Emotional Neglect Survivors, Superheroes, Codependency and Aging in Reverse

I grew up in profound emotional neglect and abuse.  This article is about healing from trauma and being an adult when you are young and being a kid when you are an adult.

Emotional neglect and childhood trauma

When your parents cannot parent you, and you are surrounded by chaos, you assume parental duties.  That is just how it works.  Kid brains recognize a need for order and if none exists, they try to create it.  And kid brains want more than anything to make sure Mom and Dad are okay.  Because we are hardwired to understand that Mom and Dad are important for our survival.  Kids need adults to help them.  So kids born into homes with impaired adults will take on adult responsibilities.  Responsibilities they do not have the resources to meet.  Kids cannot function as adults.  They do not have the life experience or the financial and physical resources.  This creates tremendous pressure on these tiny adult-like creatures.  Often these little people become very good at research.  Trying to acquire life experience earlier than would naturally happen.  They also become very resourceful and very resilient. 

Kids born into homes of emotional neglect are some of the strongest people you will ever meet.

 

Healing from emotional neglect

Humans are narrative animals.  We need stories to make sense of the world.  As a child, if you are tasked with acting as a parental figure to the grown up humans who are supposed to take care of you, what kind of story makes sense of that?  For many of us, we learn to see ourselves as very special.  We must be gifted.  We must be special, right?  We must be superheroes or saviors or healers or mystics, right?  How else could a child be responsible for adults?  Also, we cannot face the cruelty and the helpless feelings from being born into such an untenable situation, so the idea that we are there to save everyone is much more palatable.

That “fixer” narrative helps for a long time.  It gets us through the vulnerable years.  To believe we were born to help others.  That is our purpose.  We get really good at it.  Until it stops working.  It does eventually stop working.  Somewhere along the line, everyone else our age starts to grow up and become young adults.  We don’t know what that even means.  We have always been adults.  We feel weird.  As we age, we feel even weirder.  We are not aging correctly.  Everyone else seems to be getting stronger and more mature but we don’t.

Codependency resulting from emotional neglect

Most of us will find people that are more fucked up than we are so we can keep helping.  That desire to rescue others instead of feeling our own pain and fear is called co-dependency.  It is a tough nut to crack.  Because helping always sounds virtuous!  It makes us feel good!  Until it doesn’t.  And feeling the pain and fear and grief from our childhood trauma does not sound fun at all!  So we run around using whatever substances or experiences we can find to keep us distracted.  Until that stops working.

Pain always finds you in the end.  There are no short cuts to get around pain.  You have to go through it.

I will always remember the time a (really good) therapist asked me, “So helping others sounds like it is pretty important to you, huh?”  I remember the gears in my mind came to a screeching halt.  What kind of question was this?  It was like she was asking me, “So, it sounds like you really enjoy breathing oxygen, huh?”  It was utterly new to me that there were other ways to live.  I just assumed everyone was entirely oriented around helping others.  Self care was such a foreign concept to me, that it was not even on my radar at all.  I thought everyone spent all their time and energy focused on helping others just like I did, but I just thought some folks were really bad at it.  lol

Emotional neglect and being a child when you are an adult

Once I came to see that my NEED to help others had at least as much to do with my NEED not to feel my emotions as it did with actually being of use to others, I realized how clueless I was.  It began a new age of innocence.  I had so much to learn!  About myself and about life.  I felt like a 30 year old middle-schooler.  I really had no sense of myself as a person at that point.  No sense of who I was or what I liked or what I wanted.  Those were not things I could explore as a kid, because I had way bigger concerns back then.  Like survival.  So I started reading self help books and pursuing intense therapy and journaling like a fiend.  Journaling was especially helpful.  I could not hear my truest inner voice much of the time as I was so attuned to hearing the needs of others.  So journaling helped me a ton.  I wrote and wrote until I could figure out which thoughts and feelings were mine and which were coming from outside influences.

