mljt wrote:
I obsess over how many times I do things, so quite often I'll notice how many of things there are. Seats on the tube are a good example:
Picture here.I find myself focussing on the squares and looking at them in turn, in fours. So I'll pick a square, look to the one next to it, then underneath that one, then the one next to that one, in a square shape. I'll do this repeatedly.
I do that too, whenever there's a pattern of squares, on a tile floor or in a brick wall or something, I'll group the squares, usually into fours, and see the pattern they make. I don't really do it on purpose, it's more of an unconscious compulsion. When I realise I'm doing it, I try to stop, because there are far more interesting things to think about than tiles on a floor. I also obsessively count stairs, and notice patterns in their numbers. For instance, there's a staircase on my school campus with 28 steps, and it's broken into four segments of 7 steps with wide gaps in between. Same with the stairwells; there are two sets of stairs that go up and around a corner, with 16 steps in each segment making for a total of 32. I sometimes get annoyed with these patterns because I'm uninterested in them and the compulsive counting invades whatever other thing I might have been thinking about at the time. Sometimes I'll recite my favourite movie lines or songs to myself as I walk, and when I reach stairs, it always bugs me that I have to interrupt the recitation because I have to count the stairs, even if I've walked up and down them a hundred times and know exactly how many there are.
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"Survival is insufficient" - Seven of Nine
Diagnosed with ASD level 1 on the 10th of April, 2014
Rediagnosed with ASD level 2 on the 4th of May, 2019
Thanks to Olympiadis for my fantastic avatar!