as for how I'm feeling, I feel like banging my head. I don't feel anything emotionally: just head-banging energy if that makes sense.
I've never used this stim for obvious reasons (black eyes, purple bruises & red lumps...) so I definitely won't tonight, but I feel like it.
What the hell is the matter with people? Really. What the hell IS it. Do people not think at all about what they're about to do? Do they just charge into situations never thinking of consequences or do they delude themselves about what the outcome of their behaviours will likely be? Do they know damned well that they're about to behave terribly, do it any ways & figure that they want what they want & they'll deal with the consequences some other time? How does this work??? I'd love to have an explanation. How many times can a person do something they know is completely idiotic before it becomes not a matter of poor behaviour choices but of poor character? Are their impulses at odds with their better judgement & self control or what?
We all make mistakes & do things wrong. When we make a deliberate choice AND we have the correct information & reasonable mental faculties, it is no longer a mistake but deliberate terrible behaviour. Can we later cry & claim we 'made a mistake' like ticking the wrong box on a form?
The consequences: I feel like repeatedly banging my head against the wall. I feel like running through the streets screaming at the tops of my lungs. I want the day to be over. Whoever said that time flies, was NOT an Aspie trying not to stim! My hands are shaky & if I'm not very careful, I'll spill anything I even look at too intensely. I'm cold & then hot & then cold again.
I think that, in my case, stimming may be a form of emotional outlet: not just an extra energy valve. I think that since my emotional range & response is limited, my brain directs this kind of energy elsewhere & it comes out as a stim. Fortunately, my stims tend not to be the kind that might get me carted off in a basket (loud whoops & cursing in public/tearing off my clothing/ running in circles etc.) but more subtle stuff. Be that as it way, without them, I'm not managing as well as usual.
Based only on what your posts have been like, I would like to suggest that you should be extremely thankful that you appear, well to do and in a committed, long term relationship and have had children that I gather, were successfully raised all while having a rewarding career which I am sure you will agree is what nearly every Aspie aspires too, but that inordinately few Aspergical persons ever manage to accomplish or come close to.
You are indeed truly fortunate and really should consider yourself extremely lucky to be that high functioning so as to be able to pass for completely normal in every facet of your life thus far.
Anyway, I understand that people from different backgrounds see things in a different light; I mean I am a conscious, reasoning, rational adult after all so I see your confusion.
Some would say I had a woeful childhood where everything I did was either seen as acting out or hilarious, and between these two extremes I learned a version of coping that is obviously foreign to a lot of people... that of self harm. But unlike those people that go on Oprah or whatever, blaming everybody else for how they turned out, I got on with life by incorporating coping mechanisms that seemed to stave off most of the ill effects (that may be coming back to bite me in the arse, I don?t know).
But when you've been so utterly powerless as to have no control over anything at all in your life, if you feel all options have been taken away from you and you have even less understanding of it all, at that point you may resort to the one thing that you can potentially control, your body, and reward or punishment of it is the one thing that is entirely up to you, then, what if that body had been used against you, well possibly the punishment side of things may seem the better choice in the future.
So, as a child not being able to understand the world, I looked at the adults around me for guidance and they taught me what they knew, filter this through Aspergers and you can see the problem.
Fast forward to adult life after the intervening years have been spent in isolation and a loneliness most can't fathom (most of the ones that do understand take their life) and you have your answer.
An individual can only try to comprehend so much before they have to respond to the world and if that filter is clogged (Aspergers) then sometimes the response is somewhat skewed, if the person grew up in a dysfunctional family to boot, Aspergers just makes it that much harder to break the mould and not be what your home life has predisposed you to. Everybody is a product of their environment and only willpower can put you on a different path.
I don't actually like to self harm, I try to avert it at all costs. I don't actually enjoy pain, I don't actively seek it out, it is a culmination of a multitude of things but it is learned behaviour and becomes a stim, you don't ever choose your stims or plan for something to become a stim, it just happens, you stim to regain comfort in a given environment or setting and if you can't stim, well? Soup found that out ; ]
I mentioned above; "I suppose I am more trying to find a way to stop or lessen mine again without the need to want to do it for someone else?s sake", to me that is a positive approach to a problem and the best explanation I can offer is that it probably is a character flaw that a person can be made to feel so insignificant that even under the most constant positive conditions they still will feel that way, and I suppose you do it because it's what you do. I like to think of that dog that ate Pavlova whenever I feel that way though, it makes me think their is hope ; ]
Mmmm, took me a while, had to deal with something, so did I make any sense? It isn?t exactly simple to quantify a mindset.
For some things a choice is present and seems logical but rational behaviour isn?t even in the building at that point, much like the mice that die of starvation surrounded by cheese in those horrible conditioning tests they conducted.
