01 May 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism
Tags: Asperger's, Asperger's Syndrome, autism, expectations, gratefulness, integrity, loneliness, masks, social conditioning, who am I?
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I decided to copy to this blog, just for the record, a comment I made today on Lisa’s blog. One of the reasons I blog here is so that my children may some day get some insight into what life is like for this Aspie, so they can read and say, “So that explains it!” And so if I put a comment elsewhere that reveals a bit of what life is like for me, I may copy it onto this blog for future reference.
So here is what I wrote in response to Lisa’s question (for the full story, and the valuable insights of others, please see Lisa’s original post and the comments):
……………………………………………………..
“Hi Lisa,
I can sure relate to what you are saying here. It seems that you have described my own experiences.
I get so impacted by the feelings of others, and by their interpretation of the reality at hand, that I take on their stance and doubt my own gut instincts. This, I think, is because I have been made to feel “wrong” for so much of my life that I automatically doubt my own beliefs when contradicted or challenged.
I have to be very careful about what I watch on the screen. If someone is hurt or upset, that can impact me for weeks as it play over in my mind. A couple of weeks ago I finally watched Braveheart after avoiding it for years because I had heard there was violence in it. 
Well, I shouldn’t have watched. When the girl is killed by the Magistrate – well two weeks later I still feel sick and hollow inside. So filtering what I expose myself to is absolutely essential, and that would of course include people as well as DVD’s.
I often lie awake playing interactions over in my mind. One way I have found to get some peace is to repeat a phrase over in my mind, such as a bible verse or mantra, to displace the thoughts. Also I try to concentrate on (focus on) my breath so that my mind calms due to the effort needed to stay focused on my breath. But often my mind is in such a buzz that I simply cannot distract it, and so I spend hours tossing and turning while my mind spins.
I find expressing gratitude for what is, including me as I am and my life as it is, helps me centre and settle and calm.
And I remember that the same people who have convinced me that I was wrong in the past have often proven to be wrong themselves. This gives me more confidence in my own judgement. But often I forget to remember, and so get undermined again in the present situation.
But I have no sure-fire method. I am only learning to play this Aspie game, and I am so grateful to you and others who post and comment. I have learned all I know here in Aspie Bloggyland and I am greatly encouraged here and look forward to more growth.
And that is something to be grateful for and something that helps me to centre more, and trust myself more – the fact that there is growth! I can see the growth in you through your blog, and I can feel it in myself. And that is such an encouragement.
Love and hugs and blessings,
Bruce 
P.S.
I often find it hard to know what to do or what to believe. I seem to have a lot of self-doubt. I think this is because I really want to connect, and am willing to bend my guts in order to do so.
But the flip side to this coin is that I can be extremely stubborn, and stick to my own view, and essentially tell the world to shove it. I can simply close myself off to others and they have no access to me at all. This is what I did to my parents when I was in my teens.
This, I think, is a form of self-preservation. If I can’t connect without betraying myself, I put up an insurmountable wall.
So the pendulum can swing from being play-doh in the hands of others, to being a sharp-edged chunk of steel reinforced concrete.”
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Hmm…. Play-Doh vs. Braveheart! The movie of my life… hah!
Please visit Lisa’s blog (linked above) to benefit from the full discussion. (that’s not to say your comment wouldn’t be appreciated here, also, if you feel so inclined )
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23 Feb 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in acceptance, don't know, gratitude, Love, opinion, social conditioning
Tags: acceptance, authenticity, basic goodness, beliefs, belonging, certainty, community, don't know, expectations, gratefulness, gratitude, indoctrination, integrity, Love, search for truth, social conditioning, what's it all about?
I haven’t posted for a while so I thought I’d copy/paste one from my other, mostly inactive, blog. This was published there on May 25, 2010. It is primarily about religion, but applies to any groupings or divisions shaped and defined by words, such as ethnic, racial or political differences, sexual orientation, beliefs about educational philosophies, child rearing, debates about global warming, conservation, etc.. We are all in this mysterious thing called life. We need to pull together. Let’s let Love prevail.
Here’s my old post (slightly modified):
I have heard that there are well over two thousand Christian denominations and countless divisions in other religions too. And I ask what causes the divisions? Both within and between religions? Words. That’s it. Just words. And they are man-made words. Words thought up by (mostly) men. Human ideas about how it should be. People’s ideas about how they have it right and everyone else has it wrong.
