Autism recovery story

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

Normalcy ... mostly dictated ... it's too easy to twist. ... in the long run I prefer to call myself quirky - an acceptance of both my own and the majority-based view on my specific behaviour and needs.

Down with marmalisation!

 

[Matthias]

I agree that the key to a better life is to change some of the key beliefs everyone holds. However, one day? That's too simple, too idealistic.

I read a book by an expert in CBT and he claimed some of his patients recovered from years long depression in one day. That was because their depression was caused by one key belief. Once they changed the belief that caused their depression, they had no reason to be depressed.

Recovery in one day is obviously not the norm but it is possible for some people. The quality of the therapist probably makes a big difference. A study found that 70% of the people who read the book "feeling good" by David Burns, an expert in CBT, were cured of depression after just 4 weeks. Of course, everyone is different. There may be biological factors for some people that make things more difficult.

 

[SDRSpark]

There may be biological factors for some people that make things more difficult.

You mean like...autism?

 

[Matthias]

And this is the exact thinking that has harmed myself and so many of us. Having the information and community that we need to thrive withheld from us because we're "too high functioning to qualify".

You've just summed up perfectly everything that's wrong with your line of thinking.

One thing they could do is expand the criteria to include the broader autism phenotype as part of the autism spectrum. If that happened, around 1 in 10 people would end up meeting the criteria for autism. It would mean I'm still autistic, I haven't recovered, but just reduced the severity of my problems. I don't have any problem with that.

On the other hand, if you shrunk the criteria, so that only those with more severe symptoms met additional non-genetic criteria, then people could improve enough that they no longer met the criteria which would mean they wouldn't be considered autistic anymore.

 

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

...
EVERYONE is normal. Dividing people into two groups is a cognitive distortion called dichotomous (or black and white) thinking. That thinking error causes stress which impairs a person's ability to think clearly. I'm sure most people would agree they can't think as clearly or as rationally when they are angry. That's true of every emotion as well as stress.

Here are some examples:

Someone with IQ below 70 thinks, "I'm retarded. I wish I was normal." Better belief - "I'm a normal person with below average intelligence."

Someone who is severly psychotic thinks, "I'm not normal. I'm crazy. " Better belief - "I'm a normal person suffering from a mental disturbance."

A severely autistic person thinks, "My brain is wired differently so I can't understand people as well as normal people." Better belief - "I'm a normal person who has difficulty understanding people."

Well look, I'm going to match your "arguments" gambit for gambit, so please attend extra closely. Apart from presumption, because none of us asked you to pull our conversational style apart according to your snooty criteria, you are inconsistent.

Autistic people know that everybody's brain functions uniquely (if quite a lot of people are rather similar) and therefore being "a normal person who has difficulty understanding people" is in fact the same as "I have a different way of being normal and I'm slower at understanding some people (and everybody else is also slow at understanding some people)". This is because many of them won't be bothering, while we benefit ourselves by the amount of aforethought we are clever enough to put in.

Please join a psychosis forum & bestow your light on them! (Irony alert.)

Thirdly you are perseverating because you don't know how to piggy back on cues to take initiative. Please set your threads to alert then attend to your other thread because we've posted a lot of responses to it and we need our contribution over there assaying by your fine critique.

Fourthly your pain threshold has fluctuated. Well so has mine and I bet you haven't anything to say to that. (Irony alert yet again!)

 

[onlything]

Down with marmalisation!

Do you mean marmalisation as in:

-the act of unleashing upon a person and completely and utterly destroying them into a pool of viscous orange bio-sup

or

- a process intended to instill a sense of social compliance through constant smiling?



Actually, I quite like being called quirky. It's such a nice word if you compare it to a 'freak' and somehow as soon as someone hears 'autistic' it turns into just that! What a strange characteristic it is...

 

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

I read a book by an expert in CBT and he claimed some of his patients recovered from years long depression in one day. That was because their depression was caused by one key belief. Once they changed the belief that caused their depression, they had no reason to be depressed.

Recovery in one day is obviously not the norm but it is possible for some people. The quality of the therapist probably makes a big difference. A study found that 70% of the people who read the book "feeling good" by David Burns, an expert in CBT, were cured of depression after just 4 weeks. Of course, everyone is different. There may be biological factors for some people that make things more difficult.

Forum members should preserve their own privacy but you now owe it to us to disclose things about your position. Are you a publicity agent / marketer for Burns / Bowlby / the CBT industry or similar - or aren't you?

 

[Matthias]

The problem with saying people are "normal" is it's dismissive. I've heard this my entire life. "You're just quirky". I know people who say this are trying to make me feel better about myself, but here's the thing: I don't feel bad about myself in the first place. There's nothing wrong with being autistic.

