Don't understand this...

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I used to, until recently, be almost too nice... in the sense that I found it almost impossible to say the word 'No' to anyone and would help if I was asked to (tho more because I had a fear of the consequences should I say 'no'). I was generally polite to people if I spoke to them, and I could tolerate better people being near me, and would even occasionally start chatting to a stranger if the mood took me...but the last month or two, I have become totally defensive, paranoid and angry and I am not sure why. If anyone comes near me, I tend to jump away or move away, if anyone talks to me while out, I blank them as if I have not heard them or swear at them, if someone in a shop bothers me, I get angry, and worse if anyone tries to tell me what to do. I have become wary of anyone looking at me and get shifty and angry if anyone invades my space or comes anywhere near me, and I don't know why it has got like this.


Granted, I have been under a great deal of stress and had my one friend turn her back because I accidentally offended her. I have been struggling to cope in an independent life, and I have been involved in an obsessive case of unrequited love for over 8 months...anyone else who gets 'people obsessions' will understand this, but could these things account for my sudden tranformation into an aggressive and anti social monster?

I spent my childhood being taught to be careful with what I say, and to behave in an appropriate manner etc etc, so this is in a way a turnabout from someone who used to be pretty gentle and who generally managed to hide her anger when people made sudden noises or came too close...

I have the problem with saying "no" to anyone myself.

Tim

It could be like a passive/aggressive reaction where you act a certain way to people expecting a response like you would give. You keep doing this without stating what you want. Finally, your frustration gets the better of you and you snap. You go off on that person or those people and anyone who reminds you off them. You become basically the opposite of what you were before.

You need to learn a more healthy way to deal with things. Being "polite" is not turning out to be too polite in the end. It might be better to just state what you want at the outset and let the chips fall where they may.

Don't fall over, but this is one of the few times I would say a Psychiatrist or therapist could probably help you learn skills to handle this better.

Do you think it could be a mild case of winter depression ? I live in Denmark, and the wet grey winter can be very long.

I think "I have been under more stress",could be the answer to your question.If I am in an ideal situation.....I am not ill,I have had enough sleep,I have been attending to proper food,water,physical activity,Not under energy sapping stress or depression....I can be very high functioning.I find things a "challenge" that can recharge me, rather then a burden that drains me.If any of the "ideal situation" was altered it will limit the overall energy level I have to draw from.Certain stressors will not just add to this but multiply their effects.

An example would be.......

I haven't had enough sleep which makes my ability to concentrate more challenging and my sensitivity to external senses more powerful which in turn inhibits my ability to focus even more.Then add to that an "internal stressor".....my best friend has "rejected" me and my mind continues to try and process "why",plus I have lost one outlet(someone suportive to share my stress)to dump the other toxic drains of the day.Add to this the feelings/thoughts about being a "reject" in general....my friend doesn't like me,my "obsessive " interest doesnt love me(I am a great black and white thinker and over generilizer who looks for patterns)So my mind is trying to process this rejection and "recalling" similar times I have been rejected in order to find patterns and hopefully solve the problem(Thanks a lot brain).....My brain comes to the logical conclusion after hyperfocussing on years of "felt" rejection.......I am a worthless human being who no one has ever loved or WILL ever love(This is a computer defect and not true but caused by hyper and narrow focus.)This "conclusion" is to over whelming for any brain to handle.It tends to lead to suicidal fantasies as an escape from the pain by imagining a "door" out of the pain or "white noise" created to block the thoughts but this is very energy draining and doesnt leave much left over to deal with the rest of lifes stresses or you can try and create a diversion/addiction to block the thoughts(I think this is what most people in society do.)

I think the best option is to reprogram your computer(brain process)to stop hyper/narrow focus and black and white thinking.I found certain cognitive therapies helpful.You cant change how much reality sucks but you can change what you focus on (with a lot of practice.)Like any skill ,the more you put into this process the more you will get out of it and the longer you practice,the better you will become at it.If you can achieve this,it will leave you more energy to deal with the stresses in your environment that you cant change.(Though,I have also changed which environments I will go into as some of them have air that is so low in "aspie oxygen",I find them life threatening.Also helpful to follow that AA rule when over stressed....HALT....acronym for .....
Hungry,Angry,Lonely,Tired.....if you feel any of these things apply,then you try to take care of them.