These words cause “us-and-them” groupings and divisions. People gather around one set of words and take comfort in the false certainty that their words are “right” and others’ words are wrong, or at least mostly wrong. Then they get puffed up with pride in their superiority and feel they must defend and assert their “words” even at the cost of shunning the “others”, or even killing them. See the Inquisition, witch-burning, pogroms, suicide bombings, communist re-education camps,the KKK, the Holocaust, Rwanda,… just for starters.
But words are just symbols. They just stand for reality. They are not reality. The map is not the territory. Reality doesn’t change. Words do. We used to describe the world as flat. Everyone believed that. Now we describe it as a sphere, a ball. The world hasn’t changed but our words about it, and our beliefs, have changed a lot.
I can count on reality but I can’t count on words. Words are useful to the extent that they provide a predictive model that helps me prepare for what is coming next. But in the history of humankind the models have always required updating and improving as our understanding grew. Clinging to a model and defending it with one’s life betrays a lack of understanding of the tentativeness of models. Even worse is defending it by taking the lives of others.
There is an analogy from the East: words, dogmas, doctrines, beliefs, creeds, are seen as a finger pointing to the moon. The moon is Love. It’s the moon that matters. It’s the moon that is the object worthy of attention. It would be silly to stare at the finger (words), polish its nail, put a ring on it, worship it… all the while failing to notice the moon (Love)!
Now suppose there are six, eight or ten of us standing in a circle at night. We are each pointing a finger at the moon and at the same time we are each gnawing on our neighbour’s finger trying to destroy it, while at the same time trying to protect our own finger from the teeth of our other neighbour. Nobody has time to look at the moon (Love)!
Fingers (words, beliefs) will all age, wither and die.
Only the moon (Love) will remain!
Words, dogmas, doctrines , beliefs, creeds, will all age, wither and die (how many revisions have there been down through history?). Only Love will remain. Only Love is a constant.
And so with gratitude I will focus on Love. I will practice returning in gratefulness to Love whenever I wander or deviate from the path.
Love is a fire. May my divisive words be consumed by the fire of Love.
May Love abound. May Love flourish. May only Love remain.
May all beings everywhere be filled with Love.
I did a follow-up post later called “Bent fingers, Blind eyes.” It was about corrupt or misleading beliefs (crooked fingers) and about some people’s inability (blind eyes) to put even good beliefs into practice (inability to see the moon or Love). But perhaps that’s a post for another day. 
I hope this post isn’t divisive. I hope it fosters unification in Love. Let me know what you think.
20 Dec 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, masks, social conditioning, who am I ?
Tags: Asperger's, autism, integrity, loneliness, masks, social conditioning, who am I?
This post is actually a response to a question posed by Lisa on Alienhippy’s Blog. She asked us to share about “…the little you that is trapped inside. The one that you would really love to let out but can’t for whatever reason.” For Lisa it is symbolized by her “Shirley.” My response grew too big for a comment, so I thought I would post it here as a post.
Lisa, you really hit on the key here methinks! I have been thinking about who my “Shirley” might be all afternoon while I was out shopping. I have some likely candidates such as a steam locomotive engineer (driver), a medical researcher who offers compassionate care to his patients, or a landscape painter such as Camille Pissarro. But I can think of reasons why these would not have worked. Or perhaps I have left painting so far behind I can’t even imagine resurrecting it, and I am too old to study medicine.
So I go back to when I was not concerned about the opinions of others and I see a preschooler who would go up to the front of the streetcar (tram, trolley) and ask to ring the bell. When the motorman would say so, I would clang the trolley bell to warn cars or pedestrians. I loved being at the front clanging the bell.
Then when on a train I would walk up the aisle handing bits of torn paper to the passengers as their “tickets.” After everyone had a ticket I would go the length of the coach calling out “tickets please” just like the real conductor and I would collect all the bits of paper.
In first grade I was the class clown, doing Charlie Chaplin imitations and getting the kids laughing so hard.
Then my world went dark.
