Asperger's & Autism Forum

What exactly is black and white thinking? I read through a few past threads about it this morning, and a lot of people think it's synonymous with "holding strong opinions from which I will not budge." According to what I've read elsewhere, this isn't actually what it means. Kind of, sometimes...but not exactly. It's more immediate and impulsive and seems to me to be the result of logical thinking twisted in a strangely irrational and oftentimes emotional way.

Examples:

-You and a friend get into a disagreement, and you think it means that the friendship is over.
-You get a 98% on a test, but you believe you failed because you either get 100% or you fail.
-You abandon a hobby because of one perceived failure.
-You stop reading a book because there is one thing you don't like about the main character, so you assume that you can't relate to her at all.

So maybe black and white thinking is about attempting to apply logic to situations that can't be evaluated logically because...

Do they make you feel uneasy? or what

My younger sister constantly has animosity towards me. Everyday her mood is one of passive aggressiveness and rudeness towards me, specifically.

She is never happy for me, nor is she generally decent towards me.

Every morning when she gets up she lashes out at me.

When I ask her (after work) how her day was her response is “[deleted] off” and it is the same if I ask her where she is going. She is rarely interested in interacting with me.

When she comes home from work, she goes up to bed and does not come back down again until 12 hours later when she goes to work again.

She’ll constantly hold grudges for DAYS and will never accept an apology.

She doesn’t do me any favours or anything that would benefit me.

If I ask her to get me anything from the shop, she’ll say “no” 9/10. This evening my mother asked me to transfer money to her account so she could get me donuts.

Well... guess what she didn’t get donuts claiming they were all out of date. I have just been to the shop she...

Belong to a breast cancer program. Every year I go for a mammogram, I'm in the control group, as there is no breast cancer in my family history.

So you go, making sure that you are wearing nothing that will interfere with the tests. You can't use deodorant on or powder or anything with scent or hair conditioner with scent (I don't use scented products anyway). No jewellery of any kind. I drive the thirty or so minutes, remove all my clothing, put on a hospital gown and paper slippers and wait to be called in.

Then spend twenty minutes or so having my breasts squeezed between two thick flat glass plates. While a technician re-adjusts the angles and touches me. The plates compress them to a thickness of about two inches. It hurts for two days afterward. The last time I went, I threw up my lunch in the hospital parking lot afterward.

I have a mammogram coming up this month. And don't want to go. I feel guilty as when I originally signed up for it, I was keen to do this for science...

Not sure really what l experience but l will over-analyze like l have OCD as a cognitive switch to think it (subject) beyond what it was originally. It was worse when l was younger.

Also l have to constantly see every connection, every pattern, l have to know how the bigger picture comes together. Luckily this has dimished somewhat with age.

It never dawned on me that this could be a issue. Also l really want to break everything down to mathematical odds, like a bookie. I need to know the odds of something going either way.

Descartes is famous for his quote : l think therefore l am.

Hey, what are you blessed or cursed with in thinking patterns that you deny but it's all there everyday of your existence?

I only ask that because I've heard that older parents are more likely than younger parents to have children with Asperger's/Autism

Because... My parents did not meet each other until mom was 32 and dad was 40 and they had four children after that... I was born 10 years into the marriage, so mom was 42 and dad was 50, definitely older parents

One reality of my life was that I wasn't going to have my parents for very long compared to most of my friends... My mom was 64 when she passed away from ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease, so she died fairly young, and I was 24... My dad lasted until the age of 83 before he passed away, but I was only 33, when other people I know have their parents alive for most of their life

And to make a long story very short, all of my grandparents died long before I was even born

That's my family! Plus three other siblings too

Abstract: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21642850.2019.1684920

Article that linked to abstract: Autistic adults thought they were 'bad people'
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Transcript of aforementioned Article:

"Many over-50s who were diagnosed with autism late in life had grown up believing they were bad people, according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine.

Researchers from Anglia Ruskin University interviewed nine adults about their experiences of being diagnosed with autism in their 50s. The participants were aged between 52 and 54.

As children, some participants recounted having no friends and being isolated from others, and as adults they could not understand why people treated them differently. Several had been treated for anxiety and depression.

Participants also highlighted the lack of support available to adults with a new diagnosis.

It is thought to be the first study of its kind that examines the phenomenon of...

Hi I am curious to know if folks find it easy to talk about their feelings with others?

This is something I am really bad at! I either don't know what my feelings are and they manifest in strange ways...ie irrationality angry about something that doesn't matter because something else is happening I didn't think I was angry about.

Or and this one is the bigger one I don't know how to! I have no idea how such a conversation takes place and what it is intended to achieve. It my mind was a computer then the folder for discussing feelings is utterly empty. Others I can add things to but i can't seem to with this.

Hello everyone.

Last time I was at my therapist she said something about how at the last session she felt like I was ignoring or discounting everything she said but then she said don't worry, it's not like I take offense to that.

But honestly, I felt like since the first day there were a lot of things I said that she brushed off or discounted, I have a few things about me that probably aren't "typical autism" that made my diagnosis take a little bit longer maybe, but some of those things she just brushes off and dismisses like she must think I made it up or something.

One thing in particular is a condition I suffer from (note the use of the word suffer, for me it is debilitating and extremely distressing) and she just ignores the fact that this condition bothers me and laughs and talks about how "interesting" it is.

The more I think about it, the more angry I get. Like, I'm there for therapy, she ignores and dismisses my concerns and then complains that I was dismissing her...