Living in the past

[BradT]

I was looking through my old middle school yearbooks and keep wondering what might have been if I changed things. I know neurotypical people sometimes do this, but can an atypical obsess about the past more than a neurotypical?

 

[Crossbreed]

Since being Born-Again, I have been comforted by the awareness that Someone is guiding my life, so I am no longer wistful about "what might have been..."

 

[BradT]

When I was in middle school, I was very disturbed to put it mildly. I had a huge crush on this girl and I would call her house on hang up and go by her house without her knowing it. I promise I didn't mean to do all that stuff, I was young, I didn't know any better. The obsession of her got the best of me and when I left the middle school ,I lost my friends, because they became scared of me for what they heard about me. I went to a different high school, because of it. I made new friends, but still because of my damn actions, I screwed up. I was wrong and I wish I could take it back. I'm wondering though could I have had aspergers back then and does it cause a person to become even more obsessive? This was in 2002.

 

[Crossbreed]

I'm wondering though could I have had aspergers back then and does it cause a person to become even more obsessive? This was in 2002.

If you have it now, you had it then. It is something we are born with, like being left-handed, but in our neurology, instead.

If our social discordance is disconcerting generally, it is even more so when we start to get a sex drive and fail to read courting signals correctly...! BTDT

 

[BradT]

I hope the women on this board aren't nervous talking to me now.

 

[Crossbreed]

Aspie women have similar issues. I like to think that we make more room for each other because of it.

 

[Gritches]

If I had a nickel for every thought that goes through my head that leaves me thinking "I should have said/done XYZ instead" I would have an annoying amount of nickels. Dwelling on it is a vice, not a virtue, but it's so hard not to.

Personally, I think it's part of being Aspie, partly because of a predisposition to obsessive thinking and partly due to just the sheer number of very painful social mistakes that came along with growing up Aspie.

With no user's manual on how to act normal enough to blend in, it only makes sense that that would come from trial-and-error, or as I prefer to call it trial by fire, so mass amounts of social regrets are just inevitable.

 

[convallaria]

I often think that everything could be different if at that moment in past I would say this cool phrase omg why I didnt think of this phrase before, its so perfect for this situation, why clever ideas and the right decisions come to my mind a few years later?

but probably it's not because we are aspies? you describe what happened when you went to school. I also had such problems in school. maybe we learn from mistakes longer than normal people, but we learn from mistakes. I think that all this is due to the fact that we were children or teenagers and were too stupid and inexperienced to think about the consequences or that in the future we will regret about our words or actions.

in our actions at a young age we usually use more feelings than the logic, right? hormones prevent our brain from working normally and force it to go insane during the puberty period. therefore, even NTs regret a lot about what they did in their teens. just we are more obsessed with the past because of more vivid memories and frequent flashbacks.

 

[Judge]

That was a major aspect of my becoming self-aware of my neurological profile. To look back on often painful interactions with others and pondering the mistakes I made long ago.

And knowing that my mistakes of the past cannot be rectified in the present. But to just try to learn from them to protect myself in the present and future.