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I'm a shut-in. This is my story

fighttheurgetofade.com

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Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#91

Post by CanSpice »

There's one paragraph that's sticking with me:

> Play keep away with a normal persons hat and you're just taking their hat. Play keep away with an Autistic persons hat and it's possible that it's his best friend named "Charlie". It's highly unlikely that Charlie enjoys flying at highspeeds through the air into greasy hands. You're not playing keep away with a hat, you are tossing around and abusing his best friend. It takes a damaged monster to play keep away with someone's dog or their younger sibling, but most will think nothing of playing keep away with the weird kids hat.

My four-year old daughter isn't autistic, but this morning we were running to her daycare. My wife had her blankie and was out-running my daughter. All of a sudden my daughter stopped and started bawling, when five seconds earlier she was loving the chase. I'm thinking that maybe the above paragraph doesn't just apply to autistic people, it applies to anybody who forms a bond with an inanimate object.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#92

Post by astine »

There is a persistent ignorance about homeschoolers lacking socialization, an assertion I find laughable. Homeschooling done properly, frees up more time and increases true socialization. I was involved in sports, chess, and a wide range of homeschooler organized activities. 90% of the homeschoolers I have ever encountered were as equally if not more involved in social activities.

I was homeschooled and while it's true that homeschoolers tend to have cooperatives, and join social clubs, you're still more isolated than children in more traditional situations. To this day I'm more socially awkward than most of people I know and I wonder if the homeschooling didn't have something to do with it.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#93

Post by cowsaysoink »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #74
jey wrote: post #25

I have a logistical question: how/what do you eat?

I presume he orders online. I'm not sure what it's like where you are but here I order online from the largest supermarkets (Tesco, Asda etc.) and have it delivered to my door the next day for a £3-5 delivery charge. It's pretty commonplace.

That isn't commonplace in the US which I assume that is where he is from considering the whois info.

In fact it would probably be much more expensive here.

The main choices probably are a family member picking up groceries for you, or a small market which still can deliver groceries, I know mine stopped offering delivery around 5 years ago because the community size grew so much.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#94

Post by readme »

Recluse? I work from home, so I only leave to get groceries or go out to dinner with my girlfriend on an average week. I don't have any more IRL friends.

Going to try to make some when spring comes, but it's too cold to really bother right now. Being a recluse isn't so bad.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#95

Post by Domenic_S »

jpxxx wrote: post #44
thaumaturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...now be the best person in other people's lives. ...Why? I've spent most of the last ten years trying to do just that. Do you know what it has gotten me? Let me tell you what it has gotten me: friends and family that never call unless they need something; an utterly depleted bank account; a complete lack of respect or even human regard from my peers; a pile of strife and struggle and pain and misery and not one s…

I don't appreciate some self-loathing bitch drafting on my thoughts for misanthropy points. You know what sucks worse than trying to find competent professional medical attention in America? Blowing your head off with a gun and leaving your decomposing meat for someone to find and clean up. Those are the stakes here. This author wrote a novella about watching his life reduce to nothing, then wrapped it in a wordpress…

Well said. I want to add a couple comments:

-For some people, writing it all out is therapeutic. That's probably the best time (most suggestible time) to suggest therapy.

-CBT is useful, and the #1 long-term cure for depression. A good CBT therapist is what the author should look for.

-Author is making plans for the future, which is a good sign that things aren't totally dire right now.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#96

Post by cryowaffle »

jpxxx wrote: post #44
thaumaturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...now be the best person in other people's lives. ...Why? I've spent most of the last ten years trying to do just that. Do you know what it has gotten me? Let me tell you what it has gotten me: friends and family that never call unless they need something; an utterly depleted bank account; a complete lack of respect or even human regard from my peers; a pile of strife and struggle and pain and misery and not one s…

I don't appreciate some self-loathing bitch drafting on my thoughts for misanthropy points. You know what sucks worse than trying to find competent professional medical attention in America? Blowing your head off with a gun and leaving your decomposing meat for someone to find and clean up. Those are the stakes here. This author wrote a novella about watching his life reduce to nothing, then wrapped it in a wordpress…

Please, tell us how you really feel :). Good work, I hope this gets back to OP.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#97

Post by emilnewton »

I say fade. See what happens.

You already know what happens if you don't fade.

You fight every second of every minute of every hour of every day until one day you die. It'll be exhausting and possibly not worth it.

Maybe fading will be some totally cool experience? Of course no one else would ever know, but screw em.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#98

Post by crntaylor »

unconed wrote: post #84
RyanZAG wrote: post #37

I think you're wrong on one point: you constantly repeat how different and strange you are from everyone else. You're really not. As you mentioned at one point: you didn't want to go out and play, but the teacher forced you to do so. This is very common behavior, and teachers are forcing children every day to go out and play. Huge amount of people go through similar experiences to yours. Others start to lapse into an…

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane.

I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve vocalised words, others might involve images, sounds, or recalled emotions. Sometimes the associations are sequential, sometimes they are parallel. Steven Pinker refers to this as 'mentalese'.

Edit: also, this: http://xkcd.com/610/

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#99

Post by RyanZAG »

unconed wrote: post #84
RyanZAG wrote: post #37

I think you're wrong on one point: you constantly repeat how different and strange you are from everyone else. You're really not. As you mentioned at one point: you didn't want to go out and play, but the teacher forced you to do so. This is very common behavior, and teachers are forcing children every day to go out and play. Huge amount of people go through similar experiences to yours. Others start to lapse into an…

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part is that you can communicate with other people and learn from them - from their different ways of thinking.

So I agree, I never said you were normal. I never said I was normal either, or that anybody else was normal. The idea of normal is something you're forcing on the world. Others are trying to force their own idea of normal on the world too, and yet others are trying to change themselves to match someone's idea.

Throw that idea away and live your own life.

Also, there is a lot of acknowledgment and research in education into the different ways different people learn and how to identify and teach different people. Unfortunately, it's a wicked problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#100

Post by snowwrestler »

noname123 wrote: post #52
thaumaturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...now be the best person in other people's lives. ...Why? I've spent most of the last ten years trying to do just that. Do you know what it has gotten me? Let me tell you what it has gotten me: friends and family that never call unless they need something; an utterly depleted bank account; a complete lack of respect or even human regard from my peers; a pile of strife and struggle and pain and misery and not one s…

Hi Sir, Thanks for spelling out the truth. For those who are young and impressionable, listen to this man. Let me paraphrase his two points, 1) Being a nice person will not only earn you any affection you crave but the opposite, contempt for being an agreeable person. 2) Professional help is an oxymoron. Psychiatrists waste money and time. In my humble opinion, fundamental human problems involve three things, social…

This is bad advice. Being a nice person is almost always the right thing to do. Nice people are pleasant to be around, so others want to help them. And if no one wants to help you, well, at least you were a nice person.

Being a jerk gets you nothing. The jerks who achieve success do so in spite of being a jerk. (There is more to life than your affect.)

People who say things like "nice guys finish last" are not actually being nice, they are being martyrs. There's a difference.

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