Comments on: Why we don’t do what we don’t do.

By: The Integral

The Integral — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:56:58 +0000

WOW this blog is seriously a gold mine. Another thing I can relate to…….

some or all words here are approximations. Those that took the least amount of effort to bring out. Is this anything like realizing that someone might be right, but because of tone of voice or whatever, one cannot see the rightness? Or something like that. Happens with my mom quite a lot. Frustrating turn of events.

By: rr

rr — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:23:24 +0000

I am not exactly sure what shutdown is, but for the half of yesterday and half of today I can either hide under the covers looking at those green things I can see in the dark, or I can be online reading about autism. Something happened, which might seem silly, but after that I seemed to not be able to do anything at all. I got stopped doing something I really needed to do, only have a chance to do maybe once every 8 months, was promised I could have the whole day to do alone… then it turned out that my “support system” for doing it fell through and that I kept being interfered with. I kept trying to do the thing anyway but ended up not being able to do it at all, since I had to keep starting over mentally, trying to remember what it was I was trying to do. I ended up with an anxiety level that was so high that it is likely that the next opportunity I have to do it, I will avoid it (that is, if I remember the past two days, I might avoid it.) I am not sure if only being able to look at things online and not being able to do anything else including eat constitutes shutdown but I think it might.

I have all sorts of skills that I can’t use right now. I KNOW I have more skills than going under the covers and reading people’s posts online……

By: Brandon Campbell

Brandon Campbell — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 14:31:15 +0000

Yes! There have definitely been times that someone wants me to do something, but if I end up doing it I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of thinking I did it *because* they wanted me to. Like my girlfriend’s brother-in-law is really obnoxious and acts like he runs the house, and seems to think it’s my “job” to bring in the empty trash and recycling containers from the curb after the trash has been picked up for the week. Sometimes if it’s convenient and I’m feeling generous, I’ll do it, but it’s not something I do for him or because he said to.

By: Ettina

Ettina — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:34:52 +0000

Another reason is not wanting others to think they can control your behaviour. In certain conditions, where I am being told to do something I’d rather not do, I get stuck in refusing to do it. In that situations I truly *can’t* do the thing, even though I could do it if someone wasn’t trying to force me to. In some articles about demand avoidance they talk about ‘can’t help the won’t’. At first that was incomprehensible to me but I realized afterwards it described how I get ‘stuck’ in resisting. I might honestly want to do the thing and be capable of doing it, but while someone is telling me to do it I can’t do it, because then they’d control me. Other times I’m fine with doing it. This also seems similar to the exposure anxiety Donna Williams describes, especially when I can’t tell them directly why I’m refusing to do the thing, only hint at it for fear they will hurt me if they know what’s really going on combined with desire to tell them. Once I was dissociated and was trying to explain what was going on but couldn’t get myself to say the word ‘dissociated’ for fear of revealing myself.

By: n.

n. — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:00:32 +0000

“Just this guy”; I have heard of something similar happening in real life with people I know.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:41:48 +0000

If I may be forgiven for being silly, I think there’s a famous joke on this subject.

The parents were worried that their 4-year old kid, though perfectly normal in every other way, had never spoken.
Then, one day at the dinner table, he said, “Please pass the ketchup.”
The parents were all agog, and confused, but when they got their wits back about them they asked the kid, “Why did you not say anything before?”

He answered, “Up until now, everything was OK.”