aspie focus and dissociation

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For awhile now,I have been trying to explain something I exerience that I "thought" was dissociation.I related this "feeling" as to a charactor in an existential book I once read.The charactor is walking on a beach and picks up a rock and looks at it.Somehow,his mind no long er understands what "rock" is.The object had lost all meaning and his brain could not seem to place it in "context".He could experience it as shape,texture color but not "meaning".I have the opposite problem.One object has meaning but the backdrop,scenery,room,forest.is a confusing muddle.

I know this is a pretty abstract concept,so maybe that is why I am having difficulty explaining this or understanding it for myself.
I have always had this feeling when looking at "big picture".Nothing seems quit "real".When I try and look at everything,I get confused and cant seem to feel that it is real.When I focus on one thing,I am calmed.I see all the details of it and it makes sense.

The oobvious explainations for this is AS,but it may not be the only explaination.I was also thinking that the AS tendency to spend time in "one or two deminissional worlds.....words,numbers,notes,internet,video games....make our brains more acustomed to one and two deminssion worlds.I guess it's the chicken and the egg syndrom....Do we choose these worlds because they are more comfortable because of AS or do we become more AS do to spending more time in these worlds because much of the 3D world has socializing that we either dislike or are excluded from by others(not to mention sensory issues).


Anyone know what the heck I'm "going on about" or care to comment.Anyone else experience that "sense" of the world not being quit real?

I have read words and all of the sudden the whole string of words made no sense it was pretty cool, there was absolutely no meaning.

I have experienced similiar when looking at a word and trying to remember how it is spelled.I think I have a sort of dyslexia but have never been tested,so may just be another nutty theory.I think I "read" words by seeing them as shapes and not as individual letters.

I know exactly what you mean. I used to think I was dissociating too, but I think it may actually be more hyperfocusing. In my case, I'll get so focused on my own thoughts that I'll become almost completely detached from my surroundings, and it drives me crazy. I can't even hold a decent conversation or get through the grocery store without my brain turning in on itself and beginning to grind away on some issue or concept. Nothing particularly negative in nature, just any subject that happens to be puzzling me at the moment. I don't even think it's ADHD-related anymore, because I still do it even now that I'm on Ritalin. The only difference is that instead of having 5 or 6 thoughts going, I only have one at a time.

Maybe our brain wiring makes us hyperfocus on things like our routines, "ordering" & categorizing things (even thoughts), solving puzzles & problems, etc. and so maybe as a result of this intense drive, we then experience any and all outside distractions as neurological assaults, because they're taking us off our course.

Me too(?)

Yes, especially recently as I am doing more programming as a consultant. Sometimes while working on a problem I'll suddenly realize, almost like waking up, that I have no connection to whatever is off the edge of my screen. Its like I don't know where I am, what year it is, even what I am. I stop to think for a few moments, recall that I am a biological being called human residing on a planet called Earth and then all the other details of my life come back into my mind. I guess I can enter some sort of 'Zen' state when I am focusing on something to the point of complete exclusion of the so called real.

Yes, especially recently as I am doing more programming as a consultant. Sometimes while working on a problem I'll suddenly realize, almost like waking up, that I have no connection to whatever is off the edge of my screen. Its like I don't know where I am, what year it is, even what I am. I stop to think for a few moments, recall that I am a biological being called human residing on a planet called Earth and then all the other details of my life come back into my mind. I guess I can enter some sort of 'Zen' state when I am focusing on something to the point of complete exclusion of the so called real.