Handling the autonomics

techstepgenr8tion · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject:

Where to start this one....hmmmm.......

I can't really bring together what got me thinking about this, maybe just seeing a more confident side of myself in tutoring a friend in math, maybe listening to something in the car that felt beautiful, that brought out my own inner feelings of such, made me feel every bit of the NT sort of spirit within.

I've always realized that I'm stuck in a very strange dichotomy, in that yes - I have AS, but emotionally, the way I feel, what I gravitate toward, I identify a certain sort of out-in crowd of NT's so to speak...

Won't go into that too much deeper, just needed to set the basis. I find myself having, and have had all my life, a very odd conflict. I'm one thing inwardly, another outwardly. When I think of the warm, intelligent, but strong and charismatic - like the sort of NT who's the hero or heroin of a great movie, the character who's very full in their emotional development, very confident, very graceful; I have that in me (I don't doubt everyone does but for some reason, the crowds I attract, the types of friends I've had, they've helped me really get in touch with it and realize its there).

On the other hand, to the judgmental, I visually look - like I should be a complete loser. Like that stuttering goober who they tore up through gradeschool, highschool, and they didn't know him - they didn't need to, just the way he looked was more than enough to bring it all down on him. What does that consist of? I know I'm not bad looking or anything but, I'll admit I have definite autonomic issues. I have an awkward gate, my facial expressions, while I can make my face move a good deal my expressions (no matter how sincere the emotion) barely come out right, to the right degree, really convey me accurately.

True, I can completely disregard what people think and put the judgemental in their own little bag, make a 'me vs. them' conflict, but a) it feels intellectually dishonest, b) it opens no doors, c) the culmination of those two - to put it off and not accept and handle both my real self and my outward as separate dichotomies and be understanding of all responses I get - is really lack of forward motion, lack of me giving myself what I think I'm due in terms of true confidence.

Anyway, the bottom line of this, feeling like the best of me was being released, I decided to just make an exercise of it. Smiling to myself in the mirror, see if I could really project the nuiances of the emotions that I was really feeling. Yes, my face made a semblance of it, my eyebrows barely did a thing, I was able to at least get a bit more of the miniutia behind it since it was loaded with sincerity.... but what really struck me was my pupils.... for the life of me, no matter what I decided to think, I could not make them dilate. My eyes tend to be very glassy, often cold I think (that visual cue that would make people thing 'rofl, there's no one in there' - huge dehumanizing factor and yes, I think something that people really pick up on, just like facial awkwardness, as signs of a person who's feeble and signs of a person who they should reject, and if not persecute at least keep their distance from).

All the same, my eyes don't dilate, and I still find it incredibly weird.

Being overzealous, being too ambitious to say let go, I really think I'll be devoting myself to building that inward character that I was feeling tonight, keeping it, and its true - I have many layers, very deep ones, unfortunately for people who even know me I feel like they're very difficult to read just because of the fact that my expressionality says little or nothing. Three of four years ago, I would have just emotionally knuckled myself down, pretty severely, hoping that my severity on myself would teach whatever subconscious part of me that was needed, to understand that this matters - even treating my social flaws like life or death of honor didn't work. I through that approach away, had to for the sake of my own mental health (and yes, 9 or 10 years with only so much progress and actually realizing that I was diminishing my own humanity in the process told me that I needed to let go).

Here's where I'm at, I'd love to try and find a way to make all of this look right. When I'm smiling, when I'm having a deeper thought, when I want to show the purity of my own intent, when I want to show every layer of what I'm feeling and thinking on my face - I know that it'll never be realistic to ask that much of myself, but I love to know if anyone has learned to gain control of these sorts of autonomics to a degree. I'm guessing, probably just by the nature of roles, that the women here would have more answers than a lot of the guys. Still guys, if you've been through this one yourself and come to any conclusions that work I'd be glad to have you weigh in on it.

Yes, I write about some very seemingly weird, esoteric, almost outside-everyone's-scope types of things quite often. Wish it wasn't that way, as in while I know I have my own degree of insecurities its helped me a great deal in dissecting them. Maybe life has been that extremely polar for me that I've been pushed to these lengths more than others, I don't know. All the same, if this post does fall to the bottom - I'll understand, and no, I won't feel raw about it - too far passed all that now.