Healing from childhood emotional neglect

The process of becoming a person and retiring my superhero cape was really hard and long and painful.  Giving birth is painful!  I had to free the little girl in me that went into hiding so many years ago.  She did NOT want to come out.  She was very very very scared.  And MAD AS HELL!  Ack!  So much anger and pain.  I had never been an angry person.  Where did all this rage come from?  I wanted to kill my parents.  Or kill myself in front of them.  I hated everyone.  The whole world had failed that little girl and apparently she held grudges.  I did not realize this.  I had always been a sweet middle child peace-keeper.  The only daughter.  Born care-taker.  Luckily, I inherited some wild courage and bold passion from my mentally ill Mom.  Healing was a trip!

Emotional neglect and having a God complex

So what happens when you stop being a superhero and trying to save everyone individually is that you start to humbly acknowledge your own humanity and that necessitates asking for help.  The cool thing is that once you recognize what a fucked up clueless wreck you are and you start asking for help and you start dealing with your pain and fear and loss and you start reaching for things beyond your known universe, you develop a new kind of compassion.  And that in turn allows you to connect with the world in a new way.  Which just might let you help people in a much broader way.  In time.  Because if you do the hard work, you might be able to lead by example and show other Space Lobsters that life gets better.  If you are lucky.  That is the goal, anyway.  Heal yourself as a way to tell a better story.  Instead of helping others individually until it kills you.  Heal yourself so you can show others it is possible to heal themselves.  Give someone an emotional fish and they eat for a day, right?  Isn’t that the saying?  And maybe you feel good until you run out of fish and emotional strength.  Teach yourself to take better care of your own emotional needs and you can teach others to leave the emotional fish alone and take care of themselves, too.

Emotional neglect and courage

Kids who grow up in emotional neglect are powerful humans.  They survived with next-to-no support or nurturing.  They are bad-asses.  But they are also often mechanical problem solvers.  And they need to learn to be soft and vulnerable sometimes if they want to become fully alive.  They need to face the fact that some problems cannot be solved.  They will forever be damaged by their trauma.  They will never be “normal”.  They will never fully heal.  But they can learn to connect.  That is the miraculous news!  They can learn to be happy.  They can learn to be human.  I am happier now than I ever thought possible.  And more human.  And more connected.  Not like a normal person, but I am fine with that.  The amazing thing is this…  I still have a tiny bit of superhero magic in me.  Because I have stood on the edge of the abyss and I have looked out into the darkest void.  I have known nothingness that would scare the poop out of most normal people.  And I have lived to tell the tale.  I am crazy strong.  And so so so grateful to have lived to see this time.  

Power is not about invincibility or willfulness.  It is not about feeling no fear. 

No, power is about feeling all the feelings including all the fear and then trudging onward anyway.  True power is about knowing your story inside and out, so you have no worries that you are bluffing when you stake your claim in life.  I am not sure how normal people learn their stories, but I know how I learned mine and I know I am truly a self made woman and I am not afraid of my flaws and scars being exposed.  I willingly flaunt them because I am proud of where I came from and the emotional work I have done to get here.

Self care after emotional neglect

Do the work.  Find a good therapist.  Read good books.  Talk to smart people.  Ask yourself the tough questions.  Learn your story.  Write.  Listen to yourself.  Set yourself free.  Learn to love fully.  Even the ugly stuff.  Everything is about love.

Space Lobsters are made of love and hope.  We are the ones that will save this failing planet.  We have to take good care of ourselves.  And each other.

Love you,

Melissa

 

 

Treating addiction and self harming behaviors with love, new routines, and connection

Treating addiction with love.  This post is about learning to heal myself.  Some of the ways I practice living better.  Living with joy.  I was chatting with Arvid the other day about addiction and the need to normalize problematic behaviors in order to take away their power and I got to thinking about essential components of behavioral change. 

Treating addiction with love

Everything I share here is just my personal addiction observations, not any kind of formal treatment plan.  I am not a medical professional and this article is not medical advice.  Please remember that.  I am just a woman obsessed with healing and growth and this is part of my story.  But after that chat with Arvid – and a different conversation with my friend, J, – I landed on a few key points that have helped me change some problematic addictions. I want to share them.

