Stims and running water

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Maybe there is really a continuum of symptoms with no cut-off point where one says " this far 'normal' further not."

As I experience it ( and I'm still assuming I'm NT) there is:

A. my "Autistic" World which is actually a left-over from childhood, is accessed by stimming and hasn't developed significantly since I became an adult. It uses visual imagery and contains games from childhood which I can still access to relax, and do so several times a day. It is about things like empires and football clubs (things which interested me as a child). There was also a load of stuff about trains, aeroplanes and buses but I never access that stuff and it seems really infantile (the other parts are infantile too but I don't seem to mind). These worlds don't contain people, just things and systems interacting.

I also have a Teenage Fantasy Module which is not accessed by using water but by pacing up and down or running ( just like the girl in the video does). As a teenager I used to RUN whenever I had to go anywhere and I thought no-one would be paying attention (it must have looked wierd). This was my way to access my Teenage Fantasy module. I still access that every day for fun although I'm not a teenager or even young adult.

Obviously these worlds or modules are relics from different periods of development. They don't interact at all and I think of them as completely separate.

The Teenage Fantasy Module has more 'socially acceptable' stimming, which I suppose one would expect.

B. Then there are Special Interests, accessed by somehow stimming with the brain. These interests are the kinds of thing one studies in school and university (it has reduced by now to reading foreign language texts). When I read a book it's just like stimming. It began as an attempt (in late teens) to harness stimming to the need to study. My Special Interests have some wierd features (such as being focussed only peripherally on the content of a text and always reading a book from the first sentence to the last rather than consulting it for information). I am fascinated by the shape of the words and how they look on the page. When I've read a book I often can't really tell what it was about because I haven't noticed.

C. Then there is Society or Other People. This I somehow try to stagger along with. I used to try to integrate B with C but I gave up at some point because it didn't work. So now I have B and C running in parallel.


I would say that:

A ("Autistic" World) has only an inside

B (Special Interests) has an inside and an outside

C (Society/Other People) is basically an outside



The problem with this state-of-affairs is that A and B feel good and C doesn't.

Daydreaming seems to me completely innocuous and normal. I don't think daydreaming is autistic.

Quote: " Feeling starved of sensory input is how I feel when I crave certain stims."

That's spot on.

But it has to be THAT sensory input, not just any sensory input.

I didn't mean daydreaming in general. Most people daydream. I meant the kind of daydreaming described in those videos, that I do, and other people on the spectrum have described.

This kind of thing is also referred to as a "schizoid defense mechanism" and happens with other diagnosable conditions, or probably none at all. So it is not just an autistic thing, but I do think that for those of us who are autistic, it very much can be an autistic thing.

Yes. Only certain stims work for me - most often, putting my hands under running water, but it happens with others as well.

Didn't know it was a schizoid defense mechanism. I'll have to Google schizoid defence mechanisms.

I suppose it's that as well because one is disengaged from other people and in control. The girl in the video speaks of being in control in her world and of being able to do what she wants.

The only thing I can think of offhand is that as a slightly older child I think it was just more fun sometimes than interactive playing with others, so it was a kind of short-circuiting of the play process and shifting it into the head. Maybe there were no others there at first. I have absolutely no memories whatsoever before 5 and a half which makes self analysis difficult. (I find it amazing how some people in their books can describe exactly what they experienced when they were 3 or so). I don't think it has to do with escape, except from understimulation. When I see a very young child I imagine they must be bored stiff and about to disappear off into their own heads, so maybe it was like that, a way of coping iwth understimulation. My father said I was obsessed with water. The splitting of real from stim-activated world must have taken place very early.

Until last week I just treated the whole thing as a strange residual quirk from childhood.

re: schizoid defense mechanisms

When I re-read the post about the three worlds A B and C it certainly sounded really schizoid, so it probably is. I'm not really sure any more how one differentiates in practice a. the schizoid syndrome from b. mild autism and c. strong introversion. Sitting in a cave meditating for 5 years would be really introverted but not necessarily schizoid.


I find the diagnosis 'schizoid' really repellent for some reason, but I suppose one can't choose one's disorder to suit oneself. The schizoids I've come across seem really callous and cold and I don't feel that way.

Maybe: extremely introverted with some autistoid traits. That's enough to make life difficult but not too difficult.

Do you think you are more schizoid or more ASD, or just an introvert?

"Schizoid defense" does not mean "schizoid personality disorder," though. It just describes a kind of defense mechanism. I am not sure it is a defense mechanism for everyone, however.

I am ASD, and also strongly introverted (I score very high on "introversion" scales). The only reason I mention I feel like I could probably fit into SPD is because I'm not interested in starting a family and my idea of the ideal relationship doesn't involve a lot of physical intimacy, plus I'm asexual. That stuff is kind of schizoid.

I try not to be cold and callous - I actually put a lot of work into expressing sympathy and compassion when it seems appropriate (and it can be exhausting to work out what to do sometimes) - but I probably come across that way without intending to, also.

Have you heard of "broad autistic phenotype?"

No, I haven't. Thanks again for the tip. I'll check it out.

Glad to hear that Schizoid Defense Mechanism doesn't involve Schizoid Personality Disorder. I don't want SPD. I have no problem with being mildly autistic beyond the fact that it may not be true. If I WERE mildly autistic I'd feel a great sense of relief. If I heard I had SPD it would dent my self-image a lot. Being strongly introverted is also OK but doesn't seem to go far enough. It doesn't answer the question WHY one is strongly introverted.