(Edit (2010/12/22): By “dark” I don’t necessarily mean depression. At first it was a sense of being different in some unnameable way, a bit weird, on the fringes, having ideas and enthusiasms and interests and passions that others did not share, being the creative non-conformist one, unable to connect as well as I would have liked, being told what I did and thought was wrong, etc.. Then in my early teens, over a split-up with a girlfriend, I began a journey into depression. But I did manage to weight-train and win my high school heavy-weight wrestling championship so the depression wasn’t so deep that it stopped me cold. There were definitely periods of time when I was paralysed by depression and I do remember those periods as very dark indeed.)
I remember going to a child psychiatrist at around six or seven years because I was a problem to my mother.
Contrast my little ticket collector with a young man in his teens who would ride in the vestibule at the end of the coach because he could not enter the coach with all those eyes looking at him. And who would not ask a girl out for eight years of his adolescence and young adulthood. And who saw his psychiatrist every Saturday morning at 11:00 am for six of those eight years, knowing something was very wrong with him but having no idea how to fix it. A long dark tunnel indeed.
Nobody knew of Asperger’s then. Nothing could adequately explain my life.
Happily there was light at the end of that tunnel. I married at 32 and am blessed with a lovely family.
But when working as a social worker, while raising my family, I would hide in my office on breaks and at lunch simply because I had absolutely no energy left with which to interact with my colleagues. I absolutely needed the downtime to recuperate. This prompted one of them to label me “The Invisible Worker” (was this a form of adult bullying??).
I can enter a coach now without problem so there has been healing of some sort. I still don’t like crowds or groups of people but I can handle them if absolutely necessary for brief periods of time. I always travel in my own car though because I just don’t like public transit.
But where did that little guy who joyously clanged the trolley bell go?
I began my blog “born 2b me” because I was searching for the real me behind the masks of social conformity. I wanted to meet the me that I was born to be, not the me that society shaped. I think this is why I so relate to your explorations, Lisa, on Alienhippy’s Blog. We seem to be on a similar quest.
After about 4 or 5 posts in July 2010 I gave up. Then I discovered Aspie blogs in August 2010 and had a huge quantum leap in self understanding. Asperger’s seemed to explain all the strange and unusual aspects of my history, in a way that nothing else ever had. So I started posting again at the end of September 2010 about my probable Asperger’s.
But as you say Lisa, it is not Asperger’s that keeps us trapped, it is our own fear of what others will think. How to get over that hurdle is Chapter Two of the saga. I’m glad I have you and other explorers to walk with on that path. I have noticed that since I identified with Asperger’s, I am less concerned about what others will think, and this has been liberating to a degree. I hope this sense of freedom and lessening concern will grow. So I don’t have a simple answer for how to get out of the trap, but I am trusting my ever-increasing understanding of my Asperger’s to help.
But I am still much too concerned. I can agonize over a phrase in a comment or post and find I can be quite tense when writing. But awareness of this is a step in the right direction. And I can get so uptight in some face to face encounters that I am virtually speechless! But I shall keep on keeping on!
Thank you so much Lisa for being such an inspiration. And thank you for all the laughs and giggles. Your willingness and ability to share your journey is a blessing to me and many others. Keep your lantern burning. It gives light to so many others.
(edit:2010/12/22: ’10 replaced by 2010)
17 Dec 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, masks
Tags: Asperger's, autism, belonging, integrity, masks
This is an update on a previous post.
Well, I finished reading Lord of the Flies and I am convinced that Piggy is an Aspie. He was consistently so throughout the book. I am sure that William Golding had not heard of Asperger’s Syndrome in the early 1950′s when he wrote the book. But he was an astute observer of human nature and probably knew someone who was an (undiagnosed) Aspie. He simply modelled Piggy on that real person.
In my youth, I found that Piggy was inconsistent with my macho self-image (I was playing a role then, acquired from my culture). But he was the one with whom I identified on this second reading forty years later. When I first read this book, I recall I identified with Ralph, who was the leader. Ralph is both a decent chap and a strong manly type, and so the younger me easily identified with him. Now after becoming aware of Asperger’s, and my probable fit with the diagnosis, I very easily identify with Piggy, even though there are some aspects of him that don’t fit me.
Piggy was an unappreciated outsider. He is the one who has the best ideas, but is ignored by essentially everyone except the leader, Ralph, who relies on his advice.
