Autism & rigidity

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Rigidity is, supposedly, a key feature in autism. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what this really means.

The structure of my life is more fragile than most people's. Some changes can have a lof of impact on me, more so than on most others. So maybe I sometimes react more intense to some changes than others - not all changes, but those that really matters to me. Is this what people typically call being "rigid"? Really?

How is that "rigidity" explained in diagnose manuals etc? How do you guys understand the term?

(In case you wonder, I'm new here. Have just started the process to investigate if I have autism, ADD or something else. I can recognise myself quite well in some of the descriptions of aspie features, but some I certainly don't think fit me. Either I am not what they call "rigid", or I don't understand what they mean by that. Possibly you could help me explain.)

I worked at a place once that had testing done of electronic equipment that required 10 discrete steps done repetitively. As you performed the testing you would pick up speed and could get going quite fast. However, if you stopped to think about what you were doing, you broke the rhythm and had to start all over. We used to call this "brain phase out".

I think for us doing something repetitive allows us to do it sort of on "automatic pilot". When having to deal with something requiring analysis, it can be taxing and even lead to a sort of paralysis when a conclusion is difficult to reach in real time. Things that are different or changeable create a level of anxiety that is uncomfortable and we can seek to avoid them. This is often seen as rigidity.

As we age and encounter situations where we are forced out of our comfort zone, we may slowly begin to discover strategies and coping mechanisms that allow us to deal with change a little more effectively. If we have a ritual or routine that others find objectionable we usually have to choose if the discomfort of accommodation is worth it or not. We usually select a level of accommodation that meets some minimum of social acceptance.

Welcome to Wrong Planet, Marjetta,

The signs and behaviors of autism in older women are different from those of men or boys. It has only been fairly recently that anyone has realized this. Before you get a diagnosis, you want to make sure that the person performing the tests, specializes in autism in older women.

Those of us who are not children, in middle age or older, have had to learn to cope with the world without the help of a diagnosis or understanding our of disability. So we may "look" different that what the assessor is looking for.

You will also find that professionals in the field use terms that sound like lay terms, but have a different meaning in the professional sense.

I have no idea what they mean by rigidity. It could be being resistant to change. Or it could be, for example, a person who has to eat food in a certain order every time. Or have some other dressing or eating issue.

There are women here in the forum who can explain this better than I can. I hope they see your post and respond.

i think tmf has given a good description of rigidity ..doing the same thing in the same pattern..
as a normal useable process to use to get from point A to point B , if it changes a person can stall
as in , if the pattern is interrupted then , it can be upsetting to the person , who is familiar with his or her normal pattern of doing things , this could apply to any thing . ( strongly resistant to change).

@Marjatta: Welcome to WrongPlanet!

Wikipedia is always a good source for information...

"In psychology, rigidity or mental rigidity refers to an obstinate inability to yield or a refusal to appreciate another person's viewpoint or emotions characterized by a lack of empathy.  It can also refer to the tendency to perseverate, which is the inability to change habits and the inability to modify concepts and attitudes once developed.  A specific example of rigidity is functional fixedness, which is a difficulty conceiving new uses for familiar objects."

< Link to Source Article >

^
I don't think rigidity in that sense is characteristic of women with autism. But I could be wrong. I hope B19 or Amity weigh in.

With regard to autism, I think rigidity is best described in Part B of the DSM5 as "Restricted and Repetitive Behaviours".

"Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours:
Inflexibility of behaviour, difficulty coping with change, or other restricted/repetitive behaviours appear frequently enough to be obvious to the casual observer and interfere with functioning in a variety of contexts. Distress and/or difficulty changing focus or action".

This is described in more detail:

B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):

Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases).

Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualised patterns or verbal nonverbal behaviour (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).

Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g, strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interest).

Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement).


I don't personally think that gender necessarily plays a role. I'm an autistic woman and I can be just as "rigid" as men are usually described. In contrast, I know men who are less affected by changes to their routine, and they seem less rigid than autistic women. It depends on the person, their coping skills, and the existence of other co-morbid conditions.

Since leaving work, I'm in a place in my life where I don't have to deal with change. I stay home where everything is sensory-friendly and I can be myself without masking, altering routines or leaving my comfort zone. It's all well and dandy but when something does come along unexpectedly, I'm usually a mess. I'll melt down or shut down or completely withdraw.

I really think that Wikipedia definition "obstinate inability to yield or a refusal to appreciate another person's viewpoint or emotions characterized by a lack of empathy" is way out. I bet the source is at least a hundred years old. "Lack of empathy", yeah right.

Ignoring Wikipedia, so for these these definitions or explanations of rigidity has turned up in the thread

1) Avoidance of situations that can be difficult to handle is, by outsiders, seen as rigidity
2) Doing the same thing in the same pattern, and getting upset if the pattern is disturbed
3) Restricted, repetitive behaviours

Number 2 fits with both 1 and 3. But I do think these are different? Like, Number 2 is what can be observed. Number 1 is the explanation of what happens inside.

