My view on autism years in postrespect.

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I am 25 now and am someone who in my early life, teen years and even into early 20's had many aspie ways. But I have been forcing myself out of them, I have been conditioning myself out of aspie tendencies. I know some people might see that as bad, but at this point in my life I don't like carrying around the phrase with me 'I have aspergers". It is really nice when I meet a person, or a group of people, who for whatever reason, without me saying anything, notices that to interact with me best they need to put a little bit more thought into the interaction. But most people aren't like that, and I don't want to be putting the disclaimer in front of all interactions I have in the future that I am on the autism spectrum and so something will appear 'odd'.

Over the years I've been consciously forcing myself into more normal ways of being, and now at 25 I am pretty much normal I can say. People say they can still tell something is odd, something is off. But I have regained my ability to feel, show and express empathy. I have regained my ability to generally be able to feel and percieve the unspoken communcations and body languages between people in order to be able to normal back and forth communication. I've learned how to feel and show love. I have learned to tolerate my hypersensitivity, I have learned how to not just kind of 'go blank' in situations that can be intense. I have really dug deep into myself and explored what exactly this issue is and how it interacts with me.

After a lot of deep looking, I came to the conclusion, that I believe, the singular point that all autism spectrum disorders rests upon is hypersensitivity. Hypersensitivity is really the core issue, and all the symptoms of all forms of autism are just the various ways of coping with hypersensitivity, or how hypersensitivity affects physical biological development.

I believe that whatever process, whether this be neurons in the brain, running through the body or whatever, but by whatever process that registers incoming stimuli to consciousness, this process is just on overdrive in autism spectrum people. Colors register more intensely, sounds far louder, sense of touch far more. The energy and intensities coming from other people register as far more intense. Varying degrees of hypersensitivity, combined with differences in how the individual responds to that results in the various aspects of autism that we know.

I believe there is a cascading effect that occurs in most people with autism spectrum disorder. Due to an autistic persons incoming sensory stream being on overload, they shut things down to cope with this. And they shut things down generally in order of intensity. The single most intense incoming sensory data is other people, and love, so this is generally one of the first things that get shut down. With that goes empathy, with that goes the ability to percieve body language and read people accurately. With that goes the ability to do proper back and forth interactions with people because one needs to have their concioussness fully open to all incoming information from another person to properly interact with them.

From their various others things can get shut down, to varying degrees. It's hard to say anything generalized at this point. I think some people will shut down functions of creativity, others might shut down incoming physical stimuli (resulting in clumsiness I think). If someone does something that results in a certain bad, or good but overly intense response, portions of themselves that deal with that could get shut down.

This shut down occurs at a very young age, generally you don't remember shutting off this incoming stream, it is I think a natural biological response to overload. But it creates a biological alteration, a change in brain functioning. And by the time someone gets old enough and aware enough to think to themselves, reflect on themselves clearly and notice something is out sync with everyone else, you can't just reboot lost brain portions so easily. You don't even know what capacities of your mind you've lost, or what capacities of the mind you can regain, because you have no remembrance of them. People get into the habit of thinking thats just how the neurology, that there actual hardware is just 'missing' that, because they've forgot it so deeply. But I do not believe anyone lacks the hardware to show true empathy and love, and I especially believe that autism spectrum people don't. Quite the contrary, someone on autism spectrum can show more intense levels of empathy, love and acceptance to others than your average brain, it's just that this portion of themselves was shut down due to overload and potentially weird responses it garnered at a young age before could be remembered.

Due to how intensely things have shut down in a person, and for how long, I believe this can actually ret*d a person physically. Things that get shut down are not just purely psychological, as it is all interconnected to our physiological system. Things that are shut down are actually affecting biological process in some way, actual physical cellular division. It's by this that I think hypersensitivity literally ret*ds and malforms a person. Like being electrocuted in a sense, that much intensity or sensory data running through their system literally damages and ret*ds physical process that they could unfortunately probably never heal from if its very extreme. People with aspergers or forms of autism that allow them to be somewhat more normal I believe either just aren't experiencing as intense sensory overload as people more crippled by autism, or they through some way managed to be able to cope and deal with the overload better, earlier on.

