Nostalgia, wanting to go back in time, yearning for a 'golden era'

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to describe my childhood as a 'Golden Age' - there was still the same anxieties and other problems hanging around that are debilitating now, they just weren't so relentlessly overwhelming that they consumed my entire every day existence.

I feel as though all I am really doing these days is attempting to control myself and contain my symptoms through a 'balancing-act' of a variety of medications, all just so that I can 'fit-in' with 'normal' society, for no apparent reason.

I feel like they mostly basically just treat me like a freak anyway, and a burden, so sometimes I wonder what the point is in trying so hard just to 'tread water' and keep my head up... but it isn't as though I'm being given any alternative.

It does seem sad I don't really have a 'special interest'. I guess I struggle to muster the enthusiasm to find much interest in anything.

I do think it's worth noting though that in terms of 'conforming' - given that people are apparently neurologically different to us - it wouldn't necessarily be 'conforming' in terms of a conscious decision as the term might imply, simply behaving as feels natural to them - they can't help the way that their brains are wired any more than we can it seems.

They'd still be like that even if everybody else around them was different, probably...

I'm not sure what people mean about being emotionally juvenile - if you go to the shop and they're out of stock of the exact thing you wanted, do you throw a tantrum and start screaming, for example?

I sometimes feel like the normal 'model' of 'grown-up' emotional behaviour is to be very messy and basically blurt everything out - complex 'adult' situations such as divorces and parenting issues are genuinelly blurry, complicated and full of grey areas... that people need to lay everything out and deal with deep ambivalence and layered emotion... and so it is seen as 'childish' to be very sparse, cut-down and straight-forward - even though such behaviour is actually 'better' it can definitely be argued.

If you keep your life 'simple' - as, actually, being excluded from society facilitates - this would seem to be a natural result: no complications from emotional messiness of relationships.

Indeed, there seems to be a general idea around that childhood is wonderful and being 'child-like' is something to aspire to.

I know I have had extremely horrible situations in counselling in the past, for example, with counsellors insisting that I must be very angry at people in my life due to traumatic incidents and other emotional mishaps from the past, whereas I genuinely didn't feel that way.

They seemed to be black-mailing me into blurting all sorts of horrible nastiness about these people and incidents, assuming that this would be the best and only way to process such feelings, and not verbalising them in this form was unhealthy.

It felt horrible, like having my arm twisted into being abusive, it was sickening, and given the counselling relationship - of my seeking advice and assistance from somebody, broadly put, in a 'superior' position, it was confusing, counter-productive and deeply unhelpful to say the least.

They very physical sense of queasiness induced by such situations was the amongst the kind of experiences which made me wonder if I might be autistic.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to describe my childhood as a 'Golden Age' - there was still the same anxieties and other problems hanging around that are debilitating now, they just weren't so relentlessly overwhelming that they consumed my entire every day existence.

I feel as though all I am really doing these days is attempting to control myself and contain my symptoms through a 'balancing-act' of a variety of medications, all just so that I can 'fit-in' with 'normal' society, for no apparent reason.

I feel like they mostly basically just treat me like a freak anyway, and a burden, so sometimes I wonder what the point is in trying so hard just to 'tread water' and keep my head up... but it isn't as though I'm being given any alternative.

It does seem sad I don't really have a 'special interest'. I guess I struggle to muster the enthusiasm to find much interest in anything.

I do think it's worth noting though that in terms of 'conforming' - given that people are apparently neurologically different to us - it wouldn't necessarily be 'conforming' in terms of a conscious decision as the term might imply, simply behaving as feels natural to them - they can't help the way that their brains are wired any more than we can it seems.

They'd still be like that even if everybody else around them was different, probably...

I'm not sure what people mean about being emotionally juvenile - if you go to the shop and they're out of stock of the exact thing you wanted, do you throw a tantrum and start screaming, for example?

I sometimes feel like the normal 'model' of 'grown-up' emotional behaviour is to be very messy and basically blurt everything out - complex 'adult' situations such as divorces and parenting issues are genuinelly blurry, complicated and full of grey areas... that people need to lay everything out and deal with deep ambivalence and layered emotion... and so it is seen as 'childish' to be very sparse, cut-down and straight-forward - even though such behaviour is actually 'better' it can definitely be argued.

If you keep your life 'simple' - as, actually, being excluded from society facilitates - this would seem to be a natural result: no complications from emotional messiness of relationships.

Indeed, there seems to be a general idea around that childhood is wonderful and being 'child-like' is something to aspire to.

I know I have had extremely horrible situations in counselling in the past, for example, with counsellors insisting that I must be very angry at people in my life due to traumatic incidents and other emotional mishaps from the past, whereas I genuinely didn't feel that way.

They seemed to be black-mailing me into blurting all sorts of horrible nastiness about these people and incidents, assuming that this would be the best and only way to process such feelings, and not verbalising them in this form was unhealthy.

It felt horrible, like having my arm twisted into being abusive, it was sickening, and given the counselling relationship - of my seeking advice and assistance from somebody, broadly put, in a 'superior' position, it was confusing, counter-productive and deeply unhelpful to say the least.

They very physical sense of queasiness induced by such situations was the amongst the kind of experiences which made me wonder if I might be autistic.