Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequences

It’s very difficult to admit that you are in the wrong. Especially if the misdeed was not an intentional act but a consequence of natural behavior.

With impeccable timing under the circumstances I read this blog post over the weekend. It was like looking into a mirror – and I don’t mean that everything appeared back-to-front! It was as if the writer had looked into my mind, seen inside as if it were crystal. I’m no stranger to recognizing aspects of myself in other Aspie blog posts: that goes with the territory. But occasionally I read something that could have been written about me. Which is kind of why I’m writing this now.

It doesn’t matter exactly what happened over the weekend. But what made it worse was my failure to apologize in a timely manner. You see, I started out thinking that because I hadn’t intentionally done anything to cause hurt then I couldn’t have done anything wrong and the other person must be behaving irrationally. I’d forgotten about unintended consequences.

To truly be responsible for one’s actions means accepting responsibility for all the effects, both intentional and unintentional, expected and unexpected, desirable and undesirable. And realizing that even unconscious, unplanned, unavoidable acts are included in this – accidents do happen.

“I never meant to…” is an excuse. It’s a valid excuse as far as it goes, but that’s not far enough. “It’s my fault” is better. I might not have been able to foresee the results of my actions, or even avoid doing it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret what happened. Accidents have causes. In this case I didn’t communicate early or clearly enough that I was approaching a crisis. It’s like being too busy defusing a ticking bomb to evacuate the surroundings in time. I had too narrow a focus on what was happening internally to think about anybody outside. And that was a mistake. There were consequences that meant the problems were more severe and lasted longer.

And so to the apology. I’m sure some people can say sorry and convey the appropriate sincerity regardless of whether or not they feel remorse. I can’t. If I’m going to apologize then I’ve got to understand that I did something wrong and regret it. Admit to myself first that I was wrong. That’s hard.

In some ways I had an easy life growing up. I had a natural gift for the subjects I studied in school and regularly achieved top marks with little effort. I got the “gifted” label early and it stuck. I enjoyed the plaudits. But the down side is that the more used you get to success, the worse failure appears. It makes you risk-averse: you avoid choosing the path of uncertainty because you have become afraid of the possibility of failure, of getting something wrong. In some ways being labelled as gifted is a curse: you’re only as good as your last [excellent] result. It made me happy, sure, but it made me awfully insecure at the same time. I identified with the label to such an extent that I felt that losing it would destroy who I was.

Admitting I got something wrong equates to admitting I failed. To accept being less than perfect. (Yes, I know intellectually I’m not perfect and I make mistakes but I don’t feel it – there’s still that belief that I have to achieve perfection just to keep on being myself.) I try so hard to get past this but it’s always there, like rails preventing me from changing direction. I still look for praise in what I do and dread censure: it’s made me a perfectionist, never satisfied with what I create because I concentrate on the flaws. It’s a never-ending school report with just the comment “could do better”.

So… it takes me time to get to the point where I feel able to admit that I’ve done wrong and apologize. Please bear with me and be patient.

I’m doing my best.

Anxiety: Learning to Cope

Anxiety: Learning to Cope

Nobody Home?

It’s the strangest feeling, or it would be if it weren’t so familiar. I catch myself playing the part, acting “normal”, carrying on without conscious intervention while all the time I’m there, watching. I feel like a spectator in my own body, a mere passenger.

I remain aware of everything around me, fully linked to my senses, but my mind is free-wheeling, pursuing lines of thought unrelated to what my body is doing. And every so often I notice that my body has been walking around, even talking to people, while I’ve been occupied with my thoughts.

Role Playing

I guess it’s a form of acting: I’m performing a role that I’ve rehearsed so thoroughly I don’t need to think about what I’m doing, leaving my mind free to wander. This is the state in which I’m most at ease: there is a comfortable familiarity as I run along the rails of routine.

Am I a Stereotype?

The trouble is… as I watch myself I wonder whether I am being myself or whether I am merely exhibiting a set of learned behaviors with the aim of fitting in. What makes me suspect this? I get little nudges from my conscience – a feeling that I should be, say, flapping my hands or talking at length and in detail about some topic of personal interest. Things I used to do as a child but have suppressed as I’ve grown.

Since discovering that I have Aspergers I have become more aware that a number of things I used to do instinctively were characteristic of the condition. I see my innate Aspie traits on one side of a balance with my acquired “normal” traits on the other, and as one side rises into prominence the other side sinks from view. I’ve been feeling more and more that I am out of balance and I need to take corrective action to restore the equilibrium.

I’ve found that whereas in the past I had been led into thinking of my differences as aberrant behaviors to be corrected, I now consider them to be natural aspects of the way I am. I have accepted that I’m different – and the reasons underlying that – and I try to be more myself rather than struggling to “act normal”. That said, there are some areas where my instinctive reactions are a hindrance to living independently: it’s not possible to go through life without interacting with strangers at some point.

Identity and Self-confidence

My sense of self – my identity – is moderately strong: I know who I am and my core values are well-established in my mind. I might not always have the strength or confidence to actively uphold them but I find that I am incapable of acting against them. My self-confidence on the other hand varies according to the situation from bulletproof to non-existent. And that’s where my anxiety creeps in.

