Is the real problem that we lack 'heart'?

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I've been looking at this a lot more lately, some moments I seem to have a much more vivid view of it due to various factors but its all still in various pieces that I'm trying to merge. BTW, I had a really great post written, albeit lengthy, and as I was about to send it I right clicked and pasted instead of copied - now that I've had a second to get my head around that one I'll try to re-explain this as best I can.

I notice that there is a lot of good advice on gender roll, the types of things that guys naturally and specifically need to fill for things to work (rules are pretty iron-clad here, AS or not). A lot of guys, even if successful, assertive, well-dressed, socially skilled, can't get themselves on this train because while they cerebrally get the need to do these things they know its a completely futile and failed fight to try and make yourself do a lot of things, things that are very heavily built on nuance and syntax, without really feeling it and having genuine motivation to do it exactly as so.

Here's what I think happens - we have to literally throw out our emotions to make it. As kids, for whatever reasons, our emotions were out of phase, off-point, incorrect, and we paid a heavy price for it. We found, then, that the only way we could really grab a hold of things and have our own degree of control and understanding was to chip away at things logically and analytically. Nothing else would work. In the end, while this helped us in many ways regarding the boiancy and control we had of our own lives to certain extents, it destroyed us on the romantic relationship level, really honed down what kinds of guy friends we did well with having, and none of it was very liberating in terms of us having much control of our lives. Also, while it made us able to be more assertive on some angles, we hit a wall as we realized that a large stretch of human decision making, to be viable, had to be emotionally based rather than logic - otherwise you can think away and look weak, look like a pushover, and still be as weak or weaker on other angles just because the natural fight isn't in you as much and takes things more direct than what people realistically give you in order to trigger.

It seems, at least from my own perspective, that a great many NT's live in a (comparatively at least) stoned and narcotized state and sense of emotion (please don't take this as a diss - its more how it feels, the intensiveness, its actually fascinating and for me has a lot of inherent sexiness and gravity). They seem to drill into that the way we drill into physics, binary code, etc. and just like that it feels as dizzying, mind-altering, and at the same time very connected to what feels like its emotional 'source'. Jumping to another instance I can remember being at my 26th birthday party, an old friend for ages who'd moved down to a big college/party area and was going to school was in the thick of the action - I went to his place and met the 15 or 20 kids he had hanging out over there that day. What tripped me out though, from the emotional current, it really felt like a highschool sports movie, highschool drama, or a Stomp The Yard or Coyote Ugly type of thing - VERY NT but very immersive in terms of drilling into that sort of emotional world. The funniest thing I remember though, as a kid I really was like that - I remember feeling that way, being a much more emotional person than logical, and in all of them I saw a very potent form of who I used to be and also in a very refined form; almost tempting for me to want to wonder what would have happened had I never thrown that away thinking that I'd like myself so much better and be drilling something far more me, high, and pure just by really going on analytical thinking and binding my emotions to that instead.

In the end, after years now, I only feel bits and pieces of that coming together again. At 28 I'm at least able to revive parts of it cerebrally, get myself to understand what I'm seeing in pop culture and movies, hearing in an artists voice, swagger, and presence in most music, and of course feeling those real vibe and aesthetically-oriented people who I've known throughout the years. Again, its a very immersive and intensive side of things; ever since my 20's though I've loved diving into new unexplored terrain like this just because of many mind altering experiences I had (yeah, I think you get my drift) and that led me to a place where what ever was real, not only did I want to chase it but I really wanted to grab as many of the most interesting corners, outlooks, and approaches as I could. There are a lot of paradoxical layers of this, its a challenge but again I'd have to say that I'm something of a perceptual athlete.

Am I being to hard on myself or breaking what I should just let be? I don't know, but I do know that even for me to really embrace myself as being PDD-NOS, reconciling that to the sense of self I have right now, and possibly reconcile that to a very real and romantically viable self - it will take having more 'heart', learning to re-instill that in myself because any other way you can't find the precision or focus to act decisively on the fly; which is a very bad problem to have the way our world works. Also, even if the opportunities I have in my future leave me being and doing much better being single, I'd still rather have the other perks of less struggle, melding in more easily, losing the anxiety, and having again - more control thus more confidence and not be fighting so many emotions that seem arbitrary to what I need to do rather than aiding me. That and if I do wind up with someone (I really believe aspies and NT's are mostly the same here) I'll need to have that more emotionally intimate part to myself and be able to do that. After piecing my natural emotional side up so much and having my 'superego' dictate over it so much, its been something excruciatingly uncomfortable and too alien for me to do right - part of this struggle of course is gaining grounds in that compatibility so that if I do find someone thing would work well with I'll have that natural compatibility and she will be more naturally at ease with me as I'll be able to think, feel, and experience life in a way that's refreshing to her.

