Wanting to hurt someone

Hi Sholay,

I’m really sorry to hear that you’re suffering these anger issues. I guess all of us struggle to understand something which we have not experienced ourselves, this might explain some of the apparent lack of understanding into how you are feeling. Speaking generally I do know that repetitive thinking about anything can get pretty exhausting so i’d guess that these thoughts are probably consuming you quite a lot, and that sounds like it’s quite overwhelming for you? The world is enough of a confusing place at 20 without all the extra ASD issues on top!

Firstly, please don’t harm anyone, that is not going to resolve anything for you and would lead to you having less choices and   freedom than you have now. I can see that Former Member has given you some really useful links which I hope you find helpful, I’m also really glad that you’ve contacted your GP about seeking proper mental health services as I feel this could really benefit you. If your thoughts are so intense and out of control that you think that you might act on them then please contact your local mental health crisis team ASAP (you can find their number on google) this service runs 24/7 and they should send someone to assess you today and put a support plan in place immediately.

Secondly, you speak of frustration about other people not understanding other people’s issues. As I said earlier, I think we can all struggle to ‘get’ something that we don’t experience ourselves. I wonder also if this is more common for autistic people in as much as NT’s seem to just instinctively ‘get’ what each other are going through, so’d i’d guess that NT’s also feel understood as they’re conversing with other NTs who have an instinctive ability to read emotions. Being autistic is so much more of a mine field for understanding/being understood. Because we can’t instinctively feel other people’s emotions and infer their mental states/thoughts we have to guess, usually based on our own experience of how certain situations have/do make us feel. Unfortunately, this is somewhat like a blind person attempting to complete a really complex maze unaided (the one at Hampton court palace springs to mind!!!) in that metaphorically you end up staggering around and bumping into things a lot and going the wrong way a lot and going round in circles etc. So basically we get it wrong a lot or we just don’t ‘get’ it. Trying to make oneself understand as an autistic person also is very frustrating, NTs don’t understand us as their brains are wired differently and other autistic people may try to understand us but struggle to fully see what someone else is experiencing. I know personally that one thing that causes arguments with my husband is when I am trying to explain my point of view to him, a view that differs from his own, and I explain it in the most black and white ‘as it is’ way possible so I think ‘surely he can understand this’, but he still doesn’t get it, no matter how many times I try to re-explain in an even simpler way and I just end up like Aaaarrrggghhhhhh!!!! So I get that it’s frustrating when we can’t make other people see our own point of view.

Thirdly, would you like to tell me in a bit more detail, what all these things are that you are getting annoyed about? You mention wanting the world to change for the better and no more war or violence. That is understandable, it’s difficult for one person to change the world BUT I do wonder if you were able to make little steps towards helping the world to change for the better then you might feel less frustrated about things and it may help focus your energy into something more positive. I know that https://www.change.org/ do a lot of petitions about various causes, once they get above a certain number of e-signatures then a petition has to be considered in the House of Commons. Why not take a look and see if you can make little steps towards changing the world for the better.

You speak also about not feeling that you are able to make your own choices and decisions, in what way do you feel that your choices and decisions and freedom are being restricted?

Well with certain age restrictions like with on adoption and surrogacy still having a higher age of 21 or 25 in some other countries. I sometimes wish that these things and some more other things were all age 18 as it is the age we become adults and can do a whole loads of stuff like get married, buy and drink alcohol, buy cigarettes, buy and watch porn, serve in a jury or apply to be a judge even and also be able to book a hotel or a cruise. It is when people disapprove of me saying that I am old enough to make my own choices when people have said that people who are over the age of 18 are really old enough and capable of making their own choices. Also I would like for everything including like adult rights or things and freedom to be age 18 or 21 and nothing to have any higher age restrictions like some dating sites or speed dating events for an example to have a minimum age of 25. Also the reason why I feel restricted on making my choices and wanting to have more freedom to do what I want because of everyone or nearly everyone says that I cannot make any decisions for myself and when they also say that it is not my decision and when they like intervene with mine and other people's lives who are my age in which nobody should be intervening with other people's lives. Also everyone should understand that it is my body at the end of the day and what I want to do with it like if I want to like smoke or drink or have a child now or in the near future it would be my choice and nobody else's at all. Also if people want to have kids in their late teens or 20s then that is also their choice and body too. I don't really think that anything would really stop 18 and 19 year olds from wanting to get pregnant or have kids either.