Change and healing come from hope, not cruelty.  Hating yourself will never lead you to meaningful change.  Treating addiction with love and acceptance and positive new routines can lead to meaningful improvement in your quality of life.

 
First, let me say that I have struggled all my life with addiction and self harm.  I have made TREMENDOUS progress and have managed to stop several behaviors that are widely recognized to be very very difficult behaviors to change.  But I am not perfect and I do not claim to abstain completely from all unfortunate behavior patterns.  For me personally, I do not measure success by total abstinence, I measure my growth by sustainable happiness, peacefulness, self acceptance, optimism, joy, love, and compassion.  In other words, if my life is more stable and more joyous and calmer and has less drama and I am choosing self harm less often, then I am moving in the right direction and I consider that to be success.  By focusing this way, I have managed to completely stop some behaviors and mostly stop others and I have managed to grow many very healthy patterns of behavior as new self care routines.
 
That being said, my addictions mostly have to do with food and money and co-dependence and I have no personal experience with drug or alcohol dependence, so I encourage folks with those problems to read my words in that light.  I THINK some of the things I have learned should translate well to any addiction, but I do not know that.
My friend, J, shared some of his thoughts and experiences with me recently concerning how he chose to treat his alcohol dependency and I will share a few of his thoughts to start.  (I am very proud of him!  He has been living sober for more than 20 years.)  Among other things, J said Alcoholics Anonymous is a phenomenally successful option for some addicts.  He said it provides alcoholics a level of support that is unparalleled and that sharing stories with folks who may be very different from you but who have fought the same battles can be powerfully healing.  I suspect in part because it normalizes problematic behavior in a way that I think is essential to healing.  We all have to get the shame out of our inner dialogs as much as possible!  J also said that late stage alcoholism can be deadly in a way that other addictions may not be.  He said the primary purpose of AA is to give people a way to let pain go.  That people come to AA to find help.  He said finding people who will help take the pain away is essential to sobriety.  He also encouraged taking life one day at a time and focusing on sobriety versus quitting drinking.  Language matters.
 
I also find that focusing on sobriety versus quitting behaviors is super helpful.  Living sober, to me, is about not running from life.  Not trying to escape your feelings.  Sobriety is about staying present in your life and feeling your emotions.  That is the important thing.  Living!  Being alive now!  As you are.  With love.  I find it easier and more powerful to focus on living better than to focus on quitting things.  When I am living well, leaving the bad shit behind just happens naturally.
 
Love
  
1. an intense feeling of deep affection.
 
The most important thing J said was this…  I will paraphrase, but he said something like, “You have to try everything.  Throw everything at it.  When you get to the point of reckoning with your addiction, when you hit bottom, you have to try anything and everything to get out of that addiction.  Throw everything at it, fight it from all angles, find what works for you.”  
 
I have tried 12-step groups for my problems and they were not helpful for me, but I tried them!  You have to try everything if you truly want to heal.  It has to be your top priority.
 
I agree with J about pain.  I have heard addiction described as a disease of isolation and loneliness.  I believe addiction and self harm are all about attempting to escape pain by yourself.  And I believe addiction cannot survive forever in an atmosphere of love and connection.  Find love and connection wherever you can find it.  12 step groups are one place you might find help.  
 
I have found love and connection in books about change and growth, in poetry and memoirs, in music about addiction and suffering and music about healing, in art, in movies, and with like minded friends and teachers.  And in sacred places.  One of the most healing parts of my journey has been a park where I spend much of my free time.  I feel deeply connected to that place and the many living growing things there.  I feel loved there and I feel more loving when I have been walking there.
 
Habit
1. a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.  
 
For me, an essential part of healing and developing sobriety has been letting go of people and places and patterns that were not healthy.  Choosing to spend my time in healing places, with healing books and music, seeking people who helped me or added something good to my life while avoiding people who were not also seeking growth.  You have to pay attention to what you are receiving.  In my experience, most addicts and folks who self harm are really sensitive people.  You have to pay attention to what you are allowing into your world.  Into your mind and your heart.  If you put poison in your body, your body gives up.  If you put poison in your mind or your heart or your soul, it will kill you just the same.  Make a habit of checking in with yourself and asking yourself, “Is this leading me where I want to go or taking me away from myself?”
 
