Not Forgetting
I am currently reading a paper from the Autism Research Unit in Sunderland in the UK about diet. This is an area I have been meaning to explore for a while now as I know very little about it.
There are some fascinating insights. One relates to how memory is affected.
One theory mentioned in the article is that people with AS have exceptional memory in certain areas, in part, due to their inability to forget, rather than as a result of exceptional memory skills relating to areas of great personal interest.
Its an angle I have never considered before but it made me think. If I feel strongly about something (or if it upsets me - if somebody is acting in a way that I perceive to be unethical for example) then it can play on my mind for a considerable amount of time.
In a way this is "rehearsal"! I have emphasised before the need for me to rehearse (i.e. mentally repeat) important material in order to enable me to retain it going forward. The outcome above is simply, in a way, doing that.
According to the text "one decides which events are worthy of retention and which should be discarded". The key is changing the mindset with regard to what is important and, so, retainable.
How can I do this? Well I think that it requires a concentrated and concerted effort to focus on those areas (and information) that I need to retain in the workplace - actions from meetings for example - and refusing to allow myself to dwell on those which are unimportant - the personality or actions of another person unconnected with business outcomes say.
Not easy of course. However, what I have found is that when I understand why something is occurring (as explained above for example) it then becomes logical for me and enables me to put it into action. This relates to my logical, AS mode of thinking.
The above facility/approach is a cognitive technique that I intend to start practising.
What I seem to have is a
What I seem to have is a great need for "closure". If somebody has been unjustifiably mean to me, I can usually only get over it once I have enough information to know it was nothing personal or if I can get one up on them if it was personal (or see karma come back and bite them in the bum later on)
Closure
This is very interesting.
I often feel the same way too. Indeed, there is a career issue that festers to this day over ten years later. It is not good and not healthy.
I often wonder why this is the case and have come to the conclusion that it is due, in part, to my not feeling comfortable in being assertive in confronting the issue at the time.
In trun, I feel that this may be - also in part - to my having some residual feeling of inferiority about myself, or a sense of guilt about confronting the issue.
Guilt is addressed in the book review I have just undertaken for the last newsletter. Bully in Site talks about the importance of not allowing oneself to feel guilty or to blame unnecessarily. This relates strongly to the sense of having Asperger of course.
In many of the cases (ncluding the ten year example mentioned above) I only came to appreciate that I was not to blame initially for the issues.
This is a lesson that I insist on assimilating from here on now whatever.