I think 3 is something else, though. This is very interesting! I always felt that restricted and repetitive behaviours is something that in no way applies to me. Reading these descriptions, I realise they did when I was a kid. I lined up my crayons, using them in order. There was nothing compulsory about it, though. Nobody ever disturbed or destroyed this but I don't think I would have felt terrible if someone would, except for the intrusion of my space. It just somehow felt good doing it.

For some time, I used the shirts in my closet in the order they hang there. But I think the reason just was I didn't know how to choose.

Experienceing chaos and trying to create order to balance, would be my explanation of these things I did. I certainly see it as something else than numer 1 and 2.

If rigidity means number 2, which is explained by numer 1, then this is very, very funny. You see, I have been taught some methods to make my life easier. Listing stuff I need to do. My mornings are more efficient, and I am less likely to get stuck on the internet, if my morning routines are the same. It's a lot of work but totally worth it.

I suddenly feel, think and, well, vibrate of this:

If I find out a method of handling stuff myself, it's called rigidity.
If a similar method is taught to me by a psychologist, it is called CBT and is all fine and dandy.

Those of you who think I've gotten it all wrong: please explain why.

Example of rigidity would be like you use a certain Toothpaste brand to brush your teeth, one day you run out or the store doesn't have any so you simply don't brush your teeth. Most would would just buy another brand.

Another example is you go to a certain hair cutting place, one day it is closed when it's not supposed to be, you just don't get a hair cut that day. Most people would just go somewhere else.


Everyone has some sort of rigidity but they are also flexible for when things don't work out like going to another hair cutting place when the other one is closed.


I am sure there are different levels of autism rigidity and I can only think of the extreme ones we will often read about in books and websites about autism.

My example of rigidity is I will not have a sandwich with a hot dog or hamburger bun, I will only use regular bread only we use for sandwiches. I decide on a peanut butter jelly sandwich only to discover we are out of bread, I will just have something else, not have a peanut butter sandwich even though we have hamburger buns or got dog buns. My husband calls this picky but to me having it on hamburger guns is ridiculous. I also will not have hot dogs on a sand which bun and I will not have a hamburger patty on a sandwich bread.

For me it's to do with inflexibility of thinking which may lead to inflexible behaviour, and what I call our sensitively-organised minds which have trouble coping with sudden changes foisted onto them by the outside world. I gather autistic people are said to have a lot of black and white thinking, though for some reason these days I'm the most nuanced thinker I know, readily seeing that very little is absolutely true or right.

I seem to remember that I didn't always see that, and that initially I didn't like the discovery that so much of reality is better described as having varying shades of grey. That seemed to make things much more complicated and difficult, but I guess I gradually got used to the idea and these days I like it, and get very tired of ideas expressed with undue certainty. I was initially annoyed when I found that science wasn't so much about establishing hard, immutable facts and building them gradually, but was about never being sure, about making new discoveries that would demolish older established ideas. I couldn't see how that would ever be comfortable - just when you think you know what's going on, you have to revise the whole thing, down comes the hard-earned house of cards and you have more work to do. But like I say, I got to be comfortable with that.

For all that, I'm still fairly sensitively organised and vulnerable to unexpected changes knocking my plans for a six. But I'm much more likely these days to have a sense that it can happen to me, and to have contingency plans in place. I still catch myself thinking too rigidly occasionally, though it's not usually long before I question my assumptions and figure out, for example, that there are other options than to take or leave the offer of buying a quantity of something for £x. I could offer less, or buy a smaller amount. Compromise.

I don't buy into the "lack of empathy, refusal to see anything from other viewpoints" thing. It may start that way but I think it's just a matter of discovering that things are relative and grey, and adjusting to that discovery.

For myself, I associate rigidity with stubbornness. Either an unwillingness to follow someone else's lead or to accept someone else's idea. It is a tendency of mine that I make an effort to minimize.

^
In myself and in at least one other ASDer, I've seen this pattern where a new suggestion is initially received with hostility, but once the idea has had time to percolate through the brain, the validity of the suggestion is more seen for what it is, and it's viewed more objectively. So I think it's very useful to give us time to adjust. Unfortunately people don't always have the patience to wait for that slow processing, and they may simply run away with the idea that we're simply rigid and stubborn.

In my case, following the lead of others is a thing I might well not do. It would be a shame if I lost out on the benefits of doing that, and I expect there are times when that's exactly what happens, but I think there are also significant problems with following the lead of others. One is that the autistic brain frequently operates in highly individual ways, which can render the simple following of advice from a mainstream NT less wise than it may look - their ideas just don't work so well when we try to ape them. The other problem is that good leadership might be extremely rare and that following bad leadership is against our interests.

In my case I'm only willing to follow the lead of another person if I happen to trust their integrity and their expertise in the subject in question. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to expect that trust without doing anything to earn it from me. I think NTs are more likely to knuckle under and get behind a leader without much scrutiny. I don't think that's a particularly good way to behave.

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