Are unusual phobias an early sign of AS or an ASD?

Post Reply New Topic

I did and still do have serious phobias. My 5 year old autie just, out of the blue, developed a phobia of all bugs...especially flying ones. I dont know what set it off because before she would catch bugs and was interested in them. She made my husband almost rear end someone the other day because a tiny fly was in the back seat of the car and she screamed bloody murder....poor baby!

Stickers creep me out a bit too; especially the fuzzy ones. OH and the smelly ones. Gross. And I don't see the point of them anyway.

I'm still highly suspicious of shadows (read: scared) but I have to hide/work on that because I like to go downstairs for a small snack in the night sometimes and it just won't do to turn all the lights on.

At age 6 or so I also recall being TERRIFIED of a large ...something... that friends of my parents had hanging in their basement stairwell. It was probably a cheesy craft, but needless to say I couldn't go down there.

Oh, and I was afraid of all flowers. And my grandmother is a serious gardener. And I lived with her.

Hello it's Luke again - interesting to hear many of your experiences! I have also just found out that my Aspie best friend also had the same fear of me of car winscreen wipers - at around the same time in his childhood - and guess what - he used to draw them I have seen his dooling from when he was a kid in school exercise books and I have read another post on this forum about a girl who had a similar fear of celing fans and also drew them so it seems like drawing is a common way to alleviate the fear especially amongst those on the spectrum - has anyone else also experinced this?

Anyway like my best friend I also used to doodle a lot - is this sort of drawing more common amongst those on the spectrum in general especially given that it is a way of occupying ourselves when we feel the isolation that we often experience?

Luke

It's not in the DSM, so it's entirely possible to have an ASD and not have childhood phobias. It might be more common in people with ASDs because we don't understand the world around us as most people do. Many children, though, ASD or not, have strange phobias.

My family members consider my phobias - vomiting and choking - to be strange.

With the vomiting phobia, I'm only afraid of myself vomiting. I only get scared when other people vomit if I think they have a stomach virus which I could catch. The last time someone vomitted around me and I thought they had the stomach flu, I nearly passed out. That turned out not to be the case, but it gave me such a terrible fright! I read somewhere that people who are afraid of vomiting have control issues. Being a self-admitted control freak, I can totally vouch for this. While vomiting, you lose control of your body, and to me that is a reason to be afraid of it.

With the choking phobia, I'm only afraid of other people choking. The last time someone choked near me, I screamed bloody murder and dove behind the furniture, despite the fact that there was company visiting us. It is quite unsettling when I choke myself, but the thought of it doesn't cause me very much anxiety. In fact, I'm actually pretty reckless when it comes to eating food - I eat very quickly and often find myself accidentally swallowing unchewed chunks. My dad actually called me out on this during lunch today. But seeing/hearing other people choking terrifies me so much that I can't even watch cartoons that feature one of the characters choking. What doesn't make any sense is the fact that this phobia started because of a near-death experience that happened to me, and yet I'm only afraid of it happening to other people. Maybe it's because I trust my own judgement/control more than other peoples'?

Man I have a horrible phobia of chandeliers.They're like huge,metallic hooks with lights and if you ever add more weight to one it would come crashing down.I constantly avoid them when I see one.I walk as far as I can from one,even sliding across the wall if I can't find any room to walk around it.At times when my phobia is at it's max,like when there's a bunch of chandeliers in a building,I won't even move from the place i'm at,no matter how much anybody tells me to move.Luckily I only hate chandeliers that are hanging from a chain or if the chain their hanging from is visible(the Giant chandeliers that look like domes with no visible sign of a chain or anything else don't bug me at all).Ceiling fans,now that's a different story.If I see a wobbly ceiling fan in a room,I would do anything to avoid it.I have a slightly wobbly ceiling fan in my room and I won't even enter my room if it's wobbling like crazy.I either shield myself with a durable object,I get somebody to shut it off,or if I'm lucky the fan will only be spinning on it's first mode.Then I just walk in,pull the cord 3 times and use something to completly stop it from spinning(after it slows down of course).I never turn it on myself,my parents turn it on after they clean the carpet floor,and use it to dry the carpet.

Vomiting is something I try to avoid at all cost.

As a child, I was afraid of the dark and being alone. If I was left alone, I'd cry. it was nightmarish.

Talking to girls. It was my high school phobia. Six years in high school, and I rarely spoke to girls, if you can believe that. College? Same thing.

Getting into a fight, or an argument with someone. If I have to argue with someone, I'll do it, but it is not something I want to do, like vomiting.

DRIVING! DRIVING! DRIVING! <---nothing frightens me more than this one. Nothing.

I definitely had and have some. Many disappeared from my memory over the years. One is the hand drier above mentioned. I feared a dark corner in the bedroom when I was little. I developed a mild phobia over elevators (regular dream). The other is swimming pools. I like to swim, so I use the center stripes, where it is bearable. At my ex-girlfriends, there hang I picture of a sad lady above the bed, I had to talk to it to overcome my fears of it. Agoraphobia is normal, I think.

There where a couple of things that really played havoc with me growing up and still do to this day.

First one was public restrooms. When I was little this was a real problem as I would not go into them at all. Imagine trying to hold it all day until you come home from school. I didn't fear anything would happen to me in them. It would just be these overwhelming urge not to go, if faced with the only choice was one of them. As a grew older the fear would gradually lessen that I could use a public bathroom, but even today I feel that fear in the back in my head when I walk into one.

The other is food. Just how it feels on my tongue would make me gang and vomit what I already ate. It could taste good to me, but it felt wrong on my tongue then the throat would close down and the stomach would start to rumble. Onions are a good example for me. I love the taste of the onions, but if you cut up one and put it in something that is baked then I will not eat it. My mother would tried to hide them but it didn't matter. Soon as it touched my tongue, I would be spitting the food out.

This would cause me great problems when I would eat at someone's house. Try explaining to someone that their food is alright as your trying suppress the urge to vomit. The fear of embarrassment would be enough for me to avoid going to someones house if they where going to serve a meal.

Also people look at my weird when I try to explain it to them. They just do not seem to get that it is not the taste but the texture of the food that I do not like.

Not so much a problem nowadays because I know what foods would cause a reaction with me. But do not be surprised to see me at the dinner table at someone else house picking out the onions in a dish they serve. I learned that looking like I was being picky was better than vomiting the food back up.

This article mentions something called infrasound and discusses its ability to scare people... http://www.cracked.com/article_18828_the-creepy-scientific-explanation-behind-ghost-sightings.html

I wonder if the sensitivity to sound is related to the phobias, as in the sounds triggering the fearful feeling, only since our hearing is more sensitive we get the creeped out feeling sooner. Does that make any sense?

I have seen someone with an actual phobia, and since then, I can't say that I have any actual phobias. There are things that I strongly dislike and avoid, but nothing causes the kind of panic in me that I saw in that person with an actual phobia.

I remember very much disliking rabbits when I was a kid, and I think it was all because of a weird dream I had involving them. Other than that, I have nothing, even though I am pretty sensitive to sound. It makes me more angry than afraid.

They're common in autistic people in general. Not necessarily an "early" sign, but a common trait. Enough that I think they're even mentioned in the DSM. (In the long description, not the short criteria at the end. Something about unusual fears of everyday objects.)

There was a picture of my great grandmother that I thought was going to 'get me' when I was 4. I would take her picture and put it face down.

I also hated loud music of any kind and hated to be taken places where there were huge crowds milling about.