(When I mention healing stuff, I am NOT talking about mindlessly happy stuff.  I am talking about music and books and people and places that help you find your truth.)
 

Routine

 

1. a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program.
 
Habits and routines have also been key to my recovery.  I don’t think you can give up destructive patterns and routines if you are not also cultivating new positive habits and routines.  Recovery involves changing how you see yourself, how you experience the world, how you feel your emotions, and how you meet your needs.  EVERYTHING contributes to these elements.  Where you are, how you are, who you are with, the tools you use to cope.
 
Some of the new habits and routines I have developed over the years to replace destructive patterns….
 
WRITING:  I write.  All the time.  Not for an audience.  Just for me.  I write to hear myself.  To witness how I talk to myself and about myself internally.  To document – and change – my inner narrative.  Private personal writing is the single most powerful tool I have found for change.  I write every day.  If you are not sure where to start, you might begin by writing about the gray areas that are most unknown to you.  For most addicts, that would likely mean starting by writing about pain or anger or fear or sadness.  Just write out what you feel as much as possible.  In the beginning, it will be clumsy and uncomfortable.  That is good!  That is a sign you are moving beyond your comfort zone and learning and growing.  Keep at it.  You will move deeper and deeper over time.  The more you learn about your heart and mind, the more you express your feelings, the lighter the burden you will be carrying, the less you will be at war with yourself, the less you will need to escape your life.  Also, if you start with writing, you can practice expressing your feelings just to yourself.  Once that becomes more comfortable, it will be easier to express your feelings to others and begin forming healthy connections.  Writing is a tremendous tool for learning to love yourself.
 
TALKING:  I have been talking to therapists for much of my life.  Talking is a powerful tool for change.  Talking is a way of giving more weight to your thoughts and feelings.  Valuing them.  Talking about your experiences is a way of honoring them.  Telling your story is a way of saying, “I am here.  I am alive.  I exist.  I matter.”  Find ways to establish positive habits that involve telling your story!  To a therapist, to a support group, and / or if you are fortunate enough to find one, to a true friend.  TALK!  It matters.  The more you talk to a supportive audience, the more connected you are, the more YOU can see and hear your story clearly.  Talking and writing can help you move from being a victim to being a survivor.
 
(Talking to pets counts in my book, too!)
 
WALKING:  For me, walking in the state park nearby is medicine.  I need to walk.  It keeps me sane.  My feet need to connect with the earth, my eyes need to see the natural world, my mind needs to perceive myself as a tiny component in a much larger system, my heart needs to feel the seasonal cycles of growth and dormancy that remind me I am not supposed to be happy all the time, my skin needs to feel the breeze or the wind or the stillness or the humidity or the rain.  I need to connect in this way.  I love the park like some humans love other humans.  The park is my home and my family.  Find your sacred places.  And then WALK!  Keep walking.  Walk out your pain and your loss.
 
RESEARCH:  I spend part of every day learning.  About psychology, spirituality, creativity, neural plasticity, storytelling, love, grace, compassion, meditation, nutrition, power, freedom, leadership, courage, trauma, recovery, etc.  Research anything and everything that interests you.  We live in a world that prioritizes entertainment.  And I do believe that having fun is important!  But make time to research and learn, too.  Feed yourself good knowledge and wisdom.
 
REST:  I take time every day to sit still and just be.  To rest.  Usually with animals resting on me.  🙂  I play quiet music in the background and I am just still for a while.  Not napping – though I recommend that, too! – but just being quiet and resting.  Rest is essential.  Rest is healing.  Rest lets your mind and your body settle.  And I think it helps your brain recalibrate, too.  If you stay too busy all the time, your thoughts and feelings fall behind.  Make time for rest.  Every day.  You deserve your own time.  We are not in these fragile bodies for long.  As much as possible, sit still in your beautiful body and just be.
 