That is my theory on autism after being able to reflect back on myself, and other aspies I've met from a more clear state of mind, and after undoing some of the ways it has affected me. The process of coming out of autism really had just alot to do with training myself, training my mind, my body, to be able to comfortably handle more and more intense levels of sensory data run through it. Repeadetly putting myself in situations, or consuming things, that would instigate sensory overload, and forcing myself to adapt to it. And as I could handle more, more and more brain functions returned to me and I found myself just naturally being able to do things I never thought possible.

Adapt or die...Darwin would approve.

I feel like you might need to attach "lacking common filters" to "being hypersensitive."

One can be hypersensitive and not 'sperg. It is the inability to shut out the invading hyperstimulus that has the flavor of Autism.

I don't really want to burst the bubble here, but I normalized rather a lot in my late 20s. It was deceptive. It was more that I was accepting of intense stimulus and ignoring the havoc it would wreak upon me. More thinking I could read facial expressions; but was really more projecting my preconceptions onto people's body language.

In my early 30s, as I got closer to people, started living in group situations and being part of group decision making (consensus), I completely and catastrophically fell apart.

If you'll forgive an analogy, it's like I painted a landscape on a window and kept looking at it until I believed that was real. I knew that "painted landscape" very well, in finite detail. Until some kid threw a baseball through it.

If you want to try to fit in, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but beware of autistic burnout.

(Philip Voss voice) Again! (/Voss)

While in a lot of ways I'd agree with you that the impirical experience of autism is that the shutdown is lead on by hypersensitivities, you have to also think about what hypersensitivity means. It could be a neurological bottleneck, a process perhaps that you're brain is just not wired well for, etc.

My own experience was that I found out - from NT's - that my inherent reflexes and instincts were wholly inappropriate. So, I went through a phase of gutting what was inappropriate, then I went through a phase of what I felt appropriately expressed me - in NT language - as I wanted to be seen. The problem is; they don't anything that deviates from who you were born being - ie. "Be yourself" means "be your 'biological' self", anything else registers for some reason as permanently inauthentic.

The trouble for me as well - while certain efforts paid off, most I was forced to eat as a loss. I had to accept that I was different, had to even accept that no matter how normal I was in the head and no matter how judgemental I even was in NT ways and even fully willing to enforce it on myself - what you look like outwardly in sum total will restrict and limit what you'll be allowed to be on the inside and what you won't.

Hence - I'm a misfit to this day, my efforts lead me to greater confidence and self-assurance but apparently, by birth, I have separate sides of me, both visual and even internal, things are just inherently too dissonance for most NT's tastes. I've been able to smooth it over a bit but - I kinda met in the middle of nothing so to speak. I'm sure I'll be able to be a lot more successful in the general sense of things but I'm really kind of seeing as well just how doggedly stubborn things like this are and how completely resilient AS/autism can be to self-improvement and self-correction measures. With social skills for example you can get everything down pat, know exactly what to say, what not to say, how to say or not to say it, but at the same time if you can't just blurt things out off the top of your head and not sound like you're coming from left field people still perceive that its a front or that you're hiding something. You can perhaps semi-win in terms of securing your own safety but as for really winning against it, I think people's successes there are really more luck of the draw - ie. what their issues were to begin with, how genetic they were, and most importantly how the world et large reads them.

Interesting that I decided to post this thread yesterday and then you respond with this just today, because today something happened which made it glaringly obvious to me that I am still considerably weird.

I am just so tired of putting the disclaimer "I am on the autism spectrum" before all relations I have.

Here we go again. A unified field theory of autism - there isn't one.

As a child I was hyposensitive so I believe I just lost my diagnosis if we go by your criteria.

It's not just hypersensitivity (that's like saying ADHD is just hyperactivity) but a whole lot of conditions because of an abnormal developing brain.

