Time for blog #3. Having read & responded to many of your great blogs, I'm getting the hang of what blogging actually is. I've been thinking:
We Aspies are known (by NT experts who think they know us) as prone to having OBSESSIONS. What the heck does that mean? It means a keen interest in some specific subject. This might be a more conventionally approved of subject like, in the USA, baseball & all statistics related to the sport, Marvel comic books & all things super-hero OR it might be something more obscure like algae or batteries or Medieval battle armour.
What makes it an obsession when WE do it & a hobby or interest or 'specialization' in the NT world? It depends: there's no real consensus. Since we're allegedly developmentally defective due to some unknown 'brain insult', virtually anything we do is viewed through the lens of detecting 'evidence' of pathology. An NT doing the same thing may be an enthusiast or an amateur. Make a few bucks at it or become known for it & you may have a passion. If it disturbs or annoys the NTs in your family & they think you're doing it to escape from dealing with them or with life, THEY say you're OBSESSED. Your shrink will ask you a bunch of stuff about your interest & determine with you whether or not it is causing you distress, if you freak out when you don't get to do it, if it is 'interfering' with your ability to meet other life demands & may even look at whether your interest is 'socially appropriate' (because if lots of NTs don't approve of having an interest in wing nuts, YOU NEED HELP!).
Now...if you really want to go into the BAD LANDS mental health-wise, you cultivate or develop a full-blown OCD. You are preoccupied with a fear of _____X_____ (<-----select an obsession & add it in here) You do _____Y_____ (<---- add compulsion here) because it temporarily relieves the anxiety associated with your obsession. VOIL?! You're officially an OCD guy (or a NUT in the vernacular). This must be upsetting & disturbing to you.
There are many people with such OCDs (a civil engineer obsessed with precision compelled to re-check & micro-manage) who integrate their obsession into their life quite well & find a way to render it a career booster. IF they're neither distressed nor disrupted in life, are they magically no longer ill- even if their staff is going nuts because of him?
Think of the shopaholic who is in debt & buying all kinds of things she can't afford. She shops, gets a high from it, stuffs the good into the closet, feels guilty & ashamed, becomes anxious, returns to the store & roundabout it goes. Now, think of a wealthy woman who does the same thing shopping-wise BUT, because she has the money, her closets full of unworn clothing with the tags still on do not distress her at all. Um...if you can afford to be an out of control shopper & it doesn't distress you are you no longer ill?
Using social convention or personal distress as a measure of pathology is problematic: if something no longer interferes with your life or doesn't bother you, it is no longer an illness! If society deems it bad, you're disturbed. The same woman moves somewhere else & she's completely normal. Am I alone in seeing the crazy in these inconsistencies?
Consensus & opinion are fine for some things but when it comes to labelling someone as ill & medicating them, it isn't. We Aspies (especially the more suggestible ones!) need to be aware of these inconsistencies & NOT be too quick to begin taking medication: there mightn't really be anything wrong with you.
We Aspies are known (by NT experts who think they know us) as prone to having OBSESSIONS. What the heck does that mean? It means a keen interest in some specific subject. This might be a more conventionally approved of subject like, in the USA, baseball & all statistics related to the sport, Marvel comic books & all things super-hero OR it might be something more obscure like algae or batteries or Medieval battle armour.
What makes it an obsession when WE do it & a hobby or interest or 'specialization' in the NT world? It depends: there's no real consensus. Since we're allegedly developmentally defective due to some unknown 'brain insult', virtually anything we do is viewed through the lens of detecting 'evidence' of pathology. An NT doing the same thing may be an enthusiast or an amateur. Make a few bucks at it or become known for it & you may have a passion. If it disturbs or annoys the NTs in your family & they think you're doing it to escape from dealing with them or with life, THEY say you're OBSESSED. Your shrink will ask you a bunch of stuff about your interest & determine with you whether or not it is causing you distress, if you freak out when you don't get to do it, if it is 'interfering' with your ability to meet other life demands & may even look at whether your interest is 'socially appropriate' (because if lots of NTs don't approve of having an interest in wing nuts, YOU NEED HELP!).
Now...if you really want to go into the BAD LANDS mental health-wise, you cultivate or develop a full-blown OCD. You are preoccupied with a fear of _____X_____ (<-----select an obsession & add it in here) You do _____Y_____ (<---- add compulsion here) because it temporarily relieves the anxiety associated with your obsession. VOIL?! You're officially an OCD guy (or a NUT in the vernacular). This must be upsetting & disturbing to you.
There are many people with such OCDs (a civil engineer obsessed with precision compelled to re-check & micro-manage) who integrate their obsession into their life quite well & find a way to render it a career booster. IF they're neither distressed nor disrupted in life, are they magically no longer ill- even if their staff is going nuts because of him?
Think of the shopaholic who is in debt & buying all kinds of things she can't afford. She shops, gets a high from it, stuffs the good into the closet, feels guilty & ashamed, becomes anxious, returns to the store & roundabout it goes. Now, think of a wealthy woman who does the same thing shopping-wise BUT, because she has the money, her closets full of unworn clothing with the tags still on do not distress her at all. Um...if you can afford to be an out of control shopper & it doesn't distress you are you no longer ill?
Using social convention or personal distress as a measure of pathology is problematic: if something no longer interferes with your life or doesn't bother you, it is no longer an illness! If society deems it bad, you're disturbed. The same woman moves somewhere else & she's completely normal. Am I alone in seeing the crazy in these inconsistencies?
Consensus & opinion are fine for some things but when it comes to labelling someone as ill & medicating them, it isn't. We Aspies (especially the more suggestible ones!) need to be aware of these inconsistencies & NOT be too quick to begin taking medication: there mightn't really be anything wrong with you.