Published on 12, July, 2020
A thought occurred to me when I was washing the dishes, a few minutes ago, or rather it was more of a question. I thought, I wonder if somebody can be so self-obsessed that they don’t even know it, even after they have been told they are, via a diagnosis of autism. Or are there really some autistic people who aren’t self-obsessed, and what would that look like?
Maybe this is the people who are on what is commonly referred to as the ‘mild’ end of the spectrum. But if so, what would bring that type of a person forward for an assessment in the first place or how would they have got picked up as kids? What types of difficulties or struggles do they have and what makes it autism and not something else, such as OCD or social anxiety or whatever?
This whole conversation about self-obsession has really piqued my curiosity and obviously, as an autistic person, I don’t see other people’s points of view easily, unless it is spelled out to me in a way I can understand. So, I’m just wondering, is there a whole other level of autism that I am unaware of?
This is for curiosity as much as to see if it’s my autistic brain blindsiding me again, because I know I fall into the basic understanding of autism, meaning selfism, and obviously, being autistic, I assumed all other autistic people are that way as well. I know we are all sooooooooooo different, of course we are, we are human beings, all human beings are different, but I thought as autistic people, the one identifying factor, that we all share, is the thing the condition (for want of a better word) is named after, which is, of course, self-ism.
You can be sure you’re self-obsessed by certain outward signs. The signs the psychiatrists use to diagnosis and identify us. Such as difficulties in school, not making friends as easily as most of the other kids, maybe getting picked on, a history of many different jobs, generally well below a person’s capability, difficulties in personal relationships including difficulties sometimes with family members, not achieving full protentional, all those kinds of things. Which all stem from the self-obsession. But you can also be self-obsessed without those outward signs, I don’t think I had or have that many of them and I think there are many of us who don’t show the ‘typical’ types of outward signs.
I’m just wondering what none self-obsessed autistic people struggle with and why they aren’t diagnosed with that instead of autism? Or have I just missed the point all together, lol, (which wouldn’t be for the first time) and autism is something else altogether?
I also learned yesterday that some people, apparently, at least one person anyway, has a negative connotation attached to the words self-obsession and selfish. I was unaware that those words could have any negative connotations so for those who do have those negative connotations, I’m not using these words in a negative way, whatever that could be. If anybody has got better words to use instead, where people don’t have negative connotations then tell us what they are. Autism literally means, self-ism, so I fail to see how anything to do with the self can be negative, but of course, that’s just me
Anyway, this is me, doing what I can to avoid doing my course work, lol, and now I’m going to avoid it some more and take my little self for a walk through the woods to rendezvous with the trees and nature for a couple of hours.
Hope you are all having a great day
Selfish is not caring about others.
Self-obsessed is different. It's being interested in one's happiness, motivations and interests to the exclusion of other things.
In Autism if there is self-obsession it's involuntary in my opinion. The brain is wired differently. Autistic people can't make as much eye contact, small talk, conversation or handle crowds, fluid multi-person conversations, noises and physical sensations as well. These force Autistic people to be more oriented to the self than to the crowd. That doesn't equate to selfishness. Some Autistic people are selfish but that's a matter of personality. On the whole Autistic people are simply more introverted and need more time alone and more control over their environment. Since many non-Autistic people don't need the same amount of control over their environment they can mistake our needs for selfishness, or it may feel like selfishness to them; this is perhaps the most sad part about Autism, that others can feel insulted or annoyed by us when we have no intention to offend them.
I like going for walks too.
Measure for Measure by Shakespeare is one to watch. It's all about judgement, how we judge one another, and the play turns everyone on their head and makes asses of us all, even the audience, as the bard cunningly strings us along before turning the eye of judgement upon us.
Yeah, it’s weird (to me) how people keep adding these value judgements (that I’m not even aware of) to these words, which just confuses me even more and cranks my blinking brain activity on this subject, up another gear when all I’m doing is trying to understand it better