The book was not as difficult to read as I anticipated. I thought the violence would cause me to stop reading, as I know that I am very sensitive to the pain of others. There were definitely extremely horrible scenes in the book. But I am already very painfully aware of the very thin veneer of civilization from my reading of books by Holocaust survivors, writings of people who did not survive, and accounts of various other atrocities. Having some awareness of the outcome from my earlier reading of this book, and my daughter’s forewarning, meant there were no major surprises, and so I managed to plow through it.
It does show how terribly vulnerable any outsider may be when civilization fails. This is pause for reflection for those of us who have felt we were on the fringes, never really part of the inner circle, and unwilling, or unable, to join the herd or pack. As awful as the book is, I am very sorry to say there was nothing in Lord of the Flies that is any worse than reality, when the veneer cracks.
10 Dec 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, masks, social conditioning
Tags: acceptance, Asperger's, authenticity, integrity, masks, social conditioning
Coats, Masks and a Coincidence:
In the past few days both Clay and Laura have posted about the personae that people assume in order to face the social world. Laura describes these as the many coats she has worn, and Clay uses the analogy of masks. Coincidentally, a few days ago, I started my second reading of Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I first read it perhaps forty years ago and remember it as a book that made an impression, but I forget all the details and so it is like a fresh book to me. I asked my daughter at lunch today if Piggy survives, because I couldn’t remember. She told me, but I won’t mention her answer here so as to not spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, or who, like me, read it years ago and has forgotten the details.
Masks and a Pig:
I am less than one-third of the way through the book. I stopped last night where Jack has just killed a pig for the first time. He found it helpful to paint his face for the hunt . I am guessing the paint makes it easier to let out the more vicious side of himself, or maybe it actually generates a new and more vicious character. Perhaps the mask gives Jack the courage or confidence for the slaughter. I am also guessing that masks will enable the other boys to step out of their ingrained roles of decent behaviour. In other words, they will switch masks.
The Script:
Perhaps for all of us the wearing of a mask enables us to step into various roles in society without having to consciously work out what would be the appropriate behaviour for the circumstances. We just go on autopilot with the expected role. We don’t have to make moral, ethical, or any other, judgements. The down side of that is that we live out the life of someone else. We perform according to the script that was handed to us. We meet society’s expectations, often at the cost of our own. For many Aspies, I suspect the conflict between their own values and those of the larger society creates enough stress to drive them out of the role. They refuse to wear the mask. They won’t play the game.
The Emperor has no Clothes:
From my own experience, I would speculate that Aspies may tend to be nonconformists. I would often prefer a different way to the group, or see through things that the group ignored, whether that group was a few people or the larger society. This was in spite of wanting to be accepted. Sometimes that different way caused me considerable effort or pain; the effort of building my own house, the pain of being an outsider. I often did not conform to many of the role expectations of society. Or I simply did not understand what the expectations were. And when I tried to conform (for example, as a social worker) I burned out! So I often stood on the sidelines shaking my head, just as Piggy does in Lord of the Flies.
Piggy:
Which gets me to my conclusion: I am suspecting that Piggy is an Aspie. So far in the book, I have seen him think things through to their logical conclusion better than anyone else. He is least subject to group-think, and doesn’t run off with half-baked plans. He seems quite sensitive and considerate of others and has a strong sense of fairness. He seeks order, both in time (sundials) and in the conduct of meetings. He values and promotes respect. He is without guile. He steers by an inner compass rather than drifting with the group. I am guessing that he will resist painting his face.
I am a slow reader. I sound out each word as if I were speaking at a normal conversational pace. I can’t rush it. So I have a while to go before I know if my hunch about Piggy is correct, and before I see how this bit about face-paint masks plays out. I may be the only one in Aspie Bloggyland* who doesn’t know!
* “Bloggyland,” a word I love, is Lisa’s term, as far as I know (just to give credit where it is due).
22 Jul 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in don't know, questioning
Tags: certainty, integrity, questions, search for truth
But I now seem to have settled into a role of “pursuer of many questions” and it seems a very comfortable fit for now. Will I succumb to the temptation of falling for the security of a fixed and rigid belief system again? Only time will tell where the spiral will lead.
That is a quote from my third post dated July 20, 2010. The spiral has led to a return to faith and trust.