I suppose you pretty much summed up most of what is going on there, especially with the worthless and unloved part. I pretty much tell myself several times a day that I will never be loved or be of any use to anyone in my life. And my body clock is pretty messed up as I often stay up on the forums all night and sleep in the daytime, plus I do a large amount of exercise, often over an hour a day of heavy exercise. And I am struggling to find a focus beyond this man right now and find myself in a sort of limbo where I am managing to force him from my thoughts more, but unable to focus on anything else as a replacement. I suppose I just did not expect it to affect me this way, it never has before to this degree if at all...and it seems to be automatic. As soon as another human comes near me generally, I start to tense up with anger.

The HALT thing, I have come across before. I am always lonely, it is something I do not see an alternative to. I only talk to people online, no one at all in my real life.

Last edited by Graelwyn on 17 Feb 2007, 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

you sound exactly like some1 who i used to goto school with. he ended up running away and going to a city a few hours drive from here. he was considered a missing person and his picture shown all over the news. someone spotted him and the police had to pick him up and drive him home. so uhhh, dont run away, it will make s**t worse. after he got back and started going to school again, i noticed he walked real slow, talked real quiet, and looked at his feet when walking. i was going to ask him about it but my friend told me not too.

Hasn't the UK had a cold, snowy winter? Like someone else said it might just be Seasonal Affective Disorder from lack of getting out in the sunlight, being cold, sky being cloudy constantly. I noticed I get grumpier in the winter especially this year. I notice a lot of others in town have been overly grouchy lately too. Might be worth talking to a dr about and seeing if you need to see a psychiatrist or just need a Happy Light.

At 31, I am a little too old to be running away from anywhere and I live alone anyway. I also walk fast and look ahead of me mostly.

Had no snow this part of the uk, and have had some sunlight. I usually get a little more down in Winter, but not to the point where I am angry. I dont believe in psychiatrists, they are generally useless and up their own a**holes with their superiority complexes.

Politeness is absorbed and dissipated like a small amount of heat. I'm described alternately as very polite and standoffish, and that's why. Despite what they say or think people aren't attracted to politeness. It will make them cordial to you in the short run. But if you try to be as polite and as nice as possible because you're lonely (this is me, speaking about me), all you get is polite avoidance. The stress of putting on a smiley face and giving the world the benefit of the doubt is what does it for me. After a while I want to puke.

I have had "people obsessions" as strong as any herion withdrawl I have ever heard of....it can be really devestating.The person becomes my whole life,fills every waking second.I feel physically sick with longing to touch,smell,hear the individual.I make clay sculptures or draw pictures of them just so I can feel some some connection to them.II write pages of poetry reinacting every time I have come into contact with them.God forbid,someone should innoscently mention their name...they will get hours of my reinacting everything I know about the person.If I have an item of their clothing,I will sniff it like a junky getting a "fix".I will take any item of theirs ,where ever I go,like a tailsmen.I have even become obsessed with other people(when I could not be with the original obsession)just because the turn of their mouth was similiar when they smiled,or the shape of their eye......some thing that reminded me of the original "person/obsession".Some of these obsessions were resolved by eventually dating the person and losing the obsession as I got to know them as real people and not "objects".(I am very sad to say,some where hurt in this learning process of mine,for that I am very sorry).However,if the person eventually "dumped" me(after dealing with my fears of rejection and insecurity),the obsession could last years.Maybe inturrupted briefly by minor obsessions,but reborn when that obsession waned.

Your current agitation and anger sounds very much like someone who is going through a withdrawl from chemical use.(I have been there).You are trying to kick the habit ,which you know to be "unhealthy" but dont sound like you have the same support systems that most "addicts" have.An NT female or psychologoist might tell you that you should read..."Co-Dependency NO More"
(I hate these kind of books).You are not experiencing co-dependency but asapie obsession, which we use to escape our daily stressors and find some enjoyment in life.How do you give that up?If your obsession was guitars and not a person....society would find it more "normal" and exceptable and there would probably be shops and web forums built around your obsession to feed your interests and let you feel like a part of a community in stead of what a "person obsession" makes us feel....Lonely,stalker and pathetic....why is this?

I wish I could help.When I finally realized that my "obsessions" with people was actually some thing "I was doing" and not just that I kept stumbling apon the "gods" of this world(which is how I viewed them),It did put a more impowering perspective on it.
I even told a few of these individuals that I chose them to worship and that they shouldnt let it go to their heads(I am always surprised to find people who seem to enjoy being worshiped as much as they are annoyed by it).My last full worship was years befor the current person I have been with the past 4 years.It is odd,but I am pretty sure I actually love this person because I never did worship him.He was a person from the beginning,so there never was any disillusionment.I have had some "sort of" on line "crushes" on people,but it is never as strong as the "obsession" and just really an appriciation of their wit or humor.It hasnt altered my feelings for my current relationship,so perhaps that painful part of my life is over.I certainly hope so....At 43,I am less likely to be able to live out these "obsessions" unless it is with someone in their 60's.

