what exactly separates worldly WPers from the hermits?

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I voted "I really love ice cream" because nothing else even remotely applies to me. I used to love ice cream, but thanks to the depression hell i'm in, I love nothing anymore. I don't get the slightest pleasure out of food or anything else. There are plenty of days in which I don't even eat at all.

At any rate.....I only wish I had an answer to the "Big IT". In terms of whatever is ultimately wrong with my brain, all I have are endless theories (my own and those of others) and no conclusions. I have been desperately trying to find some for the better part of 40 years and like Gollum of LOTR fame, all I have is empty night. Insofar as all the neuropsychological evaluations i've had, everything looks PERFECTLY NORMAL.Perfectly normal for those with NVLD and/or Asperger's that is. My IQ scores, the discrepancies between VIQ/PIQ, (in favor of VIQ), the subtest "scatter" pattern are all very similar, if not identical, to those of millions of people with NVLD/AS. Ditto for my results on all the memory tests on these evals. Everything ON PAPER appears as normal as could be for those with NVLD/AS.


Nonetheless....I either have some EXTREMELY profound and rare learning/memory problems the conventional neuropsychological tests have somehow overlooked, or I have *somehow* UNINTENTIONALLY and UNCONSCIOUSLY exaggerated or wholly imagined these problems. In terms of long-term memory impairments (and unlike many with NVLD/AS....my LT memory rather than my short-term memory seems incredibly deficient)
at least, I believe it's entirely possible for the standard neuropsych tests of memory to overlook them. I have some credible evidence to support this belief and following contains some of it.

My apologies to those of you who have read this article before as I have posted the link to it many times.


http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/con ... /123/3/472


I have written about all these problems in some goodly detail in several of my other posts on WP, so no need to do so here again. If anyone actually cares to learn more about them, either read my other posts or just ask me anything you like. Let's just say that in most key areas of my life, I function no better than a mildy mentally ret*d person normally functions. I AM including academics, skills (vocational ones and otherwise) and talents in these "key areas". Thus the "functioning" i'm referring to is NOT limited to many of the daily self-care, social, etc....issues people with ASD/AS/NVLD often have problems with. I am 40 years-old and i've never lived fully financially independent of my family. I have never held anything but the most menial and unskilled jobs and I was even fired from many of those due to one neuropsychologically-related issue or another (if it wasn't poor motor skills, it was poor visual-spatial ones, issues with math, mechanical reasoning, memory, etc....). It took me eight years to obtain a ridiculous and perfectly useless AA degree in liberal arts WITH course substitutions for math!! !. I dropped intro algebra twice before opting for course substitutions which I was eligible for due to the documented LD (NVLD is formally Dx-ed as LD-NOS.)


So to say my life is a mess would be the most titanic understatement in all infinity. It's never been any different, i've just FELT different (i.e.....not as depressed or not depressed at all) at times for reasons I simply can't explain. Those times were the most irrational, for the circumstances of my life have never given me any cause to feel better than I currently do. Once the so-called "Depressive Realism" kicks in....I view my inexpressibly wretched circumstances in all their unspeakably hellish clarity. So you better believe i'm envious of everyone else with ASD/AS/NVLD and I REFUSE to apologize for engaging in this so-called "sin". The fury and hatred I feel towards this universe, nature, god, the flying spaghetti monster or what-f***ing-ever created me this way would annihilate all infinity if only it could be weaponized. But alas....i'm as impotent as a lamb and as ridiculous and laughable as a clown and I suppose all life on this earth should be very thankful for that.

I frankly don't give a s**t if others are capable of being happy in spite of whatever limitations they have. I don't care if some person with Down syndrome finds contentment in bagging groceries at Piggly-Wiggly and living with their parents for the rest of their lives.


I CANNOT be happy with my limitations, whatever they ultimately are. I valued intelligence, knowledge, talent, skill infinitely more than any other human qualities, including
"morality" and "goodness". Morality and goodness get you no where aside from the same oblivious nothingness "evil" and "immoral" people like Adolf Hitler wind up in. I feel like a passionate genius whose one and only abiding passion IS genius trapped inside the brain of a mentally ret*d person. The spirit is extremely willing...but the flesh of my brain is seemingly inexpressibly weak. "Quality of life" can only be defined subjectively. I...I repeat I define what "quality of life" means to me. Not NT society, not people with Down syndrome and not others with ASD. And I have NO quality of life....only the crude biologically-instilled self-preservation is intact, otherwise I would've blown my useless brains out a long time ago. I think no less of people with Down syndrome or any other condition which causes MR. It's just that MR or anything remotely close to it is unacceptable for ME. If that makes me self-entitled....so be it. The self is all one has in this hideous universe, this infernal creation of blind and non-conscious sadism (<which makes no sense ). Nothing and no one else matters in the grand scheme of things.