LOVE:  Man, if you are lucky enough to find good people to love, people who can love you back, MAKE TIME FOR LOVE.  Nothing else is more important.  Love is why we are here.  Love WILL heal you if you let it.  Make time for love.  Build routines around love.  Express your love.  Often and in as many ways as possible.  Build daily routines around talking to loved ones, hugs, kisses, sex, walks together, reading about love, writing about love, love songs, all of it!  I am not just talking about romantic love and I definitely am not talking about the kind of delusional love thrown at us by businesses and marketing agencies.  I am talking about complicated, difficult, challenging, real love.  Muscular love.  Practice it!  Reach for it.  Give yourself over to it wherever possible.  Surrender to love.
 
NUTRITION:  I have found that eating real food instead of man made crap makes a measurable difference in my moods and thought patterns.  I definitely think clearer and feel better when I am avoiding garbage food and drink.  I TRY to make daily routines of buying beautiful natural foods and preparing beautiful natural foods and enjoying beautiful natural foods.  And clean pure water.  I feel so much better when I do.  And I love seeing beautiful natural foods in my kitchen.  I even love seeing peelings and trimmings and such in my trash instead of gaudy food packaging.  I enjoy knowing I am taking better care of myself physically.  I eat fruits and vegetables and meat and eggs and dairy and nuts and seeds.  I do not eat grain or sugar or weird man made oils.  I am not perfect at this, but I try daily to heal myself with good food and I definitely feel happier and less distracted and less moody when I eat clean.
 
The answer to addiction is love
 
In conclusion, I have found paths to healing and recovery that work for me.  Practices that help me.  Tools I can use to pull myself up and out of the darkness.  I do not fight the darkness.  I do not hate the darkness.  I do not run from the darkness.  I accept my pain.  I value it.  I own my sorrow and loss and grief.  I know the landscape I love so much NEEDS dormancy sometimes.  Needs rain.  If all the days were sunny, everything would burn up and die.  I accept myself as flawed.  I accept my story as it unfolds.  But I also do seek the light.  I don’t run from the dark, but I seek the light.  Like a sunflower, I bend toward the light. 
 
Connection
 
1. a relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else.
 
TO DO:  Find your own best tools and practices.  Connect with the people and places and books and music that heal you.  Don’t try to be perfect, just try to be more fully alive and be the unique, damaged, scarred, beautiful, funny, odd soul that you are.  Please try to have hope.  Try to have faith.  Better days are ahead.  You will find your joy if you keep looking.  Let go of the toxic crappy parts of your life and give yourself permission to seek joy and pleasure and happiness.  Set yourself free.  The world needs your smiling face.  And your sensitive heart.
*
Stay with us!  Life gets better.
 
Space Lobsters are dynamic   

Are strong women different than strong men?

Are strong women different than strong men?  How do women view power differently?  Do they wield power differently?  I think it is hard to know because we live in a world defined by male power structures and most of the time when women get to wield power in a broad way, they had to earn that privilege by moving up through a male system that rewarded them for exhibiting traits valued by men.  How would women run things if the systems that granted power were defined by women?  We really can not know what a fair and balanced world would look like until there is gender equity in government and business and honestly that will never happen.  We might eventually have half the CEO’s and elected officials be female.  But true parity would only happen if women ran EVERYTHING for a few hundred years like men did.  Then we could all share power and see what that looked like.  

How do strong women express power?

  

Here are my thoughts on strong women in the current climate.  In no particular order.

1. Strong women do not worry overly much about outside evaluations because they have a trusted internal compass. 
2. Strong women lead from a place of wisdom and courage. 
3. Strong women both nurture with compassion and command with authority because they do not limit themselves to a single form of power. 
4. Strong women understand that self care is what keeps them strong. 
5. Strong women know that humility and humor are equally essential to a resilient spirit. 
6. Strong women are proud of their strength, but never allow pride to blind them.  They are never afraid to admit failure and correct course as needed.
7. Strong women have no time for titillation or manipulation or exploitation.
8. Strong women own their strengths and their weaknesses without shame.  They embrace their humanity fully.
9. Strong women live in comfortable nests.
10. Strong women cultivate joy.

