Catmachine

Following the post I made at the end of last year which discussed my reaction to having been officially diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Condition (a.k.a. the Syndrome Previously Known as Aspergers ), I've noticed that there are a few misconceptions that have made their way into received wisdom about how I must behave. These are not true for many reasons. For a start not everyone with ASC is going to behave in the same manner. Everyone is different no matter where they sit on the spectrum. It is perfectly possible to have ASC and be an introvert or an extrovert. Some people might exhibit certain symptoms whilst others don't. One of the most common preconceptions that people seem to have is that I will take everything they say literally. That if they use an idiom or colloquialism I will think they actually   mean that someone has (say) eyes bigger than their stomach. Well no, of course not. That would be silly. I have enough of a sense of the real world and what...

Anxiety is a very annoying sensation. One of the many problems with it is that half the time the rational side of your brain knows full well that the thoughts you're entertaining are preposterous rubbish but nevertheless you carry on entertaining them anyway despite the fact that they've long outstayed their welcome. There's something about them that holds the brain in thrall, a mysterious quality of the reply "Yes I know it's probably nonsense but WHAT IF... " that is far more powerful than the statement that provoked it.  Sometimes the only way to make anxiety pack its bags is to sleep on it. Even then - depending upon the subject of the anxiety - that doesn't necessarily work. Sometimes the next day is worse, especially if accompanied by the hangover produced by the state of inebriation that caused you to do whatever it was that made you start worrying about what people thought of you in the first place. And this of course is the nub of the matt...

Do you ever have dreams in which there are two versions of the same person? The strangest thing is that in the dream you don't really notice. It's really quite odd - there's Jack and of course there's Jack as well. Often one of them is a lesser instantiation - they have less talent or inspire less fear. You say I thought Jack was frightening but they're nothing compared to Jack! Sometimes it's something less negative - Jill will show you something and you think That's interesting - I bet Jill would like that, I'll have to remember to tell her about it! This last one sometimes occurs in real life - when Jill shows you something just for a second you think that Jill would be interested and resolve to tell her before remembering that the notion is ridiculous. It must be caused by an error in brain processing. A person is probably represented in the memory space by a complex object with myriad properties and associations. Perhaps sometimes two ver...