Well....the OP asked for the "Big IT" and this is mine....I don't know what IT is...I just know that IT exists. Hence the reason i'm trying desperately to get accepted into research studies involving autism, learning disabilities, memory or anything which may involve an MRI (and/or other types of neuroimaging) and/or some sort of neurological/neuropsychological tests beyond those i've already had.





I can't afford such things out-of-pocket, no one will even lend me the money for them and my health insurance (which my family pays for ) won't cover them. So research studies are my own only viable option at this point. I believe Nietzsche said something like people can handle anything as long as they know the WHY. I beg to differ with that statement, but nonetheless, it would certainly be nice to have some answers to this monstrously debilitating, damnably perplexing and intolerably incongruous neuropsychological mystery i've been living with for 40 years. It would be nice to know something other than "well....you have a right-hemisphere based learning disability that millions of people who have been infinitely more successful (again.... by MY definition of "successful") than you in every area of life share".

I am fully aware of the fact that I sound like a raving madman in this and many of my other posts. I cannot adequately express the hell I feel and live every single day of my life. This is how it comes across when I attempt to do so. The rest of you can't even imagine how fortunate you are.

Horus; As little as it may mean I hope it will at least make a dent in your consciousness. I send you all the compassionate thoughts I can yield. I wish there was something I could do to lighten your world ever so slightly, your world seems so dark. I can only imagine how much you must suffer from whatever it is that's holding you back. I often feel like my academic achievements are the one thing I can rely on. When I fail, I feel the abyss closing in, but I won't pretend to know what you're going through.

Nobody can set your standard for you. You have every right to want happiness and to define happiness for yourself. I struggle myself, with my definitions.

I'm not a religious person, but I do think of myself as a practicing buddhist. I have no idea how close or far away the buddhist ideas are from your philosophy, but if you are open to reading something I would strongly recommend some Western-oriented buddhist writing. It won't take your problems away, but it may make you re-evaluate your definitions of happiness and success. I hope you find some help with your learning disabilities, but I have no advice to offer there. I just know that the buddhist perspective has often helped me find new perspectives that have been very beneficial.

In any case, I wish you all the best and I hope tomorrow will be brighter than today.

A way to compress this would be by saying that people with just AS are likely to succeed, but people with AS and social anxiety disorder are not. I fall into the latter category, and hence am doomed to fail. Hooray!

I thank you very much for making the heartfelt effort LipstickKiller and I have no doubt it is sincere. It speaks volumes about you as a human being and one can only wish all humans were like you, I KNOW i'm not. Nonetheless...I would be liar if I said it means anything to me personally or if it makes much of dent in my consciousness. I am inconsolable right now and it's pretty bad when you view suicide as a luxury you don't have access to.

I have been trying to determine the source of what is "holding me back" for almost as long as I can remember. The IQ tests tell me nothing of any real value and only serve to make everything even more damnably perplexing. I scored 143 on the last professionally-administered one I had and yet I LITERALLY can't seem to learn and remember ANY given material MUCH better than people with mild mental retardation. While I admit that the learning/memory problems I believe I have could be an exaggerated or perhaps even totally imagined. Even my very highest IQ results would suggest a Nonverbal learning disability due to the very typical VIQ/PIQ gap and the NLD-esque subtest pattern. So i'd say TOTALLY imagined is certainly out of the question. Nonetheless...the severity of the problems seems very, very real to me and I would only ask that people realize i'm not intentionally or consciously exaggerating them if i'm doing so at all. Indeed....I hope to god I am exaggerating them. After all...pseudo-neuropsychological disorders may be alot easier to overcome than ones with a basis in a defacto neurological impairment.

Countless people have offered me their theories about all this, but none of them seem to make much sense. I asked the neuropsychologists who tested me plenty of questions about my ultimate intellectual capacity based upon the results of these evals.