What does hypersensitivity have to do with change and repetition? I see autism as an inwardness of self, of a preference for the familiar and repetition and also focuses on details which gives us our intense interests in just one part of an interest, a deficit in adaptability which explains some of the confusion in changing social trends, and all the sensory issues and motor issues can be explained by certain areas of the brain they may not be signalling other areas properly. Oh yes, those meltdown things we have and even shutdowns can be explained by an emotional regulator working at less than half impulse. I really need to lay off the Star Trek. They happen in the mammalian areas of the brain that have very little communication with the higher thinking area that say, "Come now, you don't want to make a bit of a scene."

I've been reading up differing views on the parts of the brain affected in ADHD and these silly scientists are trying to disprove another by saying this area is affected and that one we previously thought was not. Can't they just say, 'it's now clear that many parts of the brain are affected in ADHD'? The part they are trying to disprove is what medication was made to regulate and the medication works so disproving it is like saying tea is not relaxing, especially chai which is phenomenally relaxing.

So, I'm very critical of single theories for any disorder, especially autism.

I really dont understand your theory of hypersensativity. Im an aspie who barely has hypersensativity problems. In fact its quite the opposite. Before I learned body language, I just didnt perceive what things meant and I had little to no TOM of why people did things. I could be in a fast paced enviorenment and it didnt phase me because I just wasnt taking in anything. Even now, I dont feel that I take in as much as others. Now, I learned how to read body language and I have a much better idea why people do things. I only became more sensitive to my surroundings once I was developing the skill to process what was going around me and how people were percieving me was scary.

Sorry if I offended with my ignorance, Ai Ling. Think I might need to do some more homework on the autistic spectrum... Typically selfish of me projecting my traits onto other people.

Metalab: try not to sweat it so hard? But that is one of the nice things about aging and having a greater body of human experiences ... if you focus on learning how to normalize, less weird or stressful things will happen. Hopefully

I think it's just nice to have a clear reference to who you are, where you came from and all that. "Know thyself," a nice old cliche, one of those ones that hasn't faded out because it's still relevant after a few score centuries. I'm sure most NTs are plenty weird under that shell on the surface.

Yeah, I've noticed that there seems to be several symptomatic subgroups within autism/AS. I tend toward the OP's perspective, in that perhaps as a kid I just took the culture I was being fed too literally (hence I was an abrasive prick to all the other bad little kids and got my come-upings for it) but beyond that I've always felt almost knocked out or bowled over by visual stimuli - it's been historically to the point where I felt so much weight bearing down on me in public that I was very sheer point a to point b and really couldn't do anything about it. Even trying to shop at a store to see what I wanted was challenging for this reason. Overall though I've always found it strange that when it comes to emotions though I can more easily - when watching a movie per say - deal with emotional vitriol (I'm talking Training Day level) than watching someone warmly smile into the camera on a closeup for 30 seconds or, watch a childrens film when they're dwelling on the sacredness of emotional innocense too much.

Generally though, at least after I was able attain something pretty close to full TOM on NT's, I felt like a full on NT - but just more like an NT with his head held underwater all day, gasping for breath, and having my head plunged right back down again. I could know exactly what to say, what not to say, how to act or not to act around who, but at the same time the aspie behaviors much of the times as well as inability to speak strait or even having to jerrymander my sentences because my brain would pull opposite words or mix the order when I tried to speak them - this sort of thing came quite literally as a neurological give-out; ie. if someone's badly hungover and tripping over their own feet - they're not doing it for the sake of looking sloppy or stupid, neither was I being that way for the sake of looking weird; I *hated* it, tried to beat it out of myself, but to little avail.

I think things like this though also have a big impact on how people look at the dialog around 'cures'. It makes sense that the people who feel oversensitive and underpowered in the face of what they can see around them would want to be cured of that condition where those who are - on the flip side - actually insulated from most of what NT's go through, likely see loads of unnecessary suffering and want nothing to do with it. Just as I'm sure gene receptor/targeting drugs will be made for everything under the sun somewhere in our lives I'd like to think that they'll take into account that human suffering is really the most important thing in the equation and - if someone's not suffering - leave them to their preferences.

Well you don't have to tell every person you meet that you are on the autism spectrum before you talk to them....I don't. A lot of people would not care, or would not want to know or might even be a jerk about it.