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> I have been stuck like this since the beginning of high school I think. There's an oft-repeated notion in the autism-spectrum community that around the puberty period (13-15 perhaps) a bunch of otherwise normal shifts that the brain goes through kinda tweak out a bit because of the autism and the mass-defragmentation process can sometimes end up culling important bits and pieces that are generally Important™. It seems that sometimes this can be unconscious stuff sadly (I generally hold that my memory got a lot worse around that period, which I incidentally don't remember too well too). Also, just as a... thought experiment, and just for reference, there's a very important focus distinction that I personally only really twigged to the existence of (let alone importance of) quite recently, that being the difference between active/concerted focus and relaxed focus. The former is front-and-center cause-and-effect, while the latter is more "in the zone" and meditative. I've realized that the brain shifts between both models subconsciously for example as part of daydreaming, but that consciously identifying those splits can be as useful as they are tricky. For example, for me, reasoning about something just a step or two beyond my current frame of reference requires using relaxed focus, as the thing I'm thinking about will just fizzle out and I'll find myself thinking about something else. In the same vein I find that focusing on the idea that I'll be able to concertedly do something, and see it through, beyond first-order acute focus, also requires reasoning about the capabilities and capacities of relaxed focus. I hilariously got my current mental model of relaxed focus from a ferret training book :D I happened to leaf through a few years ago. It explained that when training a ferret it can be useful to put a leash on it and use the leash to anchor it to your lap, not allowing it to jump down and explore. Only once it has accepted the situation it's in will it kick into idle gear (relaxed focus) and, ferrets being ferrets, it'll most likely curl up and promptly fall asleep. My point here is primarily to illustrate the direct link between relaxed focus and introspection, and to point out that if you're using "this is everything" acute focus the entire time for all the things that you may have trained your brain out of leveraging relaxed focus. It's also very possible that internal imbalances and/or chronic disorientation from perpetual micro-reorientation (from ADHD / autism) might (I personally found this was the case) perpetuate a state of mind that doesn't settle enough to access this sort of thinking pattern. |