For example, I asked one if he thought i'd be able to handle calculus based upon my results. He said that while it might be a struggle for me, he saw no reason why I ultimately couldn't do it. Well.....I couldn't even manage INTRODUCTORY ALGEBRA. This is just one out of countless examples in which my personal experience was wildly inconsistent from what both my neuropsych evals and the psychologists who administered them told me. I have placed a considerable amount of trust in these people and their psychometric tools for there was nothing better to place my trust in at the time. Aside from a few alternate ideas which amount to little more than educated guesses at best, nobody here has offered me any more plausible explanations. Thus....i've been forced to be my own psychologist and i'm hardly qualified, formally or otherwise. Still....I think I have unearthed a few potential answers from that seemingly infinite font of information known as the internet. The article I provided the link for in my previous post would be one the best examples IMO. None of this has provided me with any definitive answers of course, but perhaps it's lighted the path a bit. At least if I get accepted into a research study, I can go in "armed to the teeth" so to speak. That is...my own self-observation and research may prove quite helpful so long as those conducting the study take me seriously and are willing to listen FOR ONCE. So at this juncture, the only thing I have to look forward to is my participation in a suitable research study. Neuroimaging may or may not yield further insights, but I certainly have nothing to lose by undergoing any.


Insofar as any solace I may gain from philosophy or spirituality/religion, (buddhist and otherwise) is concerned, I wore that path out a long time ago. I've read everything from Aleister Crowley to Zoroastrianism and it all left me flat. I am the furthest thing from religious and my worldviews are entirely within the boundaries of scientific materialism, atheism and nihilism. I see no purpose to existence other than whatever illusory and subjective one/s we humans happen to attach to it. And if we can't even do that much....we're pretty much screwed and those "purposes" have eluded me all my life. I simply can't tolerate externally imposed or quasi-objective definitions of happiness and success. One thing I gleaned from Crowley's "philosophy", "religion" or however you wish to define Thelema (even though my own life and outlook would be a gross contradiction to the rather sunny and optimistic Nietzschean "yea-saying" present in much Thelemic thought) is that "Every man and Every woman is a Star". In the simplest of terms...we are our own gods and no others stand before us. There is no substitute for my definitions of success and happiness, so such a re-evaluation wouldn't really serve much of a purpose in my case. I'm just being honest, so I hope i'm not coming across as close-minded or pigheaded. Nor I am trying to be a contrarian simply for the sake of being one. I have tried all this before and it's never been very beneficial to me.


I can think of nothing better at this time than to paraphrase Denethor, steward of Gondor after Gandalf asked him; "what then would you have, if your will could have its way"?

I would have things as I wished them to be in all the days of my youth. I would be the sovereign lord and master of my own destiny and be one of those people who could do "anything they put their mind to". But if doom has denied this to me, then I will have
naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.

All religions, all philosophies and all other human mental constructs which suggest an "acceptance of things you can cannot change" qualify as "life diminished" and comprimised insofar as i'm concerned. There are plenty of things I cannot change which I have grudgingly accepted. I am not yet prepared to say i'm certain my overall cognitive functioning (among several other things largely dependent on it and some that aren't) is one of them. I will not be prepared to do so until the day they chuck me into the ground. I will fight my brain tooth and nail until then. I've got nothing to lose by trying and only one of my greatest lifelong aspirations to gain. Heaven to me would be at least a BS/BA degree in a subject I never thought I could conquer. I have an AA in liberal arts already...but i'd need to make up the math I dropped way back in 1999 and take whatever other courses I need for a BA/BS. This is not even about obtaining a "career" anymore....that may come with the territory and it may not. This is about things far more psychologically satisfying known as self-edification and self-actualization.

At any rate....thank you again for taking the time to extend compassion to me. I am awed by people like yourself who seem to radiate a light that the darkness within me knoweth not. I am all-consumed by my own troubles and I only wish I possessed that ineffable beauty, love and selflessness that seems to flow so easily from people like you. Such things are entirely alien to me and despise myself for it. Whether I ever comprehend calculus or not, I don't think i'll ever comprehend love.

I don't get all that many responses here on WP and I can certainly understand why. That said....the compassion you extended to me here might mean something after all. In fact, it has been light to me in what would've have been yet another black evening In one sense, I wish people wouldn't do this sort of thing since I know of no way to repay them.
Take care of yourself....people like you are the only hope this world has in these darkest of all times.

a good expression of the existential impotence i've felt all my life.