The Sum of All Fears

First a bit of background: there is a psychological theory of learning usually referred to as “The Four Stages of Competence”. Briefly, the four stages are:

  1. Unconscious incompetence where you are not aware of your lack of a skill.
  2. Conscious incompetence in which you become aware that you do not understand or know the skill.
  3. Conscious competence which is having the knowledge but not grokking it: knowing a sequence of steps and able to follow the sequence but without fluency. One still has to think heavily about the task.
  4. Unconscious competence where practice – rehearsal – has made the skill so familiar that it has become habit and little or no conscious effort is required to perform it.

What I described at the start is stage 4: I’m doing things that are so familiar I don’t have to think about them and my conscious thoughts can drift off. Problems arise for me at stages 2 and 3 where I come face to face with the unknown.

When I am faced with a situation that is unfamiliar or where I can’t predict what turns events may take I become anxious. I lack self-confidence in my ability to perform the task, whether it is making a phone call or interacting with strangers. I know I can manage well-defined, structured interactions such as ordering a pizza or going to the doctor because I have become familiar with the routines involved: I am around stages 3-4 in those cases. But with something that is off-the-wall where I would have to react according to the context I find myself back at stage 2 where I am all too aware that I don’t really know what to do.

Breaking the Circle

At the moment I find myself trapped in a vicious circle where I have evolved strategies of avoidance when faced with anxiety-inducing situations. This prevents me gaining the experience to deal with similar situations in the future, and results in greater anxiety if I can’t avoid them. I recently raised this problem with my GP and I’ve started a course of therapy to try to manage my fears so that they don’t continue to be an obstacle to me doing things.

Square One

One of the first tasks has been to analyze the roots of my anxiety: what triggers it, what is it I am afraid of? Many people have a fear of judgement: what will the other person think of them? But that’s not it for me. My core fear is of failure, of not being able to complete the task. Fears of this kind in particular can affect people who grew up with a “gifted” label as I did. A lack of experience of failing makes any failure, however small, appear catastrophic. This leads to risk aversion, a strong drive to avoid the possibility of failure. Perhaps if I can learn to accept failure than I will be able to attempt things where I lack confidence. I can hope.

Playing it Safe

Playing it Safe

Social situations are a minefield in which the slightest misstep can result in things blowing up in your face. I picture the situation as a narrow path – the “safe” area in terms of what I can say or do – with increasing danger of stepping on a mine – upsetting somebody – the farther I venture from the path.

Safe Path image © Ben Forshaw 2012

Since I am risk-averse I do not often test the boundaries of what people find to be acceptable behavior – mapping out the danger area – and when I do, I tend to do so carefully and deliberately in the hope that any negative reaction will be small enough for me to handle.

I find it difficult because different people have wildly different standards of what they deem to be acceptable. Not only that, but the boundaries move depending on context. There is only a small patch of common ground on which the majority of people I encounter socially can agree.

My starting position with somebody I have not met before is to play it very safe – speak when spoken to, no slang or swearing, no physical contact. Over time I will observe how they act towards me and others, and slowly begin to introduce those behaviors that they demonstrate – the assumption here is that they are less likely to be offended by something that they do themselves.

This is not an infallible method. That’s people for you – they’re not always rational, logical or consistent. It can be a case of “do as I say, not as I do” – how confusing! But slowly, gingerly, I can explore the envelope and work out just how far I am able to take things with those I know reasonably well.

The Point of No Return

The Point of No Return

History and literature are full of examples of actions that cannot be undone, steps that cannot be retracted. Julius Caesar commanded his legions to cross the Rubicon, countless seaborne invaders have burned their boats, Shakespeare had Henry V exhort his troops “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead”. Common to these is the idea that, while the action might be a desperate gamble, turning away would equate to failure – come back with your shield or on it, death or glory.

Such actions are invariably described with the benefit of hindsight and portray the events as heroic and aspirational. But can they really be considered to set a good example – are there situations in which risking everything on the roll of a die is the rational course of action?

Obviously the answer depends on the consequences of turning away, of choosing not to act. In Caesar’s case his term as Proconsul had expired and he had been recalled to Rome in the face of Pompey’s accusations of insubordination and treason. If he had not invaded Italy from Gaul thus instigating a civil war he would have found himself much reduced, his political aspirations in ruins. For such an ambitious man that would have been intolerable; he preferred to risk defeat and death but was aware that he could count on significant military, public and political support. Bearing that in mind, it was a calculated risk.

I would describe myself as risk-averse – I tend towards courses of action that have less uncertainty, smaller chances of incurring harm. I find uncertainty – any kind of gambling for example – to be stressful. The worst kinds of situation I can imagine involve having to decide between courses of action that each carry risk: being between the devil and the deep blue sea. It is a combination of fear of the unknown and fear of the prospect of suffering injury.

Problems arise when faced with such dilemmas – I can easily be frozen into inaction by my fears, even if doing nothing carries its own risks. In consequence I will attempt to keep my options open, to leave myself a route back to where I started. To pass the point of no return is, to me, like jumping off a cliff (I have a fear of heights which makes this allusion particularly apt). I am over-aware of the consequences of failure and this biases my judgement to favor the path with the least bad risk rather than the one with the highest potential benefit.

It all boils down to fear and anxiety, those often irrational feelings, that steer me away from particular situations or courses of action. I guess I am at least predictable in that I will act to minimize my anxiety. Avoiding becoming trapped – cornered – with risk on every side is crucial to this. There will be no passing the point of no return for me, thank you.