Re: CHAT: OT CHAT: Asperger's syndrome

Robert Hailman wrote:
> >
> > At 23:09 22.6.2000 -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >
> > >I often feel like two people at the same time, one person feeling an
> > >emotion, and one person observing the person feeling the emotion.
> >
> > Which may mean your brain's hemispheres are less specialized than in most
> > people.  I have that diagnosis, and that sensation.  The root cuse in my
> > case is that I have actual physical lesions to the left side of that part
> > of the brain which sits between the cerebellum and the cortex -- don't
> > remember its Latinate/English name.
> >
> As far as this goes, I tend to feel relatively few emotions most of the
> time, and those that I do feel tend to be relatively mild, except for
> the odd incredibly intense emotions, which tend to lean towards the
> anger side of the spectrum. I can't claim to feel like two people at
> times, emotion-wise.
I didn't comment on this before, but I often do the same thing as Nik,
and I find it a HUGE problem to be able to experience an emotion and
watch myself experience it at once -- someone before said something
about it being better that way, but I have to strongly disagree.  It can
actually cause serious judgment problems -- often, if I have to make a
decision about which I feel strongly, at the same time I can watch
myself become emotional.  Then I become very detached and think "Oh,
those aren't *true* emotions, there's no such thing as *true* emotions,
because look, I can be completely detached all the time."  And then I
make a decision that goes against what I was really feeling and I'm
miserable about it afterwards.  (Concrete example from personal life:
Boyfriend goes away for a while.  You miss him, but can get by without
being *too* miserable by sort of stepping out of yourself the whole
time.  Then you think, hmm, I don't really miss him, so I don't really
like him all that much, and you break up with him when he returns.  But
of course you really missed him lots the whole time.)  It can really
cloud decision-making skills like this -- no fun at all.  Sorry, just
had to put in something about my experience with it.

Nicole
--
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