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I have an overwhelming negative bias

Oran G. Utan

I've come here to this site in the hopes that engaging with other autistic people will help me gain insight and grow as a person. I'm afraid this thought is undermined by my negative bias to believe that any effort to improve is fundamentally futile. There's an aspect to my thoughts that wants my efforts to improve to result in failure, so I can justify giving up entirely. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing there are people who would be let down if I gave up. I'm only really doing it for them, but it feels very draining to keep going to efforts on things that I deep down feel aren't going to make things better for me.

I understand a big component of this could be depression and poor present health. That by following through with these changes and improvements, I might hit a point where I start to feel better. But that feels so far away and distant, and I'm terrible at letting myself feel good about anything. I think if I did hit that point where I might start to feel good about things, I'd compulsively want to crush that feeling and affirm my ongoing unhappiness.

So, if anyone has the number of an anthropomorphic animal with a cartoonishly oversized mallet that will flip my personality by way of concussion, I'd appreciate it. Also open to other suggestions.

  • I do like the way you express yourself.  It is very clear and resonant with my life experience.

    Please do not give up on yourself or your situation.  I have faced down some overwhelmingly intractable life scenarios in my past when, quite literally, there seemed virtually no hope of anything but "an end."

    I have come to believe that passing through the long, dark, dank, misery of one's soul and one's circumstance can be a necessary evil at times......for some of us.

    I have no clue about how you should try and manage your current burdens and mindset and I think that solutions are different for everyone anyway.

    Like you, I do not want to loose my aspiration to improve myself, my lot and the lots of those around me.  I think that is a laudable aim.  I am not content to simply be kind to myself - but nor do I think I should try to batter myself into an unrealistic aspiration either.

    You are clearly, at the moment, feeling like you are in a "downer" phase.  I think that's OK.  I endured such a phase for a prolonged bout (I like to call it my mega-burnout)....years.  There was no "quick-fix" for me, just a very hard slog to stay sane, stay safe and continue along with my journey.  I did this.  I survived.  I have come out more aware and much, much more calm.

    Endure and survive.  Things get better. Hope does spring eternal.

    Chin up solider.

    Kind regards

    Number.

  • in reply to gen1sup

    I guess one of the benefits of being a compulsive overthinker is that I at least tend to express those thoughts well. At least, through writing. Verbally, I'm a babbling mess.

    I'm glad I could at least give someone a sense of kinship with this problem.

  • Hello.

    For me I feel like there is no place for ‘happiness’ in my life and this belief is so rigid that when I feel an ounce of happiness… i feel confused and angry for feeling that. 

    I don’t have a solution but just wanted to say you seem like such a kind and down to earth person. I don’t know how long it took you to write this but the way you write is so expressive and I understand what you mean.

    i feel a similar way but the way you write it is so perfect…I struggle to identify and describe simple emotions but you so well described the similar situation im in.