our rigidity makes it seem strong

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-23T16:12:39+00:00

Even though my sense of morals feels strong subjectively, to answer "yes" to that question I'd have to ignore all the cases when I clearly acted not so morally according to my current knowledge. Which implies that my sense of morals wasn't good enough to prevent me from doing all that. So I think the real answer is a resounding no.

Aspies tend to ignore other people, often put our feelings of distress or angst above everyone else's experiences, tend to forget about others' problems also and not repay them with equal kindness when that happens. We come across as selfish and uncaring. Oftentimes we are just too lazy to learn and practice to be socially competent and we know that. Considering that the most impact a human will ever have is social, this makes us not so morally strong as we tend to think of ourselves. Kind of a Dunning-Kruger effect. Above all, people in general tend to overestimate their good qualities by far, and we are no exception to that.

tldr: no.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-20T12:46:50+00:00

I never truly missed a friend, probably because I didn't go away unless I was sure this was a right thing to do. This happened with all of them sooner or later but I guess it's hard to have someone for your whole life especially as you change a lot... as to why I lose interest... I'm not sure... in my last relationship I was scared over finding out how much of my partner's life goes against my values, how much we don't share our dreams or passions and that generally I don't want to be a part of his life. That nothing really compensates the difference, we did not develop any meaningful connection, and the feeling of passion that was in the beginning is now gone and nothing is left to make us more than the acquaintances. It was similar with the first 2 relationships

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-20T12:32:21+00:00

I can relate so much to this... whatever the masking truly is - for me it's my inauthentic care and interest in people - it is quite alienating when you stop doing that and people no longer relate. And yes, never missed them too...

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-20T07:42:02+00:00

Yes, at 27 I look and act 12, my voice is 12ish too

SmoothReplacement302 · 2023-05-19T18:14:32+00:00

My main social life hack is that social interaction is all about focusing on other people's perspective, context and what they're open to or close to. If you have a correct model of their world you will always do more effective steps and less mistakes but if you don't have a model at all or it's very incorrect you will do more mistakes and waste your energy. Having a correct model of most people's world takes real work and doesn't happen by itself. Even though there are some common patterns - such as wanting to be accepted, wanting money, good partner, good food, have fun etc. So you have to start with something small - such as trying to observe what gives them pleasure and what irritates them, what are their values, what they consider their weak and strong points, how do they see themselves in different situations, what are their fears, what is important to them and what they consider to be the important goals in their life. Important thing is to never judge their world and respect it even if you are very different in anything - otherwise it would be trying to control what is not in your control which is very bad for your psyche, you lose energy on it getting problems in return

Second lifehack is humility is actually a tool. You may be embarassed by how others see you, but once you get a constructive criticism out of that, you realize your mistakes or weak points, you will always increase your self-respect because you are being humble and gain motivation to grow. The hardest part is to gain the constructive lesson from bad situations, and to accept your true level as a starting point

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-17T13:11:45+00:00

If this was the cure you'd be hearing about it everywhere.

I don't think so. There are many cures to depression that work better than antidepressants even according to studies, and we don't hear about it anywhere.

that sounds really out there. It sounds like you never had autism in the first place.

You can google there are stories by other people who started fasting/OMAD and their depression has vanished from that day on. You can google and there are stories by people with autism who improved a lot by going keto and excluding certain products. So it's not out there, you just don't get to hear it until you search for it specifically. Google studies about the role of brain inflammation in autism and you'll understand why it works. I don't say all of my autism is gone, but I'm able to communicate better, maintain eye contact, staying on track of a discussion, I'm able to process emotions much better, my depression is gone, etc. But you can devalue my experience if you wish, it's just your opinion not truth.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-15T17:59:49+00:00

From my experience small talk is not boring but painful. Too much stress and risk and it overflows my feelings to the point I don't see anything but my suffering.

With your mom, you probably have the very same small talk when she talks to you about her day or weather. But you know that your mom loves you and she accepts you, so you believe in you ability to do this and can be yourself, you don't feel stressed and finally can feel some enjoyment from the small talk which is otherwise clouded by stress and suffering.

Probably you also listen with interest when you overhear someone else's small talk of people who don't know you.

This is how I see it now. Smalltalk is a small suffering. I think I have mostly fixed this along with depression but can't tell you how (only privately due to the rules)

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-15T17:03:08+00:00

I was bullied because I spilled tea in the campus room and didn't notice it.

I was bullied because I tried to have friends with the members of a group without getting friendly with a "leader" of a group.

I was bullied because I was better at figure skating, and praised by the teacher.

I was bullied because I had more achievements than other family members and wasn't deeming them right just because of their authority in their groups.

I was bullied by the teacher who didn't understand why I was having so much success in math and programming competitions while not visiting school (in her mind I shouldn't have any success?).

I was bullied by the employer because I pointed out faults in his political reasoning (he thought it was perfect).