The closest thing I can say to advice is try an persue other obsessions.We need them.Even addicts are allowed Nicorette,methadon and AA meetings.Your sleep schedule is the same as mine.Up all night,sleep all day.I found that to work to my advantage and got an over night job.

You have helped just by describing what I am going through. It has left me feeling like a depraved freak, to be honest, and it does not help that the person who I am obsessed with, in spite of being aspie himself, labelled me a stalker when someone asked him whether he liked me. But this is different to the others in that it is everything... I am drawn to him in every sense of the word. Usually, due to my abusive past, I am not drawn to anyone in a sexual manner, but with this man, I am, even though he is by no means conventionally attractive! I mean, the man walks around in much the same clothes each day, and he sometimess wears one of those old fashioned knitted tea cosies on his head which makes me like him even more. but what you describe is exactly it. I seem unable to go through a day without talking about any move he has made that might indicate interest, and there have been many, in spite of his not actually talking to me. I know he himself had an obsession with a female for a long long time, but maybe he just cannot recognise the same thing in me that he had himself? I am fighting to get obsessed with something else, but it is not working and I am left in this sort of empty limbo. The forums are filling some of it, but each day I wake, and he is my first thought. And my second thought will be, should I just stay at home today to avoid seeing him or shall I go out just in case today might be the day he talks to me?

With the letters I have sent, he knows more about me than most, and I am fairly sure he has read them as he used to take home the poems I left for him. It is so very frustrating for someone with an IQ of 150 to be trapped in this pattern, knowing it is causing me distress...but in the first 6 months, there was still enough joy and fun in it to balance it out. Now, as time has gone by with still no speaking, my hope has waned further and I am left with an internal tug o war battle between carrying on hoping in the hopes he might start talking, and giving up altogether and retreating back into my shell, so to speak. If there is one thing my interest in him did do... it got me out of the house, out of my room, away from my 24 hour a day internet obsession lol. But now I am left thinking it was not worth stepping out into that world out there in the first place, as once again, I have singed wings.

I vary between thinking I must be seen as a worthless freak for him to single me out for not speaking...to wondering why he cannot see our shared interests and my depth etc. Is this a grieving process? I did go through similar before after my last obsession, who happened to be a female who ran the spiritual forum I moderated, but the anger was not like this that time. I did not feel so much rage and I managed to make a pretty clean break and put all my attention into the forum I had opened myself.

Why can I not be like other aspies, and just get obsessive interests in a certain period of history, or in a certain scientific theory etc? I really envy the aspies who do not get these damn people obsessions, and at least obsessive interest in those other things is of some use and benefit whereas you gain nothing from a people obsession, unless the obsession focus happens to understand and befriend you.

I get people obsessions. Really badly. I'm recovering from one right now. Do you know what autosuggestion is? Our whole problem is right here. I can combat it by reminding myself of past "people obsessions" and how lame the people turned out to be; no one can ever live up to the vision you have in your head of them. The most frustrating thing for me is that, by some stupid fluke, I obssess about a person that I haven't much respect for. So I'm caught between this feeling of disrespect for myself for obssessing about a person that doesn't deserve it, and frustration over not being able to end the obsession one way or another. So I try to reverse the autosuggestion, which so far isn't working too well because the best way to do that would be to imagine myself with someone else, and I can't visualize what that would be like because having been with this person is the onyl thing fresh in my memory. So I just stop my racing thoughts and go "f**k her, she doesn't deserve this."

LOL Loved your Psychiatrist comment. That's why I said don't fall over when I told you I thought a Psychiatrist might actually be able to help with this. I agree with your assessment, but it still sounds like with these particular symptoms they might be able to help. If you've already tried it, well then I'm not sure what to say about how to break it. I'm the opposite. I can literally forget people once I let them go. It's kind of like I say I'm done and I really mean it.