***

I am a strong woman and I am proud of myself for the work I have done to become this person.  I like who I am.  The path that brought me here was not always fun, but I did not have a say in that.  I did, however, get to decide how those experiences manifested in my future.  I decided they were the basis for a comedy instead of a tragedy.  I decided my story would be one of transformation and triumph, not one of succumbing.  It is a daily battle to keep my story on track, but today at least, I am up to the task.

How do you define strong women?

Melissa

 

 

 

How do I build theory of mind?

Build theory of mind skills with a few simple practices.  I wrote yesterday about theory of mind, the idea that each of us is operating from our own personal mental and emotional map of life.  This is a concept most children begin to understand around the age of 4.  Some studies suggest kids keep learning this concept with greater depth until the are 6 – 8 years old.  How can you strengthen your theory of mind skills?

The most common way theory of mind is studied in very young children is the Sally Anne test.  It is fascinating.  I was never tested for this as a child and I have no idea how I might have responded but I know that I did not fully develop theory of mind until I was in my early 20’s.  My delay probably had to do with childhood emotional abuse and neglect or the fact that I have ADHD up the wazoo.  Until my early 20’s, I had empathy and compassion in a very limited scope for only a very few people.  I just assumed on some lever that we were all working from the same emotional / mental map and if something was right for me, then it must be right for everyone.  Some other time, I will write about the awakening that led me to fully develop my theory of mind, but for this post, I want to write about two basic ways anyone with theory of mind impairment might begin to strengthen their skills in this area.  Please remember that I am not a mental health professional, just someone with a lifelong passion for the human mind.

Building theory of mind

I believe this concept is hugely important to our society right now, not just to Space Lobsters.  I think weakened theory of mind abilities are responsible in part for the polarization of our society now.  We have trouble imagining what others are experiencing.  We assume everyone is using the same mental / emotional map that we use.  It leads to hurt feelings and defensiveness and eventually dehumanization.  The biggest tool to help build theory of mind will be your sense of self.  If you strengthen your sense of self, it will be easier to understand when someone else exhibits behavior that is reflective of their perspective, their mind, and not get their expressions confused with your own feelings.  Not take everything personally.

Build theory of mind with language and self expression

One very basic way to begin is to be sure you use language that expresses YOU.  Talk about what you like and how you feel and what you need using “I” and “me” statements.  Instead of talking generically about “this is good” or “that is weird”.  Say, “I like this because…”  Or “that feels weird to me because…”  This is one way to train your mind to think in terms of how you have experienced things your way and someone else might experience the same things differently.  Make sure your sentences have YOU in them.  It will help even if you are not conscious of it helping.  Saying “I love you” is more powerful than saying “Love ya”, for instance.  It is about YOU having a feeling.  The more you can express YOU specifically, the more you will begin to realize other folks are expressing themselves.  No one is expressing a universal truth.  There ARE universal truths, of course!  Like how humans need oxygen and water is wet.  🙂  But when it comes to feelings and beliefs and memories and needs, you have yours and I have mine.

Another super helpful way to strengthen your theory of mind skills would be to write about your feelings and beliefs and preferences.  You do not need to show the writing to anyone.  But writing is a great way to learn about your own mind.  To see how you talk to yourself in your head.  The more you write about what YOU like and how YOU feel and what YOU want and how YOU perceive things, always using language that has “I feel” or “I think” or “I want” in it, the easier it will be to remember that other people may perceive things differently.

If you read my post yesterday on theory of mind, you might say, “But Melissa, people do not wear these outfits that list their fears and secrets.  People do not carry easy to read scrapbooks.  How am I supposed to know their inner maps of life?”  The answer is that you won’t!  You are not supposed to!  People are not puzzles for you to solve.  Theory of mind is not about you knowing where everyone else is coming from.  Theory of mind is only about you recognizing that their minds are made up of different memories and feelings and needs than yours.  Your job is just to get to know YOU and to express YOU as honestly and respectfully as possible.  Their feelings and needs are not your responsibility.  But you will have an easier time in life if you can learn to identify your feelings and needs and perspectives so you don’t get so quickly confused or overwhelmed by people who are working from very different perceptions.  The goal is not to change who you are or even to change how you live life.  The goal is to feel less stress in relationships because you no longer experience conflict or differences in perception as a sign that you have failed in any way or that the other person has failed.

