Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

(unimportant)
Nerdy Autistic Stuff

ASD(compartmentalization) > (ADHD <> OCD) -> Stress (or Trauma) => Detachment > Disassociation

Detachment: Detachment disorder can refer to different psychological conditions that involve a disconnection from one’s feelings, surroundings, or identity. My experience is that you lose connection with your emotions and even your body’s signals. Note that I understand the sense of self, and I understand Identity as the measurements we use by the self.

If taken further, detachment leads to disassociation:

Disassociation: Autism dissociation is a term that refers to the tendency of some people with autism spectrum disorder to disconnect from their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in response to overwhelming situations.

Disassociation can become very severe to the point where we treat those individuals with it, as having disconnected from reality and are having a nervous breakdown or a psychotic episode. However, that’s very different from the Autistic spectrum behaviors I’m discussing here in an attempt to help others with ASD recognize, name, and gain control over their feelings.

In my experience with severe stress, exhaustion, and illness, I never lose my logical faculties, but I lose the relationship between my sense of self, my intuition, and my feelings, and largely function as a machine. And unfortunately, a handful of extra SD’s of IQ obscures the autist’s state of mind from the observer. 😉

I’ve told people when in that state that “I’m not really here” meaning that my autistic masking is still operating, and my autistic logic system is still working, but I may lack intuition about myself and probably lack all empathizing, and sometimes any sense of causality over time – and so I can’t be sure the answer, advice or opinion I’m giving them is what I would do if I wasn’t detached or disassociated.

We forget that most of our decision-making still relies on intuition – intuition we have trained from experience, and even increasingly abstract experience such as education.

I think of this experience as ‘war mode’. There is a difference between a fight and a battle. In battle, you can ‘depersonalize’ – where lot of (all of that emotion shuts down, and you just ‘do’. I experience it as ‘floaty’ or ‘flowing’ and when it’s happening it’s kind of exhilarating- at first. 😉 So It’s like an extremely strong and persistent ADHD experience.

Now, I have a hard time switching OUT of ‘war mode’ because it certainly feels like a drug – until your body gives out at least. 😉

In other words, like the male autism spectrum or the female psychotic spectrum, I’m not sure these are defects so much as abilities that are useful, but that they are useful in war and crisis. But not so useful today when you can be in a war mode for months or even years on end.

Other than psychosis and schizophrenia I keep discovering the utility in the range of human cognitive frames, and our present problem is largely our failure to understand these states and change our environments enough so that we restore our normal state. Or better, train our generations into mindfulness such that we defend against entering them when unnecessary.

This modernity we have made is not mentally healthy, and we need the mindfulness of stoic training as much or more so than we need physical fitness training and educational training. Religion can’t do it for enough of us. We need a discipline that doesn’t require suspension of disbelief in order to capture everyone who needs mindfulness.

Note that I don’t discuss the Autism spectrum as a disability until it is one, where there is no sense of self at all. In fact, given the inversion of the IQ curve, it sure looks like evolution is telling us something very important.

I hope someone else finds this useful.

-Cheers
Curt Doolittle
The Natural Law Institute
The Science of Cooperation