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| Why I hate Diagnoses |
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I've just come to realize I'll never be happy unless I'm underweight. I've seen a light flickering in the deepest darkest depths of the tunnel and my bad days are when the light turns off and I sit around and wait for the light to flick back on, because leaving that light for the end of the tunnel seems like heading into oblivion...so I sit in the darkness waiting for the light to flick back on. I have no concept of other people. I've had 26 years of practice so I know when to pretend to care, what to say and how to act, but I just have no concept of all these people in my world. My therapist asked me if I thought it was because it hurt too much to think about. I'm open to her opinion so I've thought about it quite a bit, but that's just not it. My sister has this running commentary about people and I've found myself wanting to scream at her to "Keep quiet! I don't care!" Even when she hears of tragedies that happen to acquaintances, or even complete strangers, she and everyone else seem to have a certain feeling about it, an empathy that seems to me to be grossly over exaggerated. I don't feel anything. I never have. Since I was old enough to understand the world beyond my own, I've noticed I have no feelings one way or another when things happen to other people, even happiness doesn't come over me when I believe it should. Only when it directly effects me, only when things are good or bad in my own life do I feel anything, and then I feel everything. Even when my "friends" and family have good or bad things to say, I don't feel sympathy or joy unless it effects me in some way. It's not that I don't have a heart. I think people who are that way are really just angry or resentful or something. when I was young I wondered why people felt so much for and about others and I didn't. I can fake it if you like, but I don't feel it. I wish I knew why because I realize it's abnormal. I have to add a preface to this part in case my therapist reads this, but don't take me seriously if you don't like what follows, take it as I needed something to write. My therapist brought up a few years ago Asperger's Disorder. We went through the DSM4 somewhat clumsily and that was that, we've done it with other things "just for the hell of it" I guess so it wasn't anything new. She brought it up later, I'm sure after reading a short blurb I added to my website as "food for thought," a one or two sentence entry, saying that she didn't really think I had it sort of thing. I get frustrated with diagnoses for this very reason. My old psychiatrist once told a guy who was talking over some of his patients, including me, that I had "severe OCD" which was news to me. I've heard agoraphobia and social phobia but recently my therapist said I'm not even close to having agoraphobia. I've heard BDD and PTSD and various other things, but in the end it all seems to come back to the feeling that there's nothing wrong with me, it's all in my head, so take six months and figure out how to get over it. I won't comment further on that statement, at least not today. I usually take these diagnoses and throw them out unless I hear them over and over like "depression" and "eating disorder." For some reason Aspergers has come up only once or twice but it keeps popping up in my mind. Recently I watched a show on Discovery Health or TLC about the family who has six or eight children and they're all autistic. About three have typical autism and the others have Aspergers. People with Aspergers can be perfectly functional in all areas except socially, that's where the diagnoses is made. I was reading online from a page on Syracuse University's personal home pages: "As adults, individuals with the condition may have problems with empathy and modulation of social interaction." I had to look up modulation: "An inflection of the tone or pitch of the voice ; specifically : the use of stress or pitch to convey meaning." My paragraph above pops into my mind and this description of adults with Aspergers sounds eerily familiar, if not a gross understatement of how I see myself. I partially feel as though I've been acting in a great dramatic work displaying all the expressions and feelings I've learned about over the past 26 years, and my audience is...my family and my therapist and every person I've ever met. On the other hand, I start to throw Aspergers out with the rest because I haven't heard it more than once or twice in relation to myself. Unfortunately, I'm desperate for a reason behind my complete lack of "caring" about anyone [ever] and I start to wonder again, if there's a name for it and if this is it. This is why i hate diagnoses. Last update: 08-10-2008 06:30
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