Understanding that I'm autistic and what that means has allowed me to understand why I am the way I am, why I do the things I do, and most critically: how to work with what I have in order to live my best life.

"Normal" me couldn't manage very well at all. Autistic me understands sensory issues and meltdowns, and how to mitigate those issues in order to prevent the stress and overwhelm that leads to at best, discomfort and at worst, very bad situations. Autistic me understands my difficulties in understanding people's motives which allows me to make adjustments to the way I interact with others. This in turn keeps me safe(r). Autistic me understands that I don't communicate the way others do, and this allows me to be clear about what my needs are when communicating with others, so that we can bridge the gap between my communication style and theirs. Autistic me understands that I don't know my own emotions all that well, and that I need to put in effort - by putting in that effort, I can greatly improve my life.

These are all greatly positive changes which were withheld from me by insisting that I'm normal. Understanding that I'm autistic allowed me to work with these things and find a way to work around them or better yet, make them work for me. I couldn't do any of that when I was trying to see myself as "normal" and not understanding why I was failing so miserably at things that others found effortless. Recognizing that I'm not in fact normal, has afforded me a great deal of self compassion that I wasn't able to have before and has released me from a lot of shame that I carried as a result of the things I couldn't seem to get right.

Being "normal" isn't a good thing at all, in my case.

You can acknowledge and accept all of those things without placing yourself in a separate category as other people and believing you are different than them. Many "neurotypical" people struggle with stress, get overwhelmed at times, have trouble communicating, and misunderstand people. It's normal. It means you have weaknesses just like everyone else. Shame comes from blaming yourself. If you know those weaknesses aren't your fault and you're satisfied with the effort you are making to improve yourself then you won't feel ashamed.

 

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

Do you mean marmalisation as in:

-the act of unleashing upon a person and completely and utterly destroying them into a pool of viscous orange bio-sup

or

- a process intended to instill a sense of social compliance through constant smiling?



Actually, I quite like being called quirky. It's such a nice word if you compare it to ...

It was a play on "normalisation"!

My own favourite epithet is "clunky". I love to clunk!

 

[onlything]

I read a book by an expert in CBT and he claimed some of his patients recovered from years long depression in one day. That was because their depression was caused by one key belief. Once they changed the belief that caused their depression, they had no reason to be depressed.

Recovery in one day is obviously not the norm but it is possible for some people. The quality of the therapist probably makes a big difference. A study found that 70% of the people who read the book "feeling good" by David Burns, an expert in CBT, were cured of depression after just 4 weeks. Of course, everyone is different. There may be biological factors for some people that make things more difficult.

Maybe it would be easier to believe if you gave the name of the expert.

I'm happy that it helped these people in one day if such a thing truly occurred. Yet too bad that normally depression lasts for months or years and the recovery time is so much greater than that - and greater yet for those that have recurring episodes.

It makes me wonder how great of a part of the whole is depression based on a single core belief when most recoveries include medication, specialist therapy and/or lifestyle turnover. A curiosity. How does it happen and what could be an example of this kind of a core belief?

 

[Matthias]

Forum members should preserve their own privacy but you now owe it to us to disclose things about your position. Are you a publicity agent / marketer for Burns / Bowlby / the CBT industry or similar - or aren't you?

I'm none of those. I'm just an ordinary average person who likes to help people.

 

[onlything]

On the other hand, if you shrunk the criteria, so that only those with more severe symptoms met additional non-genetic criteria, then people could improve enough that they no longer met the criteria which would mean they wouldn't be considered autistic anymore.

I can't even imagine how bad it would have been for us on the 'high functioning' end of current spectrum. It makes me wonder what would have happened if my counsellor at the time never told me about autism. If I never knew that there is this kind of people, this kind of thinking. If I were stuck in that weird, miserable loop knowing that people reject me for something but not knowing what, that I am wrong but not understanding why... Getting to know about autism literally saved me from committing suicide. It gave me a REASON, it gave me a POTENTIAL, a POSSIBILITY... A Community. If autism and its diagnosis criteria were only about the low end of the spectrum and my counselor never even considered it, we wouldn't be talking right now.

 

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

You can acknowledge and accept all of those things without placing yourself in a separate category as other people and believing you are different than them. Many "neurotypical" people struggle with stress, get overwhelmed at times, have trouble communicating, and misunderstand people. It's normal. It means you have weaknesses just like everyone else. Shame comes from blaming yourself. If you know those weaknesses aren't your fault and you're satisfied with the effort you are making to improve yourself then you won't feel ashamed.