Failed hermit here. I started off well, but when all were wandering around, I was doing whatever I wanted, and that attracted the wrong kind of attention. Girls, and while sex is reasonable, they had other motives, which involved me becoming something other than a hermit.

Family is another big one, when they did not know where I was life was much better, for they were not going around telling everyone I dealt with that I was strange. People can deal with it on their own, but when they are warned, by someone close to you, in secret of course, relations take a turn for the worst.

For a long time I was just trying to figure out what was going on in the world, not much, so I went back to what pleased me, and found that figuring out how machines worked, hanging out under cars, did lead to making money, for all who saw themselves better than me, owned cars they did not understand.

Some large companies owned computers they did not understand, and the nightshift was open, and they way I did it, the day shift ran well. The same for photographic processing.

I never did get friendship, love, I did get sex, but it always lead to change into another person and make all my dreams come true. They could not define the dreams, so it never lasted.

In general, I found that all other people saw life other than I did, as some magic they were waiting to happen, and I, failing to provide that magic, did so on purpose. An example would be I often owned three cars, little else, so they thought I should give them a car. They were heartbroken when I sold it.

I have been through long periods of being a comfortable hermit, I like to read, easy to please, and live simply. Sometimes I want more, a lot more, and the focus and detirmination is there, even if it takes years.

When a lot older I discovered that people did not like what they did, they settled for the best they thought they could get. I do like what I do, and while they do have more, it owns them. As many are learning of the biggest house they could buy, it owns them twice over, they cannot make the payments, and they are no more human when they move out. They gave everything to rent a life, and it was not enough.

I never fit in, but I could make house calls and fix computers, so good money, no social life, and more toys. Judged from the ones I have met, I am much better off not meeting any.

People are not like me, I am.

I do understand and feel as Horus does, try as hard as I will it just does not work, I suffer, so I quit, and just do as I will. The truth is humans are living a lie, and want you to join in. I do not do well in that pretend game, the most I can pretend is that I am not going to eat them.

They all squirm together toward something, all I see is the grave, but they are into it.

Not by anyone elses standards, but I do some things that please me, and are beyond what most do with their time, I hold a patent, have written a book, and get along with machines and dogs.

Much of life has passed me by, so I am not in a half million debt. I own my life.

It does get better with time, I see ways to up my income without dealing with people. The ladder of this poll, I would not fit most places.

A hermit that makes sneak attacks on markets? Broken machines are scrap, working machines production, and there are markets.

I get pictures of what might be, figure out how, take years, and most of it works.

People can run machines, some can fix them, some direct their use, and some sell the product. I can do that, as a hermit, and the web is a wonder for the likes of me.

I can do what they do in groups better, cheaper, faster. I can see the space above them.

Their world is social, mine is physical and mechanical.

I picked up bits wandering through their world, did the isolated, dirty, jobs that took learning, and they never changed. It was a slog through the wilderness, but not like the real wilderness, a joy to be in.

What I did added up, joined, and if I understood it could have been faster, but it is now. I am not cut out to be a social worker, but a designer of what could be in the current and future market. I have always looked ahead, and at the structure, and finally discovered I could just change it, and no one would notice.

A lot of work went into taking my first bite of a billion dollar market, and it tasted good, also I had everything to keep biting. Now I can afford bigger teeth.

I have no social skills, no friends, but I am happy. Some play with people, some with the structure of reality, and it is one or the other, not both.

That I should want other people is something told to me by other people. My life would be heartbreak if I believed the lying little ground apes.

I was not made to be one of them, lucky me, but to be one with what they live in.

They have been nothing but a problem, the structure of reality a friend and teacher. Looking back that is what carried me through, and has always been the same.

I am one that makes the machine run. That is what made my living, that is my path, and no different now that I am taking on bigger parts. The only thing that worked was being myself, and being old, life was take it or leave it, and I took what I wanted.

Now I see a world of social propaganda, for it is all they have, to mill around the water cooler rubbing egos. They have to, because they have nothing else to offer. The less they are needed, the more of a social network they build, till Facebook is filled with a world of strangers, hitting each others page.

I hear it here, that people are alive in their special interest, and thrown into utter confusion with people.