I guess from a logic standpoint, you are going to have to look at those relationships and say, what is going to change if they are suddenly back? Is anything going to change? Sometimes I think we hang on to things that just clearly are never going to work because we don't want to see that black and white fact. Your relationships are not just about you, so therefore you cannot be the one totally to blame. Relationshps don't work that way. They are a dynamic between two people. Sometimes the dynamic is good at one point because you are both at the same place when it starts, so you get along great. However, if you don't develop the relationship into much more than just a dysfunction or neurosis that pulled you together (and unfortunately, most relationships start out this way, you identify with each other's problems), over time, as things change, the relationship will fail because what drew you together is gone and nothing else is there to take its place. This happens to NTs all the time as well, by the way. So, take you and the other person out of it and analyze it from the outside. Don't allow yourself to focus on you. You need to see the dynamic between the two of you and where it breaks down. Both people are responsible for that, never just one.

Once you do that, step back and take a look at why you are drawn to these people. We're usually drawn to people because they fulfill something we feel we lack. They compensate for us. They compliment us. The same is true for them. Figure out what initially attracts them to you. I'm not just talking words, think about actions. My husband has never said that part of the reason he loves me is because I don't notice anything in the house so I don't disrupt his "order" and I don't clean in "incorrect ways," but I can tell you that is a big part of why he's attracted to me. On the other side of it, I love that he takes care of all of that and lives in a minimalist environment. I love that I know where things are because he's so fanatical about order. I love his OCD behavior. It makes me feel calm. So, there's one big chunk of why we get along. The downside of that is that we don't even each other out really. He gets more OCD by the day and I couldn't begin to take care of myself. It's working, but it's not balanced. I just make sure I'm aware of it. I try to see it for what it is. It tells you much about yourself to do that exercise because most people do this. That's what causes attraction.


When you see the relationship from both sides, you'll stop taking the whole thing onto yourself as if you can be the only one responsible. You'll start to see the facts as they are and you can deal with that. You can take steps to deal with that. You won't have to feel so overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Try that and see if it helps. It's the only thing I can think that I do that might help. I hope it does help.


Oh, and gray skies make me depressed no matter how happy my life is. I can't believe how much it affects me. I live in FL and I still get that in the winter.

One needs to apply the same rules to this as any other obsessive interest. It may be an obsessive interest in a person, but in many ways, it follows the same pattern as any other obsessive interest an aspie might have...and I do not think many aspies quickly forget the last obsessive interest they have had. With most people, I can do as you say... I just let go. They still come back to my memory and I still sometimes get annoyed that they are no longer there, but I get on and do not feel much. This is a different ball game because it is an obsession, and not actually even a relationship. I do not have a relationship with this man as we do not talk. WE just 'dance'. It is a one sided obsessive interest that consists of a need to devote all my time to talking about him, thinking about him, analysing him, trying to work him out etc... much the same as you might with a new obsession with a specific game or a specific book or a specific invention. I have read that aspies react badly to their obsession being taken away or to any attempts being made to interrupt when they are engaged in their special interest. This is what this is, in a very real sense. A special interest, only it involves feelings in a more real sense, I suppose. And seeing as I have spent 8 months analysing both his actions and my own, I have already looked at it from almost every angle, although naturally, I lack the ability to have any real sense of what he feels or thinks about it. I can see why he considered me a stalker, but I cannot see what made him take my poems, how he might feel when he gets my letters etc. I have looked at this every which way, much as one might look at a complicated and apparently unsolvable puzzle. If I could simply flick a switch and say enough is enough, I would, but it doesn't work that way. As to facts... I have no facts. I have only the facts of how I feel and how this affects me as without any input from him, I have no facts on his part. I have asked in letters for him to make it clear one way or another. He has not. I have asked for him to stop hovering around me if he lacks interest. He managed a few days then went back to hovering. He veeers between hovering and indifference. That confuses me and makes it incredibly hard to totally back off as obviously, as soon as I see any sign he might want to talk, I return to making sure I am around wherever he is...usually the library...even if I am not in the mood to sit and read. The reason I do not see psychistrists anymore is because there was nothing they could come up with that I had not already considered or looked into myself already...and in the end, I realised only I could change it...or circumstances. In the case of people obsessions, it either sorts itself out when the person I am obsessed with says straight out they arent interested, dont like me etc etc, or when I really do just hit rock bottom and have to retreat into my own little world to recover. It is a difficult situation. My main priority is trying to stop my instant defensive reactions to people. I managed to not be so aggressive yesterday but it is a battle. Is it not ironic that someone who is esquisitely lonely makes sure that no one comes near her ?


As to the weather...Florida... I used to go there almost yearly on holiday(I am uk based). I had a Disney world obsession.