Your questions are interesting questions, and many people have given them considerable thought over very many years.  The unvarnished truth is that there is no single right answer to these questions, only what is considered to be generally socially acceptable in a particular place and time.  The laws that we have in the UK are the current "official consensus" that the UK has arrived at to this point.  This consensus can, and has, changed over time.   Also the "official consensus" differs in different countries, and sometimes even in different regions within countries.  In the UK for example, I believe the laws on abortion differ in the different "provinces." 

Another aspect is that in some places, the local consensus within certain social groups may differ from the "official consensus". An example of this that springs to mind is certain social groups accepting young girls becoming married and having sexual relations, which may or may not be consensual, even though the local "official consensus" is that such things shouldn't happen and is illegal.  There was a story about this in the news last year but I don't recall the full details, of which country the particular story was about or which social group was involved.

Another question which some people debate is whether the current "law making bodies" in any particular country/region actually even have a right to make and enforce such pronouncements.  That relates to concepts like the idea of "sovereignty" etc. which has cropped up a lot in the recent debates on Brexit. 

The ages of which the prohibition for certain activities, e.g. smoking, sex, are lifted is, to some degree, fairly arbitrary and inevitably a compromise.  The way the law works however is that it needs to be precise and unambiguous, as much as possible, whether an offence under a particular law has been committed or not.  In the case of the sorts of things you are talking about the easiest way to define that is to specify a particular age.  The arbitrariness/compromise of the situation however means that inevitably this age is set too high for some people - they would be "mentally capable" of doing such things at a younger age.  The flip side however is that for some people the age set is actually set too young, and they would benefit from a few more years of "mental maturity" before they embarked on these things.  Unfortunately legislating to take that into consideration would be incredibly difficult, and would be difficult to implement which is why things are the way the are.  One of the ways this difficulty is handled is that the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service are given a certain amount of latitude to decide whether or not a prosecution for any particular offence should be brought and whether or not it would "be within the public interest".  Sometimes they may decide that a caution would be more warranted, or they may just talk to people about what they did, or they may decide that there is no need to take things any further.  Which action they take will very much depend on the offence, the people involved, how various people reacted to things etc.

Perhaps some people might be able to give examples of where they undertook activities that they were legally allowed to do, and to which they consented at the time, but which with hindsight they felt they weren't yet old enough to fully understand what they were getting into, and they may have wished they had waited?

One thing I don't know if you've thought about, is that there is a flip-side to these things - part of society granting rights to do certain things also comes with certain implied responsibilities.  For example, at the age of 16 people in the UK are generally allowed to have sex, and provided there is consent at the time, then no offence is committed if two people over the age of 16 have sex.  But having sex can have certain impacts on people, and along with the right to have sex comes with it the assumption that people who are legally having sex will accept and deal with any consequences that may arise from doing that.

Another thing that I don't know if you've considered or not, is that these sorts of laws are rarely enacted by legislative bodies without some sort of good reasons or motivating occurrences behind them.  If you are interested in pursuing changes to these sorts of things, then I would recommend researching the history and reasons of why the laws you want to change were enacted in the first place, and how they may already have changed over time.  As with many things, it can sometimes happen that changes made without fully considering all the possible ramifications may end up:

* "throwing out the baby with the bath water" - i.e. there was a perfectly legitimate thing the law was trying to protect against, but ill-considered changes may allow the undesirable thing that they were brought in to protect against to start occurring again,

* Changes can have unanticipated consequences which may turn out to be bad problems themselves.