I should note that I have made great progress with my own theory of mind skills, through diligently pursuing empathy and compassion on a broad scale, but it will always be something I consciously work at in a way that most neurotypical folks do not.  I will never have the innate fluency in mind stuff that neurotypicals do.  That is okay, though!  I like being me and I have found the theory of mind work that I have done is enriching and has allowed me to form deeper happier bonds with others.

 

 

 

 

What is Theory of Mind?

I will be writing about theory of mind often, I think.  It is an important tool for Space Lobsters.  Theory of Mind (ToM) is key to self awareness, self acceptance, compassion, empathy, and more.  Those of us who are non-conforming need ToM even more than neurotypicals do.
What is Theory of Mind
  
From Wikipedia:  Theory of mind (ToM) is a popular term from the field of psychology as an assessment of an individual human’s degree of capacity for empathy and understanding of others. ToM is one of the patterns of behavior that is typically exhibited by the minds of neurotypical people, that being the ability to attribute—to another or oneself—mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires, emotions and knowledge. Theory of mind as a personal capability is the understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one’s own.
Possessing a functional theory of mind is considered crucial for success in everyday human social interactions and is used when analyzing, judging, and inferring others’ behaviors. Deficits can occur in people with autism spectrum disorders, genetic-based eating disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cocaine addiction, and brain damage suffered from alcohol’s neurotoxicity; deficits associated with opiate addiction reverse after prolonged abstinence.
  

What is Theory of Mind?

 
My explanation of theory of mind:
 
Imagine a world where everyone wears simple black scrub pants and black shirts.  And written on their clothing in clear white block print are all of the potentially shameful labels that could ever have been applied to them.  So for instance, my outfit would say, among other things, “ADHD, survivor of childhood abuse and neglect, former anorexic and bulimic, problems managing money, overeater, disorganized, judgmental, fearful, anxious, depressed, bisexual, asexual, overly sexual, antisocial, rude, self indulgent, self righteous, helpless, ugly, needy, insecure, fat, broken, lost, angry, willful, arrogant, reactive attachment disorder, PTSD, self-destructive, impulsive, loner.”  
 
EVERYONE you know is similarly attired with their own potentially shameful labels.  No one has secrets.  Everyone can see our humanity on full display.  Everyone can see the burdens you are carrying.  You can see the long journey they have been on.  They might more easily imagine how hard it has been for you to participate fully in society.  You might better imagine how miraculous their genuine happiness is now that you see what they endured to get where they are.
 
Now imagine that everyone also has a big three ring binder they carry with them.  A big fat scrapbook.  And in that book are all of their beliefs and memories and fears.  All of their emotions and life experiences.  All these things are laid out in their scrapbooks very clearly in a way that you can look through the book and quickly understand how they see the world.  How they experience being alive in this world.  Their perspective.
 
Once you read your friend’s labels on his outfit and you look through his scrapbook, you immediately understand that he experiences life differently than you do.  The map he uses to navigate the world is different than yours.  You understand this in a deep and lasting way so that in the future when the two of you have a disagreement, you no longer feel as though he is trying to change you or beat you or win some sort of contest with you.  You now understand the disagreement as being two people with very different mental maps trying to find some common ground.  Two people trying to be understood.  Trying to connect with each other.  
 
You remember all of the experiences and feelings in his book which are very different from the feelings and experiences in your book and you no longer go through a disagreement with him looking for ways to win or to prove you are right.  You now go through disagreements with him aware of his map and how it looks nothing like your map.  So you know that when he expresses himself – even if he is talking about you! – he is expressing his map, his experiences, his feelings.  This is not to say he is projecting.  Simply that he is seeing the situation through his own lens and that his lens is shaped by his experiences and beliefs which are different than yours.  There is a saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That means, you see the world in terms of what you know.  If you have always been attacked, for instance, you are more apt to assume someone is attacking you when they may in fact just be trying to ask you a harmless question.
You realize there is no one right way of experiencing anything.  What is right for him is right for him and what is right for you is right for you.  We are all just trying to get our needs met.  Of course, there are right and wrong behaviors.  There is morality.  But that is different than how you experience your life.  Feeling hurt or sad or angry or confused is not a moral question, it just is what it is.
 