Who said we're ashamed. We don't know that you are a genuinely vulnerable person.

And you don't know anything about my categories. Difference doesn't put anyone into a different category from me. Your theory of my mind and your theory of your mind are abysmal.

And none of us came running to you asking for your light about any conviction that we were at fault in our being.

Every time you post another post you don't explain what move you are making.

 

[SDRSpark]

I'm none of those. I'm just an ordinary average person who likes to help people.

It's been made pretty clear by almost everyone responding that your idea of "help" is harmful.

What is your obsession with your idea of fixing us? We are just fine with the way we are and most of us are vehemently rejecting your idea that we should consider ourselves to be like everyone else. This is especially infuriating because many of us have been badly harmed by these ideas in the past and continue to be badly harmed by these ideas today.

So why do you continue?

 

[Matthias]

Maybe it would be easier to believe if you gave the name of the expert.

It makes no difference to me whether anyone believes it so I won't take the time to dig for a quote.

I'm happy that it helped these people in one day if such a thing truly occurred. Yet too bad that normally depression lasts for months or years and the recovery time is so much greater than that - and greater yet for those that have recurring episodes.

It makes me wonder how great of a part of the whole is depression based on a single core belief when most recoveries include medication, specialist therapy and/or lifestyle turnover. A curiosity. How does it happen and what could be an example of this kind of a core belief?

The reason people are depressed for years is because the treatment they received was inadequate. The serotonin/chemical imbalance theory has been mostly debunked. The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly against it. Numerous studies have shown that antidepressants aren't any more effective than placebos with the exception of a minimal improvement over placebo in the most severely depressed patients.

Psychoanalysis and other talk therapies are a long, slow process because they doesn't focus on what causes a person to become depressed. If you search any reputable medical site for depression and treatment, you'll find the most effective treatment for depression and anxiety is CBT.

The core beliefs to focus on are how you see yourself, other people, and how you feel about the future.

If you see yourself as inferior, think the world is full of bad people, and feel hopeless about the future you are very likely going to become depressed.

If you see yourself as just as good as everyone else, believe the world is full of good people, and feel hopeful about the future it is very unlikely, maybe even impossible, to become depressed.

 

[Wolfgangus Faldestolius]

I'm none of those. I'm just an ordinary average person who likes to help people.

Are you going to attend to our posts?

 

[onlything]

Shame comes from blaming yourself.

No, it doesn't. It comes from others blaming you. It comes from people telling you that the way you are and think is wrong, that you have to change your core personality to fit their view of normal. When you're a child, your subconscious takes these voices into an internal talk - only then you start to do it to yourself.

 

[onlything]

It is strange to me that you describe yourself as an average person that wants to help but proceed to ignore questions for sources that would help us, as rather analytic people, to understand your point of view and possibly cause some of us to even believe you and benefits of CBT a bit more.

 

[Matthias]

It's been made pretty clear by almost everyone responding that your idea of "help" is harmful.

What is your obsession with your idea of fixing us?

I got better because someone else helped me. I wish someone had the courage to help me sooner. I don't like seeing people suffer so I want to pass it along and help others.

We are just fine with the way we are and most of us are vehemently rejecting your idea that we should consider ourselves to be like everyone else. This is especially infuriating because many of us have been badly harmed by these ideas in the past and continue to be badly harmed by these ideas today.

So why do you continue?

There is nothing anyone can say that will infuriate, hurt, or harm you or anyone else in any way. Do you know how I reacted when that person tried to help me? I got angry and yelled at him because I felt I was being attacked. I thought he made me angry but I now realize it was my own beliefs that made me angry. When I decided to follow his advice a few months later, I got better and now feel great.

 

[SDRSpark]

I got better because someone else helped me. I wish someone had the courage to help me sooner. I don't like seeing people suffer so I want to pass it along and help others.

There is nothing anyone can say that will infuriate, hurt, or harm you or anyone else in any way. Do you know how I reacted when that person tried to help me? I got angry and yelled at him because I felt I was being attacked. I thought he made me angry but I now realize it was my own beliefs that made me angry. When I decided to follow his advice a few months later, I got better and now feel great.

Good for you. Most of us have already attempted what you are advocating for and have found it to be harmful. We have experienced the consequences of the ideals that you are espousing and have paid the price.

And, shock, horror many of us are not suffering! We are thriving despite having had to overcome a world of difficulties brought on by ideas like yours.

You're making CBT sound like the new, more palatable bleach cure. It's not palatable. It's highly transparent and you will continue to be shouted down.