When Job, in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), pursued God with questions he was simply answered with a demonstration of God’s majesty. No other answer was forthcoming. I think this is because the human mind is just not capable of comprehending God and his reasons for doing what he does.
Hence I am faced with my pride and arrogance in presuming to question.
Psalm 131 tev
Lord, I have given up my pride
and turned away from my arrogance.
I am not concerned with great matters
or with subjects too difficult for me.
Instead , I am content and at peace.
As a child lies quietly in its mother’s arms,
so my heart is quiet within me.
Israel, trust in the Lord
now and forever.
.
And so I shall simply sit down, shut up, and trust in the Lord.
As I write this there have been 90 visits to this blog since it started less than a week ago. To all who have visited: Thank you. Your interest and comments are appreciated.
May peace and joy be yours in abundance!
20 Jul 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in masks, questioning, who am I ?
Tags: authenticity, beliefs, hypocrisy, integrity, masks, questions, who am I?
How many masks have I worn in my life? Some fit well for a while but then become suffocating, some chafe or itch, some make me feel accepted and at home, many I put off and on repeatedly as my mind changes or my mood shifts. They are often used to help me “fit in” or to give me a sense of identity or purpose. My hypocrisy meter tells me when I must discard a mask.
The masks have come in many flavours: Christianity (Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, Fundamentalist), Buddhist, Agnostic, Tibetan Buddhist, Scientific (Cosmological, Astrophysical, Psychological), Poetical, Artistic, Philosophical, Political, and Zen of various persuasions.
And those are only the ones bearing on beliefs or spiritual practices.
There are also the many hats I have worn: breadwinner, husband, father, citizen, family chauffeur, son, student, etc.. These roles are much more enduring than my adherence to any belief system or spiritual practice. Although the beliefs and practices have a form of constancy in that they keep cycling round and round in a sort of spiral.
Most of my masks or personas fail to satisfy as I become aware of their shortcomings. And it seems my enquiring mind never fails to find the inevitable shortcomings in any belief system. The result is that it is hard for me to settle down in one belief system for long. I am too full of questions! This is confusing and frustrating for some who wish I were more predictable.
I have often jokingly called myself “The Midnight Christian” because I would read the Bible late at night and remake a committment to Jesus only to wake up the next morning feeling very Zen again.
But I now seem to have settled into a role of “pursuer of many questions” and it seems a very comfortable fit for now. Will I succumb to the temptation of falling for the security of a fixed and rigid belief system again? Only time will tell where the spiral will lead. But now that I am looking at my life from the more meta-level of questioning the very nature of beliefs, and how we get hooked, I think it would be hard to take any one system too seriously. Let the questions rule!
17 Jul 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in good questions, who am I ?
Tags: authenticity, basic goodness, core, don't know, God, heart, Holy Spirit, integrity, prayer, search for truth, social conditioning, what's it all about?, who am I?
On this blog I hope to explore just how much of me is authentic, genuine, real, and how much is the result of social conditioning, programming, and religious or political indoctrination.
Who am I ? That’s a good question. I am often convinced that I know the answer, only to find out shortly thereafter that I don’t know.
Is there a “god”? Integral to this search will be an exploration of whether or not there is a “god” and, if there is one, what his/her nature may be like. Part of that will be an examination of whether or not prayer “works” and if so in what way and for whom.
Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? I anticipate looking at these questions as part of my search for who I am.
Of what does my “core” consist? Is there at my core a “Basic Goodness” as the Shambhala Buddhists teach? Is there “That which is of God in every (hu)man” as the Quakers claim? Is there a line separating good from evil running through my heart as Solzhenitsyn believed? Am I the temple of the Holy Spirit as St. Paul proclaimed? Is my heart of hearts good, or, as Calvin taught, totally depraved? Will something survive death?
Can words ever capture or describe reality? If not, then this whole blog will be just noise – a very real possibility!
Will you join me in my search for “me”? Please comment on my posts. I welcome, and I am sure I will benefit from, your criticisms, comments, knowledge, suggestions, wisdom, experience.
I make no claim to “know” anything so please don’t let anything I may say spoil your own faith. What I write is just “opinion”. Take it as such. I may change my opinions almost daily! That has been my habit.
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