His expressions – even if he is talking about you! – are revealing who he is.  You no longer feel the need to defend yourself all the time now that you have seen his book and read all the labels on his outfit.  Now you go through disagreements with him and look for common ground instead.  Look for ways to connect instead.  Your differences are no longer threatening, they are enlightening.  You no longer seek to place blame when the two of you struggle to connect.  You no longer think conflict is all your fault.  Nor do you think conflict is all his fault.  Conflict is no longer threatening.  Conflict is now just a natural thing that happens from time to time because you are different individuals navigating life with different mental maps.  
 

Communication is how you figure out where you both are standing and how to navigate to some common lands.  Ask questions.  Express your own feelings gently and without blame.  Listen.  Love.  Ask for what you need.  Don’t expect that he will just know.  He may not know, but he may want to learn about you.

 
We have to reach out to each other and really listen and try to find common ground with less guilt and shame and less willfulness.  More openness.  There is nothing wrong with your map, your scrapbook, your outfit.  There is nothing wrong with my map, my scrapbook, my outfit.  Your perspective is yours.  My perspective is mine.  I will try to understand you.  You will try to understand me.  We are both flawed confused humans trying to make sense of this nonsensical world.  Be kinder to yourself and to others.
 
Everything I do and say is an expression of what I have been through and how I feel and what I need.  My words and actions are not an indictment of you, they are an expression of me.

That is theory of mind to me.

 
(Now I should add that some people are very very damaged.  There are people in this world that have no conscience.  There are people who will harm others and use others and do so with no shame.  Your duty as an adult in this world is to learn about yourself.  Learn your story.  Learn your needs.  Learn your feelings.  Learn about your formative experiences.  That way, when you meet a person whose mental map is so askew that they will harm you, you can see that clearly and not try to help or fix someone who is beyond helping or fixing.  Some people are beyond helping or fixing.  They are on a different kind of journey.  It is okay to simply wish them well in your heart and move on without investing in that connection.  You get to choose who you want in your life.)
 
 

Famous people with ASD / Asperger’s (on the Autism Spectrum)

This list of famous people with Aspergers or Autism Spectrum Disorder is something I am compiling as I discover names.  Some of these folks are self described, some have been diagnosed, some are speculation.  I found some on lists that other folks created and some I found through articles by or about specific people.  In the case of historical folks, they came from other lists and I cannot speak to why they appear on those lists, but if Asperger’s fits my impression of these historical figures, then I am including them on my list, too.

 

 

Abraham Lincoln

Al Gore

Alan Turing

Albert Einstein

Alexander Graham Bell

Alfred Hitchcock

Andy Kaufman

Andy Warhol

Sir Anthony Hopkins

Benjamin Franklin

Bertrand Russell

Bill Gates

Bob Dylan

Bobby Fischer

Carl Jung

Charles Schulz

Courtney Love

Crispin Glover

Dan Aykroyd

Daryl Hannah

Elon Musk

Emily Dickinson

Franz Kafka

Friedrich Nietzsche

Garrison Keillor

George Bernard Shaw

George Washington

Marilyn Monroe

H P Lovecraft

Hans Christian Andersen

Henry Ford

Henry Thoreau

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Newton

James Joyce

James Taylor

Jane Austen

Jerry Seinfeld

Jim Henson

Jim Jefferies

John Denver

Lewis Carroll

Ludwig van Beethoven

Mark Twain

Michelangelo

Nikola Tesla

Oliver Sacks

Stanley Kubrick

Steve Jobs

Temple Grandin

Thomas Edison

Thomas Jefferson

Tim Burton

Vincent Van Gogh

Virginia Woolf

Wasily Kandinsky

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

 

Just found this page that you might want to check out…  https://myaspieworld.home.blog/2019/02/27/world-without-aspies/