Regularity: for Autistic People. Part 1: The Normality Fixation

(The title of this entry is a rip off of the "Autism: For Regular People" blog.)

Just read this post by Axinar wondering why neurotypical people get so upset over such little things as wearing inappropriate clothing.

I think I have a good idea as to why.

All human beings, autistic and non-autistic, look to a certain degree of sameness for comfort. This is said to translate for autistics into the widely known "symptom" of a need for routine and ritual, and having an inexplicable "meltdown" if one little detail is out of place.

For neurotypicals, the only difference is what details are focused on as needing to be the same.

For an autistic person, it may be a specifically comforting texture or sight.

For non-autistics, famous for being able to screen out "irrelevant" details as in the famous case of normal people not noticing a gorilla walking onto a basketball court while they're told to pay attention to the ball, it's likely to be a context-specific social custom. Certain things - like common neurotypical stereotypies such as thumb-twiddling, nail-biting, leg-twitching, and pencil-tapping - are filtered out as irrelevant, while other things, like the clothing you wear, seem to always be relevant in a social context.

In an office, you usually dress in ways that other people in the office dress, more or less. NTs get a general sense from subconsciously obserivng others of which patterns are appropriate, inappropriate, and irrelevant. If anyone violates this sense and wears something out of line - like a red dress or an old ratty sweater - then the NTs sense of "sameness" is violated. A "relevant" detail is out of place.

The result: a meltdown. (Or, to put it in traditional NT lingo: an emotional overreaction. Why are autsitics' emotional overreactions compared to nuclear disasters, and ours not?)

The meltdown may take the form of nasty gossip about the person violating the NT's need for routine (venting), and/or trying to restore the routine by putting pressure on the violator not to violate any of the relevant details. Oftentimes, nasty gossip, and subtle changes in behavior around the person, are attempts to pressure the person to figure out what's wrong and change it. Unfortunately, the NT's blindness to "irrelevant" details, and inability most of the time to even imagine them, can lead to some grave mistakes being made, as when an autistic is exposed to extreme sensory overload by the neurotypical's attempt to force him or her to "act normal" at the cost of learning and enjoying what the autistic actually can learn and enjoy.

Now why do people need sameness at all?

Possibly because if something is out of place, our instincts tell us that the cause of that out-of-place-ness may be dangerous: a predator may have moved that blade of grass; the person wearing the strange clothes is an enemy invading our territory; those odd movements could be a sign of disease, or of the person about to do something dangerous. Sameness means that there is no evidence of such an outside threat having come by. Sameness is safe.

So...I think normality is the "classically neurotypical" version of routine and ritual, which is an expression of the basic human need for reassuring sameness, which may come from the instinctive sense that if something's out of place it's likely due to a predator or threat. Hopefully this will help confused autistic people reading this blog to understand us non-autistics and the weird things we do sometimes.

Considerateness is Relative

I've been reflecting on a case, a while back, where my bf had dropped me off at a bus stop maybe 15 minutes from my apartment on his way to his parents' house for dinner. He'd asked me if this was okay with me, and I said it was. On my way back home from that bus stop, my big sister called (or I called her - don't remember which). I had plans to meet her for dinner later on. I told her that I was walking home from the bus stop that my bf had dropped me off at. She was complaining about it: "He dropped you off at a bus stop? How inconsiderate! He should have taken you home."

"But he asked me if it was okay, and I agreed to it," I told her back. (Well, something along those lines. No exact quotes in any of the conversation recalled here.)

Seriously, he did consider my feelings. He asked me if it was okay. If I really wanted to be driven straight to my apartment, I would have told him so, and in all probability he would have done it. But I didn't mind a short walk.

So what would have been "considerateness" on his part, if asking me if it was ok with me was not? Assuming that I was a spoiled selfish princess who, even if I said it was okay for him not to drive me home, would have bitched if he didn't, because I figured he should know what I want and that I would avoid direct communication because it's rude not to thinly disguise your selfishness? Why can't we just openly accept that people have self-interest, and express it directly?

Dang. Spock's right. Humans are highly illogical.

(I hope I'm not painting too negative a picture of my older sister. She is not some stereotypical ignorant jerk. She knows a few basics about autism, and that some things just aren't easy for my boyfriend. And although she sometimes has a hard time being around him - it's common for certain people to both overwhelm and be overwhelmed by my AS boyfriend - she does her best to accept him and be around him, 'cause she knows that I care about him and that he treats me right. But she just has expectations in social situations that I don't, and that particular reaction just happened to be a good nucleus for calling out the arbitrariness and senselessness of certain kinds of expectations that are common in society, like the dance of "considerateness" or "politeness." Why is direct expression of self-interest taboo? Why should people assume indirectly expressed self-interest in everyone, when maybe sometimes people genuinely don't mind accommodating others or not insisting that others accommodate them?)

What's considered rude to one person isn't necessarily rude to another person. My bf considers my needs plenty, as long as I make them clear. He doesn't refuse to consider them because they don't make sense to him; he just does what he can to accommodate me. In my view, being inconsiderate would be refusing to honor my strong wants and needs at all, particularly after I have expressed them clearly. My bf doesn't do that, at least not on a regular basis.