Do you know who you are?

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I'm not sure if this is just me or do other aspies feel the same way. Are you ever confused about what you should do with your life? Are you not sure what your interests are? Do your friends ever think you should do something that you might not be good are or don't think is right for you. What do you do for fun, do you love things that are not easy for you, but hate the things you might be good at?

All the time. What I want & what my family wants for me are definitely not the same. Plus I don't think my interests & talents match up at all. Sigh

Agree with all of the above. Also have no idea how I am perceived, or even what my personality is.

Perhaps off-topic; if so, my apologies in advance.

...when I've talked to other people, especially those in one of many forms of therapy, the focus seems on stripping away bits and pieces of debris in order to show what is the considered the 'whole' person underneath. This has been almost completely unsuccessful and baffling to me, and I think I understand why as of recent. Instead of sculpting myself, I am required by my processes and my perceptions to use a constructivist approach, building my personality and responses with selected components. Trying to take those apart is like taking a sledgehammer to a world of Legos - there are recognizable pieces, but nothing relates and most of it is merely pieces.

Do I know who I am? I'm getting to know the person I've become, and trying to rebuild on the fly as my understanding increases.


M.

I was going to post about the same, it's nice to know someone else has a similiar understanding of how they work.

i am me, i am here, and thats about it!

Count me in.


Yes.


There is a core but a lot of searching outside that, sort of "trying them on"


That has happened.


That's a longer answer than hands are willing to type right now.


That has happened.

Yes I often feel there is no point in my life, I ask my pastors often what is my place, I have no idea

Never. I know what I am supposed to do in life - make things as happy as possible for myself. I know what makes me happy so I just do those things and do not do the things that make me unhappy.



This is confusing to me. How could one not know what their interests are? Can't people tell what kind of things make them happy?



No and even if they did, I don't think it would affect me in any way.



I love things that are not easy for me. This does not mean that I do not have fun doing them. Challenges make me happy. I am very good academically but I steered clear of subjects I found easy, for example. I find the things that I take to naturally boring as there is no difficulty in achieving things.

Why saspie is happier than me

I noticed you said "pastor". Are you religious? I used to be too, as I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church. I was incredibly unhappy. The moment I became an atheist was the moment I found joy in life and realised I only have my life on Earth to be happy so I better make the most of it. Also the world became infinitely more fascinating now that I don't think God just created everything by magic.

Yeah, I go to a church. Don't know why sometimes. I had atheist parents.

I think I am sort of trying to find my identity right now. One of the issues I have been going through is that the world has been down on me all my life because of my poor organisational skills and social skills.

So I tried to be what others wanted me to be. The results have been disastrous. Ive been trying to drop the organisational skills I learned as Im the sort of person who is either completely disorganised, or obsessive and OCD, and Ive realised I would rather be disorganised than uptight and unhappy.

Ive also dropped the punctuation and spelling standards in my posts. I cant be bothered reaching the apostrophe, though I have good grammar... sometimes I dont put the capitals in like I should either. I want to stop being a perfectionist as it isnt me, but a personality I was forced to adopt when I worked as a secretary, which I hated anyway.

As for the social skills well mine are pretty good but I am going to drop most of them for a while. Why? Well I feel it takes up so much of my thinking and concentration to come up with the right thing to say, and word things correctly, that there is not enough room for me to be creative and I have realised that that is more important to me, to be a spontaneous thinker, than to please everyone.

So if I have been obnoxious on the board over the past few weeks, that is why. I am just being myself. It never made me friends in the past, and I dont expect it to now. Maybe I should just accept that I am just not a people-pleaser. Its hard, anyway.

Not really.

Now, to get back to the original post...


Am I confused about what I should do with my life? Somewhat, yes. I love music, must write. I enjoy teaching. Neither are particularly profitable or stable, and deplete my resources in terms of coping with interaction. I run a small business; it is taxing. But given the choice between that and a cubicle farm working on the phone? *shudder*

Am I unsure about my interests? No, those are surprisingly constant... reading, music, computers, observation, animals, antiques.

Do others think I should do other things? Yes... most believe I should pursue law or medicine. Psychology interests me, but anatomy disturbs me; while I am fascinated by minutiae, the legal profession would kill me.

What do I do for fun? Canoe. Wander. Read. Write/compose.

Does the difficulty of something affect my interest? Somewhat; I never trusted the things that came too easily.


M.

Last edited by makuranososhi on 14 Aug 2009, 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have a pretty good idea who I am, overall. Finding how to live with it and make that answer work is the real question for me.