Not sure how this sounds to all the 'Accept yourself as you are' people, change really just feeds my own addiction to try new angles and have more control, more knowledge of self, and I feel like you have to do some ballsy or edgy things sometimes with your own emotional core and really get in there to institute changes - especially as you learn that certain things really do nothing but hurt you do to an imbalance in how you process. So just understand, I need this within myself I think to really feel, if not like a whole person, but at least much closer to it.


Sadly, this is written nowhere nearly as well as the last post I did but oh well - I'll get over it. Also, some thinking that I have may seem black and white in print - understand I'm not absolute on the big picture, these are just components and of course ignoring many mitigating factors; still, my tendency to prefer precision in describing things and getting an idea across means a preference to isolate dynamics and speak of them in pure form. Still, just drop a line and let me know what you think. I still have a lot of points and tie-ins from before that I left out, I'll try to bring those to mind as people ask questions or as I'm able to remember them in relationship to this overall idea.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 13 Apr 2008, 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll be very short. I am not dx'd, I was brought up as an NT, surrounded by NT's, of course I suffered from this, I took the aspie way (logic), now I'm moving back to the NT world, so I think I know quite well both worlds and all I can say is: you are definitely right.

It's mind boggling, isn't it...how well the so called "super-ego," the BRAIN, can control any shred of "primitive" emotion you might try to feel. Unreal.

Don't know about you guys...does it ever happen, when you are surrounded by very loving NTs..that it...rubbs on you too and you start to realize and to feel? Then if they're gone, that sense of "aroused" emotion just disappears after a while..

In terms of getting those things out of myself yeah - I was able to gain certain mindframes but it would slip away once the stimulus that actually helped me and hit me from the right angle left my presence. When I do feel something new and really get the sense that I came across a deeper understanding of it than I've ever had to date; I do try as much as I can to hold onto, if not that feeling, at least the lessons that I learned from it in hopes that I can make that more common as I gain more exposure to it.

I wouldn't say we have to throw out our emotions, we just have to suppress them. I've come to the belief that aspie emotions are far more powerful than the respective emotions of an NT, and can cause problems if they are expressed unchecked. All the way up to halfway through high school, my emotions ran unchecked and I caused much in the way of disruptions in school, for example...

In other words, we have to do as the vulcans do...

Right, but that's a double-edged sword as well - you get yourself to be purely logic and even if you're able to sport it in an artsy and virile way, at least according to yourself, it doesn't work. In the end there's only one way to get things done, to actually be in the flow with your surroundings rather than going against them. When you talk about your emotions being destructive though; I think after that deconstruction period - when you've been in it for a long time, tore out the real maladaptive stuff, and feel like you just need the fire to handle life the way everyone does; you return to it but just down a different track if that makes any sense.

For me I don't know if I ever will be fully able to, I know for sure I'll try and I know that I'll use that new trajectory to bolster confidence, try to keep myself at peace with myself no matter what the obstacles are (literally - taking the highest points I've had, weaving them into my identity, and using that as another catapult to really put me in and keep me in the right places), have myself imagining being able to really show effection and instinctively be a good boyfriend, husband, father; also having it in me to know how to stay on top of dynamics and if things get dangerous for me and especially for my family - I know how to squash it and am, if at all possible, 2 or 3 moves ahead of the problem. To gain that sort of direction, it takes rediscovering instinct and really going at it; doesn't take a whole lot of ego (if anything that just makes you blind) but it takes feeling over thinking a bit - something that I could never make sense of my world while doing in the past, though at this point I think I may well be satisfied enough with what I have figured out and who I've become on the inside that I could take that route.

First of all: Non-diagnosed person.

"Heart"? I put a lot of "heart" into everything I want to do (as opposed to what I'm forced to do).

I'm obsessive, see.

Even to the point of a "narcoticized state", as you put it - just not all the time, but sometimes.

BTW: I am just as good at synthesis as I am at analysis.

Next time hit Ctrl z. Instant undo.