Yes, I did create this world I live in. Let me delve deep into my underlying feelings.
Principally my thoughts tell me that I expect to be alone with nothing. That is the default concept in my mind. I have never been alone or had nothing, but I think that should be my state. Thank God I never did have what I want for myself!
Founded on this is the fact I expect no help. I do expect to be blocked and all manner of obstacles to be put in my way.
I know if I see an easy path, I really do not want to travel on it at all. I am attracted to the quiet, shy and reclusive type of person. I am eager to find an impossible cause and throw myself into it. If there are any metaphorical cliffs, I cannot resist but to jump off them into the blackness.
If all is quiet and calm and safe, I will soon get bored of it. I will stop feeling. I will look for ways to stir myself and have strong, powerful emotions and thoughts. Yes, I will need to suffer mentally and push my thinking to extremes, or I have no sense of being alive, no purpose. Purpose is everything.
If I do one job and know I can do it, I want too many such jobs at once. And in those jobs, I only want the most difficult…I will dedicate my whole life to these jobs day and night, awake and asleep.
Then I will complain endlessly that I need peace, rest, and calmness. Which, if I get it, I will destroy it eventually.
What I need is what I do not want, and what I do want I cannot cope with.
So…do I create my own misery. Most certainly I do.
Do I create my expectations based on experience – not at all.
Does my experience create any expectations in me – not at all.
To some extent there must be a reciprocal procedure going on – I must be learning from experience, and I must be imposing logically deduced concepts onto my actions and direction. But under all this there is something that is just me and it is pretty negative.
It is not as negative as it once was, because I remember quite clearly thinking I belonged nowhere. I never had an explicit concept of not being human, but I did believe I just did not belong among humans, that I had no concept of being a man, or a person – that I genuinely did not belong among people, there was no way of connecting. It manifested in such ideas as ‘that my brain did not engage in this world enough to do anything useful’; ‘no human could be interested in me’; ‘I had nothing at all to offer’; ‘I had absolutely no talent or ability’. There was no bridge from me to the outer world.
Over time I have experienced that there is a bridge. That there are others actually drawn to me. That my brain can engage in this world…mostly by masking, but at least that is some kind of bridge and engagement. These people and opportunities for engagement my be few, but they exist. They may be difficult to make real, but they are still there.
Here, then, I have identified:
- I have some emotional and feeling issues – where they need to be stirred, they have to be strong, or I do not sense them;
- That my mind gets bored, I need to think hard and use a lot of mental energy, or I have no purpose, reason to live;
- That based on these two experiences of my inner life I seek out an external experience that is actually quite volatile, which pushes me to my limits.
- That balance is not what I am actually seeking – in fact I am after extremes in a circular pattern. Endlessly going round and round without end.
Maybe now I can self-direct a bit better?
Nigel, the Autistic Companion 