Shut off thinking

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Have you ever consciously shut off thinking?

I did so, for decades, shutting off thinking about everything else except for what I was focused on or what caught my fancy at that point in time ("special interest").

Focusing on your special interest is not shutting off thinking.
It is focusing on one topic, which is thinking.
Most people can focus and think about one topic, it is normal.

I don't think I could ever totally shut off thinking, the brain really abhors a vacuum.

I suppose you mean "flow". Yes, that state is easy for me to enter. I'd suspect most people on the spectrum do it frequently.


As for actually "shutting off" my thoughts. Taking seroquel is the closest thing for me. It probably discards 80% of what's going on in my head a few hours after I take it.

Let me explain a bit.

When I was at college or at work, I only thought about college or work and "special interests" (which are pretty diffuse in my case and of which I had multiple going on at the same time). I simply shut off thinking (or even giving the basic attention to) about everything and everyone else like my college mates, my professors, my co-workers, myself, my clothes, what i ate, my health, the bills I needed to pay, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn etc etc - I mean everything .

I am still trying to figure out the reasons I did this. Possible ones I can think of are

1. I couldn't break the "flow" of thinking about school/work/special interests.
2. I couldn't deal with the cognitive load of thinking about everything else

There are quite possibly other reasons which i have not figured out yet and would love to tap into the collective wisdom of WP to help me figure out.

Similar, but can't always do it on command.
The flow, or continuous rolodex of problems to solve is what happens in my conscious though.
Most of my conscious thought is a simulation, or learned batch of algorithms that use memories that have been sorted by conscious thought, and using multiple conceptual associations.
This process causes my anxiety.

The other type of thinking is partially unconscious, but does register into the higher brain areas where the conscious stuff usually resides. It can borrow patterns from the consciously stored memory, but mostly uses experience memory (real stuff), where the few associations used are linked to real sensory experience, such as a scent (not a concept).
The process is less controllable and seems to go at its own rate.
Focus is very easy and the experience is usually pleasurable.


It might be more accurate to say that you have shut off your identity rather than your thinking.

Why the anxiety?

Is the problem accurately simulating a concept? Is it mapping the concept to the real world? Or is it the implementation that is hard?



I think, therefore I am?

It is really scary how easy it is for me to shut off my identity. Allowing my identity to take a back seat to work and special interests has had far reaching negative consequences, so I would not recommended it to anyone.

At the end of the day, it just seems like an inability to have and maintain an identity while also focusing on work etc - something that should be most trivial to any NT.

The problems that need solved repeat in rolodex fashion, prioritized with worst possible addressed first. Counselors call this obsessive or repeating "negative" thoughts, and they generate a fear response, which translates into anxiety.

The algorithms used in thinking use conceptual tools as though they were real sensory input. Learned concepts, patterns, and methods are used in this thinking. "Learned" usually means downloaded from other people. Solving a "real" problem using mostly conceptual tools is most often problematic. Solving conceptual problems with conceptual tools can work in the mind, but rarely solves any real problems. Implementing conceptual solutions to real problems is nonsensical for the most part, but nevertheless is extremely common.

Generally all conceptual information in the brain has been filtered by the identity software. Conscious thinking filters the world in terms of what it means to the imagined identity.

Most NTs do not even consider solutions to problems that are potentially harmful to their identities, no matter how effective the solution would be in the real world.

NTs generally never shut off or bypass their identity software. It is used for everything at all times, except maybe when they are sleeping or unconscious.
It requires either remarkable discipline and/or rigorous peer review for an NT to produce anything like an unbiased work that does not serve their identity in some way.

I know that a great many non-NT people have well developed identity software and basically use it in similar ways to the NTs, because they have been conditioned to think they are supposed to.

When non-NT person ignores, or otherwise refuses to acknowledge or serve an NT's identity, then they are often accused of being self-absorbed, or unable to see from other perspectives.

On this forum a lady recently explained to me how she was justified in treating others badly if they were younger, and had not earned a relatively significant position in the pecking order, and also failed to recognize her authority and previous experience. I suggested that she was expecting others to serve her identity and position in hierarchy. She then said it had nothing to do with hierarchy, and that she wasn't surprised that I was unable to understand her alternate perspective. Perhaps not, but from my perspective her statements were very text-book hierarchy type thinking.
It was some sense of "fairness" or "respect" based on the amount of suffering an individual has chosen to tolerate in the past, thus earning special consideration.
Fail to give this special consideration, and expect to be treated poorly as a human.
"Rank has its privileges" and "punishments" are text-book features of hierarchy.
I did not try to explain these things to her because it seemed completely futile.
Anything that threatens someone's identity is either ignored or attacked.