Does anyone else ever have strict blinders when it comes to being in a situation versus remembering other things? For some reason when I'm not seeing someone in my daily life, I will forget they exist. Like I can go weeks without talking to my parents because I simply forget (which is "Unacceptable" and "Bullshit"). The only thing existing is the here and now, the past is long gone and permanent, the future is always changing and uncertain. I have difficulties planning ahead because I'm too caught up in the present and change my mind at a moments notice. Thoughts?
I've got the same thing with people. I stress out about leaving home for weeks in advance, and then once I'm gone I just don't miss people or get homesick. (Barring extreme circumstances when I start wanting someone particular to come and support me.) I kinda get the past/present/future thing too. I mean, the future hasn't happened yet so there's nothing there, and the past is just ... stories? I mean it happened, but it's not happening anymore. It's over and done with. I think I tend to forget what emotions I experienced during past events because I feel like I'm only conscious now, or something. Not that I think Past Me didn't experience emotions, just that they generally don't leave strong enough impressions for me to remember? That may be because of something else, though.
Same holy shit. I have a hard time remembering to talk to people because just.... Not there, not remembered. My parents got upset when I was a kid and went to japan and didn't even email cuz I wasn't homesick. Like I am very stuck on the present which causes a lot of problems with planning ahead.
My friend calls it banana theory, I think. It goes something like, you're eating a banana and you say "Hey, bananas are really great, I should eat them all the time." And then you finish eating the banana, and you forget about bananas for the next several weeks until you see another one and you say, "Oh yeah, bananas are cool..." etc.
The worst part is explaining why you haven't contacted the people you've forgotten, like. "Oh I'm sorry sibling, I forgot you existed" There has to be a better way to explain that to people I feel like.
Saaaaame. I am so shit at communication. And the past/future thing is me as well. I don't remember the past in much detail and a lot of it seems like something that happened to someone else (thank you Karkat for naming that someone else Past Me). The future just doesn't seem real past a certain point. At best, it's about a month; at worst, it's only a few hours. It makes motivation hard because I don't want to do the thing now, consequences are Future Me's problems. And when I have to deal with the consequences, it's Past Me's fault.
Aah yes, all of the forgetting to talk to people! I can go weeks without human contact outside of my family and bf because I just... forget to? And then I get lonely and I'm like, "What the fuck, how did this happen."
i 100% get the thing about the future - people who have these detailed plans about what they want to do in the future kind of confuse me, because i just have vague, amorphous outlines at best. like, yes, i want to graduate, i think i want to work in a museum, but i don't have Plans to apply for specific ones or which cities i want to live in and all that. i haven't even started a curatorship program; what would be the point? someone asked me if it was an avoidance thing. i'm a master of avoidance, but i'm aware of it. this is more just that it's unnecessary to make plans at this point, so why try and make a plan when a year from now i might have a completely different idea of what i want to do?
I have a plan for the future because if I don't have a plan I panic because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Though it's not a very detailed plan. It's mostly, "Graduate. Teach for a bit maybe??? Do a Masters in Special Ed with a specialisation in autism. Teach autistic kids??? Improve the world??? Get a cat???"
My books say that the sense of "there's no sense planning for the future since it's so uncertain" falls under the same umbrella as the trauma symptom called "foreshortened future", which at its extreme results in kids who are certain that they won't live to adulthood so they better do all their living now. And my books also say that there's an impairment of episodic memory (memories of your past that aren't facts) in some kinds of people with autism (coexisting with, of course, some other people who have extraordinary skill in that area, b/c autism is like that). So there's some search terms, if you wish 'em.
Well I'm a diagnosed sperg. The episodic memory impairment sounds like a thing happening with me along with the permanency issue. I have terrible memory across the board, especially when my routine is disrupted. Which is more of an executive function juggling complication, I'd think. Which could also be a contribution of problem with the coding of data to be store for memory.
VE already knows that I likely have the problem with foreshortened future. Heh, as a teen I was 100% convinced I would not make it to 20.
It was beaten into my head by my mother as a tween that I was going to die before I could have a family. I know that feel. /halfhearted bunp