I think it's good that you giving thought to a lot of these things, because coming to terms with them in your own way is a large part of becoming a socially responsible adult.

Your questions are interesting questions, and many people have given them considerable thought over very many years.  The unvarnished truth is that there is no single right answer to these questions, only what is considered to be generally socially acceptable in a particular place and time.  The laws that we have in the UK are the current "official consensus" that the UK has arrived at to this point.  This consensus can, and has, changed over time.   Also the "official consensus" differs in different countries, and sometimes even in different regions within countries.  In the UK for example, I believe the laws on abortion differ in the different "provinces." 

Another aspect is that in some places, the local consensus within certain social groups may differ from the "official consensus". An example of this that springs to mind is certain social groups accepting young girls becoming married and having sexual relations, which may or may not be consensual, even though the local "official consensus" is that such things shouldn't happen and is illegal.  There was a story about this in the news last year but I don't recall the full details, of which country the particular story was about or which social group was involved.

Another question which some people debate is whether the current "law making bodies" in any particular country/region actually even have a right to make and enforce such pronouncements.  That relates to concepts like the idea of "sovereignty" etc. which has cropped up a lot in the recent debates on Brexit. 

The ages of which the prohibition for certain activities, e.g. smoking, sex, are lifted is, to some degree, fairly arbitrary and inevitably a compromise.  The way the law works however is that it needs to be precise and unambiguous, as much as possible, whether an offence under a particular law has been committed or not.  In the case of the sorts of things you are talking about the easiest way to define that is to specify a particular age.  The arbitrariness/compromise of the situation however means that inevitably this age is set too high for some people - they would be "mentally capable" of doing such things at a younger age.  The flip side however is that for some people the age set is actually set too young, and they would benefit from a few more years of "mental maturity" before they embarked on these things.  Unfortunately legislating to take that into consideration would be incredibly difficult, and would be difficult to implement which is why things are the way the are.  One of the ways this difficulty is handled is that the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service are given a certain amount of latitude to decide whether or not a prosecution for any particular offence should be brought and whether or not it would "be within the public interest".  Sometimes they may decide that a caution would be more warranted, or they may just talk to people about what they did, or they may decide that there is no need to take things any further.  Which action they take will very much depend on the offence, the people involved, how various people reacted to things etc.

Perhaps some people might be able to give examples of where they undertook activities that they were legally allowed to do, and to which they consented at the time, but which with hindsight they felt they weren't yet old enough to fully understand what they were getting into, and they may have wished they had waited?

One thing I don't know if you've thought about, is that there is a flip-side to these things - part of society granting rights to do certain things also comes with certain implied responsibilities.  For example, at the age of 16 people in the UK are generally allowed to have sex, and provided there is consent at the time, then no offence is committed if two people over the age of 16 have sex.  But having sex can have certain impacts on people, and along with the right to have sex comes with it the assumption that people who are legally having sex will accept and deal with any consequences that may arise from doing that.

Another thing that I don't know if you've considered or not, is that these sorts of laws are rarely enacted by legislative bodies without some sort of good reasons or motivating occurrences behind them.  If you are interested in pursuing changes to these sorts of things, then I would recommend researching the history and reasons of why the laws you want to change were enacted in the first place, and how they may already have changed over time.  As with many things, it can sometimes happen that changes made without fully considering all the possible ramifications may end up:

* "throwing out the baby with the bath water" - i.e. there was a perfectly legitimate thing the law was trying to protect against, but ill-considered changes may allow the undesirable thing that they were brought in to protect against to start occurring again,

* Changes can have unanticipated consequences which may turn out to be bad problems themselves.

I think it's good that you giving thought to a lot of these things, because coming to terms with them in your own way is a large part of becoming a socially responsible adult.