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

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Hi,

My name is Luke and I come from Liverpool, England and I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 11 years old - further information on me can be found on my newbie post on the "Getting to know each other forum" as I am new to this forum but I find its subject matter facinating of course!

Anyway onto my question. When I was a kid before I was dxed with Aspergers I had suffered from some phobias which I would consider to be unusual, at least from an NT point of view. For example when I was 3-4 years old I had an irrational fear of car windscreen wipers and when I was in my grandads car, when the wipers were switched on when it was raining I used to get very upset even to the point of crying at times and I would ask my Grandad (or Dad) to turn them off as I think it was quite a deep fear as far as I remember.

Anyway when I reached 5 years old I developed another very obscure fear. In my Grandma's house thier was a large mechanical wall clock with a striking mechanism (she still has it to this day but it is no longer used for time!). One day my Uncle who was thier at the time wound the striking mechanism - at the time I thought nothing of it and I had no fear that anything bad was about to happen. I went with my dad to my Grandma's house a few days later and I was sitting on a sofa underneath the clock. The clock stroke midday (I think) and and the sound made me feel really frightened almost on a level of pathological fear - I went running out of the front door and at the time I started crying and was insisting that I would not go back into the house unless the clock was removed or at least the striking mechanism was disabled. I was really fearful about going to either my grandma's house or any other house that might have had a similar kind of clock for a long time afterwards - although my Dad did disable the mechanism to make it easier for me so the clock would not strike/chime.

My question is are fears like the ones described above more common in children that are on the Autistic Spectrum than in NT kids? And are fears like that considered an early indication of being on the Spectrum? Also have any other people on here had similar fears during the same phase of development as a child?

Luke

Hi again.

I can definitely relate--I DREADED our smoke detector when I was a kid. It made a horribly loud buzzing sound and had a bad habit of going off at the slightest provocation (like when somebody burned toast). This fear persisted until the day I moved out of that apartment. The ones here are slightly higher in pitch and don't bother me quite as much. (Also, they don't go off unless there's actually a reason--I can burn candles nearby and nothing happens.)

A common aspect of AS is sensory hypersensitivity--in our cases, to sound. I think that's what was going on with you (and me as well).

I'd say so. When I was younger I was afraid of plants, leaves and a certain sound that buses made (I cried whenever I heard it.) And even to this day, stickers creep me out.

For a couple of years when he was between 2 and 4 my son would have a complete meltdown in public restrooms (I finally got the fact that it was too loud in there!) and, if I tried on shoes in a shoe store.

He would scream and try to forcibly put my shoes back on me. That happened twice before I stopped taking him.

We would have to buy shoes, bring them home to try on him with a food bribe, then take the ones that didn't fit back.

He's six now and completely over the new shoe phobia. He will go into public restrooms but he hates it.

I have never had a phobia. I am not really afraid of anything. The closest I get to fear is an adrenaline rush when I am doing dangerous things. That is my body responding to stress and keeping me safe.
On the other hand, there are things I really don't like. I don't like overpowering perfume or air fresheners because they make me gag. Being stuck in a store for too long gives me a headache because of the bright lights and colors.

Oh man. What is the medical terminology for fuzzy-phobia and hair-in-shower phobia? Always freaked me out, even now. Also hate swarms of things. When my OCD got the most of me, that was the worst. Swarms of anything.

Huge stores tend to mess with me too, after a while. They are also quite dehydrating for anyone.

A lot of the posts in this thread sound to me like sensory sensitivity rather than "phobias".

Loud, sudden, sharp sounds - striking clocks, smoke alarms, etc - are a classic trigger for sensory sensitivity. I can even get agitated by the sound of someone pouring breakfast cereal on a really quiet morning: the abrasive sounds of all the cereal scratching around in the box as it is being shaken just jar on all my nerves, which can be very tender and hyper-sensitive at that time of day (no, I'm not hung over nor do I have a migraine). This is a sensory processing problem, not a phobia.

So - to the OP - yes, this sensory sensitivity is very common among people with AS: well over 75% of diagnosed Aspies have this sound sensitivity, according to Dr Tony Attwood (A Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome). It can be the most debilitating aspect of AS for many people. It is hard to cope with everyday situations if your whole nervous system is screaming at you because of the sounds you hear.

You can also have touch sensitivity (e.g. disliking your wet or hair touching you) and light sensitivity (I keep the florescent lights in my office switched off because they just feel "too bright" - but no one else at work does that) and taste sensitivity and so on.

The fear of the clock sound would be to sensitivity of sound. When I was about 8 there was a huge thunderstorm and I was so frightened I hid under my blankets until it stopped. I never really liked thunderstorms until I was an adult. Although I did get stuck in torrential rain with lightning during a meltdown and that was not fun.

I was scared of the windscreen wipers too.

I think phobias or sensory sensitivity is common in ASD. There's also a predisposition to anxiety in ASD. I forget what part of the brain is affected. Amygdala I think.

When I was 8, I was afraid, that my heart was going to fall out of my chest, because I watched a documentary about a boy, around that age, who's heart grew faster than his body, and kept on falling out of his chest.