Consider them baby skills, but the focus and persistance is what it takes to become really good at something, and most never will. We come up different, but we are going somewhere. They come up the same, and will mill around till buried.

Still a hermit, but one who sees patterns.

It seems to be ice cream.

Well I'm both happy and unsuccessful. One reason is the love I feel for my son. Another is I stopped trying to be something I couldn't. Another is I learned that simple pleasures are priceless.

Actually, I never tried to be something I'm not. I'm too lazy. I just stopped worrying about it.

All I gots going for me is my singing and my "persona" that I adopted to help me be something other than flat non-entity (I don't really mean it like that exactly but it is more than a half-truth)...I am not an enterpeneur but I got scooped up by one...a non-self-conscious non-NT-ish business owner..who liked the fact that I am "musical"..as man-folk are inclined to...and like my obsessive stuffed animal making at the time..and my childlike ways and my strangeness. Even though I have been frequently accused of being too self-aware...maybe on AS terms I am not.

I was never really insulated much from the world despite difficulties I had since I was a child. my parents are very liberal and open-minded and supportive of me..I still go out with them every week and they support me in whatever i choose to do, even if the decision is extremely foolish...

I have been singing since i learned to talk, and my parents let me join a band at the age of 15 whereupon certain rudiments of basic social skills that did not come naturally to me were pummelled into me by my older bandmates..
I also fell into the whole "relationship" thing at an unusually early age and it has been a pattern that I have always ended up in LTRs...but I am not a breeder or the marrying kind..so that has spared me from certain stresses of conventional adult life.

I am a "puppet business owner" I work from home, and my home is a venue...this can be quite stressful at times.
I do not feel successful...I don't feel like I am on a social ladder. I am only on speaking terms with a few people.
I am financially better off at the moment than i have ever been in my life, but that sorta hangs in the balance and could totally change.
It would be really bad if I did not work from home particularly as I am getting older...my executive dysfunction is deplorable, and living in my insulated world has wreaked havoc on what few social skills I have acquired.

I do have an unconventional lifestyle which might lead plenty of people to question my place on the spectrum...but none of us are identical...

I'm both socially active and unworldly.

[quote="LipstickKiller

I have children and do well with them, probably because they're a special interest of mine.
[/quote]

Childhood Interest topic
This is the first time \i have ever seen anyone write this.

I am retired and might feel like a hermit if I did not have a job. I work mostly for the social interaction with my coworkers. I am successful at work, but have been through 3 marriages so far. I am living alone again, looking for number 4 so I can have more of a social life again.

I feel like a hermit who's secluded hermit camp is perpetually invaded by strangers ...and they all want me to give them a beer...

I guess the only way to get happy is to be pleased with the things you do have instead of continuing to crave the things you don't.

i guess i would fall into the ice cream category here. at times i have done well, but not sustainably; currently am an unemployed semi-hermit. staying employed is difficult for a variety of reasons, but primarily because my confusion / frustration threshold (for sensory input, for making sense of unstructured job responsibilities, for interacting with co-workers and communicating with supervisors, etc) is very low and it's like a countdown to self-destruction: inevitably there is a blowup of some sort, which i have always been too overwhelmed to sort out.

i wouldn't say my social anxiety (which can be profound) is at the forefront of all this, and my inability to connect properly with other people goes much deeper than failure to integrate superficially or to appropriately assess when someone's joking. i have managed to maintain some friendships, but have watched just as many fall through the cracks because i could never get comfortable or understand what was expected of me. and my friendships tend to fall into one or more of these categories: geography prevents us from spending much time together; other person is also something of a hermit, and expects little from me; other person does most of the talking, and almost all of the friendship upkeep; other person is socially ostracized or marginalized and doesn't make me feel pressured to act "normal"; friendship is based on topic of common interest and doesn't require me to recognize the person's emotional needs. dating has been awful.

i would say the biggest obstacle thus far has been my own unawareness of where my problems are coming from, and therefore forcing myself into intolerable situations again and again hoping for a different result. also: i think my outward presentation tends to be quite composed when contact with other people is limited (what i lack in social graces, i can make up for with intellect, to a degree), and i'm good at limiting it - except at work.

so here's an example of someone who isn't doing especially well, and self-esteem doesn't have much to do with it, nor does social anxiety. ultimately my temporary successes have required an act that i can only maintain under very low pressure and for a very short time.