Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Two Truths and Countless Lies

I LOVE the show Lie to Me. Love it. Fixated on it. It's one of those shows that makes you feel smarter, at least inside your own head, it makes you feel like you can see the world differently. That you can read people better, and that you've learned something.

Pompous assumptions of course. The science and the vocab may be real, but it's jut a TV show. It's got incredibly charismatic, REAL feeling people who are fabulous at their jobs, do it in the blink of an eye and tackle cases that strike us right where it hurts.

Murder, rape, war, injustice, racism, the loss of hopes and dreams, family, love, crisis. It's got enough action and heart pounding music to satisfy the adrenaline rush, and enough real emotion to bring out a sense of relating to the events and characters.

As I'm watching it today though, I found that I have learned something...

...I am an incredibly poor judge of emotions. Sure, in the show, I can see what's coming. Lines and emotions are set up to play out in a way that allows the audience to follow along. Leave your audience confused or left behind and the show falls apart quicker than my boyfriend will at the NOFX concert we're going to see in June.

In real life though...I tend to see in faces really two emotions. Worry, and anger. People wearing neutral expressions, I tend to associate with feeling something they aren't. Meaning when people are say, listening to a presentation and actually concentrating as opposed to sitting and thinking (which we all know can generate a lot of different emotions). Boredom can be a fairly flat facial expression. I always attribute it to something it's not.

Now, this revelation could be for a lot of reasons. I know I have a lot of social anxiety, so it could come from my own fears that anger/worry/disgust are things that I WILL see in people. So I attribute any facial expression that seems nondescript as fitting what I'm afraid of being judged by.

I could be a mild form of Aspergers Syndrome, which falls on an autism scale at the high functioning end of the continuum. Obviously just having trouble recognizing and correctly identifying facial expressions isn't the only symptom to diagnose, but combined with:

- Social awkwardness / no friends
- Obsessions / focused on one subject
- Lack of eye contact
- Sensitivity to noise / touch (textures/being touched by others/uncomfortable with unexplained/sudden contact / feel of clothing
- Odd speech / extreme logic / very proper speech
- Anger / aggression / hitting others- (when I was younger, I had some trouble controlling small contained physical outbursts. As I got older, my anger turned inwards and I developed a pretty crippling aversion to violence or physical outbursts. Good for society I think.)
- Craves ROUTINE
!
- Appears lost / in own world

Is a possibility and one I've suspected for a long time. Not necessarily that I HAVE Aspergers itself, but I certainly show signs (which is what a Syndrome is, a collection of symptoms in varying numbers and degrees that tend to cluster and lead to a more or less singular diagnosis).

I could also be selfish. That's possible too. I'm very inward focused. Maybe I'm just....poorly socialized. I'm like a dog that doesn't understand how other dogs behave because I've spent so little time with others. Though since I haven't started sniffing butts yet, I clearly am not a total lost cause in the human world.

I also have very little control over my own emotions. I think and brood a lot, so that explains a lot of my quick flash expressions that don't ever fully manifest. People catch me a lot, I usually have no idea what the emotion was. I sometimes have inappropriate emotional responses to things. Laughing in places I shouldn't, being overly concerned/saddened by something that really isn't all that important. I've learned to be very conscientious of my behaviour, to think before I formally assign an emotion to something. It's tiring, I tend to be very flat with my facial expressions and emotions. I prefer the stability of not emoting when I can. People don't always like that once they get me alone. I think I throw them off guard. My social face is very expressive.

Anyway, it's 4:45 am and I'm having some Lie to Me guided self-reflections. But I do get concerned sometimes about what it all means.

I plan on getting a psych assessment done as soon as I find a new family doctor who can get me a referral. I'd like some warning before I do something as destructive as my dad, if that capability is in me. Who knows, maybe I'll find out some interesting things.

But for now? I'll just pretend that I'm working with Dr. Lightman. And that I can see your deceptions. Sure would make it easier to see the bad people coming. Unless they come from behind. Guess I also need to start watching something like Alias. Women kicking butt and taking names.

2 comments:

  1. To be honey Hun, sounds like boarderline personality to me. I've lived through a lot of diagnosis, I have Asperger's, ADHD, OCD, Anxiety problems, Major Depressive Disorder, Boarderline, and a ton of others. The emotions sound like borderline to me. Asperger's tends to show in memory, hand tics, anxiety, lack of empathy, ADHD, OCD, Depression, very formal speech at a very young age, being upset be changes in routine, bing able to remember a TON of info another very specific subjects, certain learning disabilities, can't make eye contact as well as a bunch of other things. To have Asperger's you need to show ALL the symptoms, not just a few. But I see the borderline in you. It's pretty clear in the way you handle your emotions and your way of thinking. My mother had boarderline and I was severly abused because of it. I grew up tortured. It's the bio social theory in action. I was biologically geared towards being emotionally sensitive but the way she raised me ensured I got the diagnosis. I go to DBT therapy though and have made huge leaps and bounds. You cant tell I ever got the diagnosis for borderline and very few hints at having Asperger's. At age 17 I was trained in DBT to be a peer to peer counsellor and am very knowledgable about it. I think this program would benefit you a lot, people with no diagnosis at all gain a lot from it. It focuses on coping strategies and controlling anger, anxiety, depressed thinking etc. The full name is Dialectical Behavior Therapy. There might be a wait list to enter the program (sometimes close to a year!) but it changed my life around. If you need someone to talk to in the mean time ask for my email and I'll send it to the address in your profile. I don't mean to be creepy nice or anything, I just think you'd really like DBT and it'll help you cope with the mountain you're carrying now. You're doing amazing, I think you're being exceptionally brave and I can honestly say I'm impressed by how much of a tough cookie you're being. Keep it up! ;D

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  2. Eh, I don't do well in therapy. They tend to tell me things I already know, or tell me I'm doing great at coping, like with my dad trying to kill me, and then I just leave. I don't connect well with people I have to open up to.

    Besides, without a proper psych diagnosis, which I can't get until I get a proper doctor to give me a referral, I'm probably not going to sign up for anything.

    That bitchy denial blather aside, probably can't hurt to at least check it out. So feel free to send it my way.

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