Defining Ourselves via our Emotional Baggage

I don't know if it's just me, just aspies or everyone but it seems that most of the deep one-on-one social and philosophical conversations I have these days are about living with excess emotional baggage.

It's perhaps an "age" thing because I really don't remember my friends talking about these issues when we were younger. Strangely enough though, even my conversations with today's youth are picking up these angsty traits.

There are two good reasons why I'm beginning to suspect that its a trait that is stronger in aspies than in NTs.

The first is that my "meaningful" conversations are increasingly being held with other aspies and the concept of emotional baggage seems to be increasing proportionately.

My other reason is that when I examine my life and my present day actions, I'm relying on some aspie traits which I know aren't as strong in the average NT. Chief amongst these is the vivid long term memory,

The Influence of the Past
There's no doubt in my mind that we're all influenced by our past, NTs and aspies alike. We see that behaviour in animals.

For example; When our dog, a shi-tzu cross maltese, was a pup, it took an unexpected leap from an adult's arms. The dog landed quite painfully on hard concrete. The dog was ok but it must have hurt.

We rarely pick up the dog up nowadays except to show her things (eg: the rabbits who live over our fence). Even though nearly ten years have passed since the incident, the dog is still very unhappy about being picked up (she loves sitting on our lap though).

It's clear that we're all defined to some extent by our childhood (or in this case, puppyhood) but I think that the accessibility of the memory is a key factor.

Accessible Memories

There's no doubt that vivid memories (trauma) are remembered both by animals and people. There's also little doubt that these memories, both negative and positive affect our future actions. Where I think the aspie differs is that key memories don't necessarily need to be large or traumatic in order to be "vivid".

"Can't move on" is a phrase that is often associated with Aspergers. In fact, I'm sure it appears somewhere in the official criteria.

The inability to move on is due to a number of factors including; change resistance, routine, insecurity and memory. Children with aspergers seem to take things in like sponges and retain them forever. They revisit those memories over and over again and after a time, even the smallest and least traumatic of them can become a major influence on their lives.

Spiders...
So, we're clearing away cobwebs when you suddenly discover that your colleague is arachnaphobic. So you ask them "why are you so afraid of spiders?";

A typical NT answer: "Uh, I don't know, I just don't like them".

If you're lucky, you'll get a comment about their hairy legs.

An Aspie answer (my answer): "When I was four..." cue rather long story about watching my first Doctor Who (a special interest) story ever in which the hero is killed by a giant spider.

The spiders don't look quite so frightening

now but it was very scary aged four.

I know it's fiction but I don't just have the memories of the show to contend with. I also have years of bad experiences (all the other times I was scared of spiders) plus years of imaginings and bad dreams - yes, I remember them well - to contend with.

I'm an aspie and I remember everything, except sometimes names and faces and anything told to me in the last few minutes. My long-term experiential memory is great, the short term memory is abysmal.


Tune in next time...
As usual, I've waffled on and just realised that it's already a long post and I haven't gotten very close to the topic. Sorry, I'll cover the rest in my next post.