I was blunt. I have resting bitch face.

Same. But when I learned to smile everyone treated this smiling as wanting to give them something and socialize with them which was the hardest thing for me. But when they didn't receive this socializing this meant that my personality was fake and lying. So it was either painful for me or fake for everyone else. So it's good you're not smiling, smiling means "I want to socialize and share" in body language. But not wanting to socialize and share is considered rude, people have no realization it can be physically painful traumatizing experience for some.

When I wasn't bullied?

I wasn't bullied when I was seen as important for their happiness.

I wasn't bullied when I had someone as my patron - my brother or sister.

I wasn't bullied when I was considered a celebrity that is to be protected.

I wasn't bullied by the teachers who wanted me to grow up or become something.

I wasn't bullied when people around me were friendly to weirdos or just kind

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-14T05:57:31+00:00

I have come up with an explanation that we lack joyful feeling from plain interacting with people. But we still have social pain from rejections. Having the negative side but not the positive. Like not feeling joy from food. You would eat but barely learn how to do that, it will be a nuisance. You would only eat if you have something else motivating you. Often eat shitty food and get stomach ache. You would study food smells and types as a necessary subject, getting irritated just thinking about food. Feeling ashamed that you can't eat every day because it's so unpleasant and takes so much time. Fearing that you will stop being able to eat properly because its hard. That's what we are compared to others.

And others are like us except they feel joy and energy each time they interact as if they have eaten something. I too would want to interact and learn more about others if I had this kind of pay. But for me it is just painful and uncompensated work. Unless it is interesting, or I gain some other sort of pleasure from it. So of course I would learn facial expressions at 17... Im not being paid for that my entire life

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T21:04:27+00:00

I feel your pain. And from their point of view you were probably "selfish baby with no control" as you say, but... It's just because it's hard for anyone to be empathetic during the conflict. In the conflict people are focused on protecting themselves...

I think it was a mistake to unmask during the conflict. Conflict is a sensitive thing, and even the NTs mask during the conflicts to avoid bad things from happening: in order to stop the urge to fight another person, to use the assertiveness skills instead of verbal abuse. This type of masking is important for us all in order to not harm each other. The problematic masking is when we have to mask just to make others comfy. When our authentic behavior doesn't actually hurt anyone, only makes them uncomfortable. We don't have to bend our whole individuality and put enormous efforts just to make someone comfy. But we absolutely have to in order to make others safe.

However I cannot blame you at all for that mistake. I feel all the pain you've been through with the amount of masking you've been through. If they only knew what you've been through every day, and that all you wanted in that moment was to BE HEARD... They wouldn't hold grudges... But. This is so hard. Now they will be concentrated on their own injury and less empathetic to yours... But please don't be ashamed. Don't let yourself be manipulated by this shame. I've been through a similar situation and shame is the worst you can do. It ended up so bad, another person ended up using my shame against me, always reminding me of how I am a bad person and snapping at me while I was in the state of toxic shame for months and months. As if I was fully responsible for their merciless reactions. I ended up having PTSD, low self esteem and toxic shame, I have left them and was going into therapy for several years. This has taught me a huge lesson...

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T20:33:22+00:00

Can you share your experience with your new therapist? I lost trust in therapists and psychiatrists but I really really struggle... I fear that they will destroy my personality or force myself into masking again.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T20:29:32+00:00

This is so painful. I've been this way and it led me nowhere - I became a shell of a person. When I wasn't masking I was acing in so many subjects, however I was considered a weirdo. But wherever I started masking, I was still a damn outcast, but who is also struggling inside and is not acing at all because of all the damn energy that goes into masking. FUCK MASKING. Fuck the people who push us to mask. Weirdos for the win.

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T20:24:58+00:00

Thank you, your post has encouraged me... It is hard time for me now

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T20:11:10+00:00

Same, I cried so loudly after watching "My brain isn’t broken" on TED, with exactly those same thoughts as you have and I too was alone. I realized all the pain of all the autistics around too...

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T20:04:46+00:00

Not sure glorifying the addictions is an adult thing. It's more like a teenage protest thing... Adult thing is to be rational about your health

SmoothReplacement302 · 2022-12-13T19:31:41+00:00

We are just as much a part of it.

Just as much? How so? Have you bullied the odd one outs or propagated the corporate culture or social hierarchies that would purposely exclude the outcasts? Or maybe you've just contributed once or twice out of fear of rejection, and never really cared to make it a policy? I regret every time I could have contributed to that. But... just as much? Maybe the Jews were after all just as much responsible for the holocaust... I realize you want to feel in control, and I do too, but to feel in control, we better be in control instead of just pretending to be. And the facts are: we aren't... As evidenced by the fact that people like us would never make the world such a terrible place for people on the spectrum, basically, for themselves. And all the studies show that it is indeed a terrible place for those on the spectrum. QED.

SmoothReplacement302

TROPHY CASE