As regards lack of interest in having a family. I had the chance to do so a few times but felt it would only work at all if I had some mega-fulfilling job like research scientist or professor of classics or something like that where the need for a totally focussed state of mind was fulfilled during the day and family was on the margins, like a kind of frame. But I'm probably deluding myself that it would have worked out with a family even under such perfect conditions. That could be schizoid, but its more the unpredictability, noise and busyness of family life that would bother me, rather than feeling threatened by closeness as such.

I don't find closeness threatening. I find it claustrophobic and suffocating. I can live in a house with other people as long as no one expects me to mingle all the time. If I have to be around someone most of the time, or even half of the time, it'll feel stifling and confining.

It's exactly the same with me. ( I`'ve read that schizoids don't like that situation either, and it's certainly one of the symptoms of schizoid personality). I know when I've reached my limit and it seems to be very much lower than most people's, so that one ends up trying to avoid people a lot whereas if everyone were like me I wouldn't have to avoid anyone because they'd all be maintaining what seem to me to be proper boundaries of time and space. I think in that case I probably wouldn't have social problems. I mean if everyone were the same in that respect. My partner describes herself as a "hermit" but she's definitely not autistic. She thinks we're both incapable of relationships and that's why it works. She has sometimes dropped comments about autism. We saw a program about an autistic person who spent his time memorising the telephone book and could say where everyone in the entire city lived and what their phone number was. I said it was a pity that he had all this amazing data in his head but it didn't help him in life at all. She said "I know someone just the same" meaning me. Things like that are one of the reasons I'm on this forum.

How did you come to know you have ASD?

How do you know it didn't help him in life at all? I mean, sure, it likely has no career benefit, but if he gets the same satisfaction from his memorized phone book that I get from (currently) learning everything I can about autism, I would say he probably gets enough out of it to matter to him.



I was reading and following links from blogs, and ended up reading an autistic woman's blog. And then I read her entire blog from end to beginning (because they're organized that way). Then I read some other autistic people's blogs. Then I had a personal crisis and went into denial. After another three years, I looked into it again, did a lot of research on the matter, and eventually got a diagnosis.

There were a lot of little things and some big things that I knew and was aware of (like consciously working out how to talk to people, or not picking much up from body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice) and a lot that I was not until I read explicit descriptions. It was obvious fairly quickly that there was something going on.

This is kind of vagued up but I just woke up and my brain and words are mixing badly. Mostly, finding out I was autistic was an accident, but ultimately a welcome one.

Thanks for sharing your story. You say the diagnosis was welcome. What worries me is the possibilty of finding out that every piece of the jigsaw fits and then going to a psychologist and he tells me I don't have it. Which would be too bizarre, like travelling to Shanghai and then being told the meeting is in Nairobi.


Some things I'm still trying to make up my mind on. For example, at first (ie about a week ago) I wasn't aware of not reading social cues as being an issue for me, but it has since occurred to me (from another YouTube video) that it took me until the age of 33 to find a girlfriend because I hadn't the faintest idea how to go about dating someone. It was a complete mystery to me how to read signals and what to do even if I'd been able to read them. Other people were just so relaxed and took it all so naturally. It was wierd. Everyone else was pairing up and I was always the single one in every situation I got into (despite looking presentable enough, ie about average)- So I think that must class as social incompetence and inability to read cues.

Also, I don't have problems with understanding metaphor as far as I know ( I did Eng Lit at highschool and understood Shakespeare and Yeats OK). My own metaphors when I speak are often not understood by the other person because they are too subjective.

My language skills in general are good I think, so that's not a symptom either.

I'm also good at making verbal jokes.

I've just noticed I go on and on without stopping.

I got into this huge argument (a friendly one, I think) with a friend back in the mid-late 90s who said that the majority of human communication was through non-verbal cues and I disagreed strongly. I don't think we got down to the fact that I get a lot more out of communicating in text than I do in person, but I resolutely thought his assertion that so much communication happens without words was borderline superstitious.

Lots of autistic people understand metaphor and idioms, especially common ones. It may be a matter of learning over time where NTs might make inferences and pick them up more quickly, but it's not really a sign, I don't think. However, I think that I have heard other autistic people say that NTs find their metaphors difficult to grasp.

I understand your anxiety about finding that every piece fits but they still tell you that you don't have it. That can happen - sometimes, it really is the case that while you fit, you may not have it to an impairing degree. It's also the case that a lot of professionals have really stereotypical ideas of what autistic people are like, and you may not fit those ideas. I've also found a lot of people tend to compare adults to children and determine that you are probably not autistic because this 8 year old child they worked with/met/babysat once behaved in ways you do not.

Regarding the guy with the phone book: All I meant was that it didn't have any extrinsic use like learning everything about rocks and then being a geologist or learning Russian and going to live in Russia.

When I was 17 I spent 10 months writing 900 pages of autistic literature that I couldn't use for anything because it was completely unreadable. 10 years later I destroyed it because it wasn't usable. That was a mistake.

It's good to hear you are diagnosed because it gives your observations a certain authority.

It's two in the morning here. I have to sleep now.