I had a few unusual phobias when I was very young. Fortunately I grew out of all of them as I got older

-At the house we lived in until I was five, there was a patio with a "trap door" that probably lead to a water tank of something like that. I thought it was a bottomless pit and was terrified of it, especially when the cat would sit on it.
-I was afraid of electric hand dryers in public toilets. They were loud and scary looking
-Airport baggage claims, particularly the flaps that luggage travelled to go get to the next room. Think "Om nom nom nom"
-I remember going into a toy store that had a scary looking fan, and I never went into that store again after that.
-I had a fear of being in any kind of small boat (e.g. canoes) because I was afraid of sinking.
-Thunderstorms - a common phobia that became a major problem when we moved to Florida. I grew out of it around 12 or so.

Yep. When I was a really young toddler I used to be afraid of the sound vinyl records made when they jumped or got stuck in a groove. I also used to have nightmares about the window in my bedroom coming alive and talking to me, so I think unusual phobias probably are at least partly related to AS.

Strill petrified of spiders, but that's not especially unusual.

Temple Grandin writes about phobias like these, so yes, OP. Your clock one sounds like things she's described.

When I was little I had a terrible, terrible fear of railroad tracks and sirens. I'm still not quite comfortable with either. I also developed a fear of the stairs in my grandmother's house when I was about 8 and when descending them the world seemed to reel and I lost the ability to go down them. It happened on several occasions.

I definitely had some weird ones, including as already mentioned, certain plants and leaves. No idea why, and it wasnt' ALL plants or leaves. The other was bathroom or kitchen ventilator fans. I was so terrified of those, that I wouldn't go in a public restroom for fear that I'd suddenly see one that I hadn't first seen, upon walking in. Very strange fears/phobias, as I understood what the fans were, and why they were needed. Just doesn't make any sense. The fear never went away completely, but having been an adult for the past 25 years or more, I put a cap on the fear and don't act on it. Same with the plant thing. I sometimes freak out if I'm weeding a flowerbed, and I come upon a type of weed hidden below other weeds. Just to qualify how weird that phobia is, I don't freak out if I come upon a snake in the flowerbed, or if a rat runs out of a vent fan.

Charles

I was an extremely anxious and fearful child. I had a ton of strange childhood phobias, one of the most notable being the fear of young children I developed after another child pushed me in the public library shortly before I turned three. The sad part was, this kid was about a year younger than me. I would throw massive tantrums every time other small children were in the vicinity. As my parents had family friends who had small children, this was quite awkward for them. This was relatively short lived, and after several weeks (I believe) I was able to be around other children without freaking out. I still generally avoided interaction, though. The weirdest part is, I currently relate to small children significantly better than I do adults, but this was not the case when I *was* a small child.
I also developed a fear of the show "Sesame Street" which I enjoyed until around the time I turned three. According to my Dad, the last episode I watched was the one where Mr. Hooper died. After that, my parents couldn't get me to watch the show again. I developed an intense fear of the Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, and Snuffaluffagus. Presently, I recognize Sesame Street as a far better and more creative show than any of the newer educational programs for children. I've realized that none of these characters are remotely frightening; that Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch are actually quite funny. That's not how I saw it as a child, however.
This could get quite long if I detail all my fears, so I'll try to sum up. I also developed an intense fear of dogs after a little white dog on a leash sniffed me, and I'm not a dog person to this day. I also developed a fear of the swings on the playground after getting hit by a baby swing when I was three. The baby swings of those days were these bulky, metallic monstrosities with bars in the front. I had enjoyed baby swings up until there, but after that I wouldn't go near the swings again until I was six or seven years old. I was also afraid of pretty much everything on the playground, and I'm still not a fan of anything I have to climb. Once -- I was four or six at the time -- I developed an intense fear of the shadows cast on the ceiling by the chandelier in my grandparents' living room. They had the sofa bed in the living room set up for me for the duration of the visit, and they wound up having to move my sleeping quarters to the screened in patio. I did sleep in the living room on future visits. I used to be afraid to go into the water in anything much larger than the bathtub, though I presently enjoy swimming. I was (and am) afraid of pretty much all rides in amusement parks. I wouldn't even get on those carousel horses, and I still won't. I'll also never ride a real horse. My fear of climbing ladders also persists to this day.
I also had a fear of the MGM lion which persisted until I was eleven or twelve. It would freak me out to see it roar. If I knew it was going to roar, I had to be out of the room. I was obsessed with the Disney version of "The Little Mermaid" when I was nine, but I was afraid to watch the scene with the shark, and would always hide when that scene came on. I know that there are more which I'm leaving out, but I think everyone here gets the idea.
To sum up, I think it's quite likely that unusual phobias are common among children on the spectrum.

I had tons of weird phobias as a kid. I feared countless things on the TV to the point where I would get sick and my mum thought I was having a heart attack she often feared she was going to have to call 911.

I had all kinds of weird fears - still do, in fact! A lot of them were/ are around technology doing something 'wrong' - I used to have a terror of clocks going round anticlockwise instead of clockwise, and many nightmares involved this. When a CD gets stuck in my CD player and keeps repeating a bit, then I always panic. When I have an electronic thing that starts making beeping noises that it's not supposed to, such as when the battery is running out, I am completely terrified.