10 lesser known traits of autism

Written on 24th Nov 2014 by Alex Lowery

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Most people know that people with autism have obsessive interests and difficulties with social interaction, theory of mind and communication with people. There are other lesser know traits and here are 10 that affect me.

1. Lack of sleep – I have always struggled to sleep I often find that when I am in bed my mind is constantly active. I find it hard switch off. As a child I used to watch Thomas the Tank Engine all night. When the video finished, I would scream until my parents played it again. I now listen to audiobooks at night, which I think can help to a certain degree. However, I tend not to listen when it’s too late.  Some nights are worse than others though, and I can manage on less sleep.

2. Lack of relaxation – Apparently most people enjoy relaxing. I however hate relaxing in most situations.  I like to move all the time the only time a like to relax is in the bath. I enjoy floating in the sea in my wet suit but this can sometimes be dangerous for obvious reasons.

3. Only focus on one thing – I find that most of the time I can only focus on one thing at a time. Most people can switch from one thing to another but I can only be fixed on the one thing I’m doing. For example if somebody was going to take the bins out and there was a crack in the bin box, they would sort it out or let someone know if it wasn’t their responsibility,  but I probably wouldn’t notice because all of my attention would be on putting the bins in the box. There was a time when my sister’s gerbil was out of its cage and I just put it back without checking why it had escaped. It escaped again because it had a big hole in the cage. This inability to focus on the big picture affects me in so many ways! I think it is more of an issue than anything else. If I have just done a big task I find it hard to switch to something else for the rest of the day, whereas the majority can do this easily. I did write an article on this subject which you can view here.

4.  Anxiety – I live with anxiety almost all the time; sometimes it is just there in the background but it can be triggered at any moment. This can feel very stressful and does get in the way of functioning and independence. I’ve spoken about anxiety to death on this blog so I won’t go any further. I did write a two part article about my day-day struggles with anxiety. You can view part 1 here and part 2 here.

5. Perfection – I find that due to my literal take on the world, I like a lot of things to be straight, perfect and well organized. This can even be little things like the strings on someones hoody. If someone is carrying a bag, but the bag’s twisted I will feel like I want to straighten it out. If my seat-belt is twisted and I can’t sort it out, I get stressed about it. I also hate messed up books and DVDs and games. If there’s a series, they have to be in the right order and well organized. Also, I hate seeing books/DVDs upside down. They should look right! I also find that it irritates me when people use the wrong word for things. For example when someone calls a cushion a pillow, I’ll get irritated, and thing, “It’s not a pillow. It’s a cushion. Get it right!” For more information on my Obsessive compulsions, check out this link!

6. Not everyone with autism is brilliant at maths – There are a lot of people that seem to have this idea that someone with autism is good at maths. I spoke to a man the other day and said I was bad at maths and he was shocked and said he thought that people with autism are brilliant at maths. This is true for some people with autism. However there are others on the spectrum who really struggle with maths, myself included. I have been attending a key-skills maths workshop for about 4 years and am still on entry level maths!

7. Eating non edible things – I have in my time eaten a lot of pencils T-shirts and a ton of paper. I found that I liked the texture of pencils because they were so crunchy and I just loved biting into them. I used to tear off the corners of books and eat them. This was even more trouble than having a dog in the house! I used to tear off wall paper and eat it. I still eat paper now but I know not to eat peoples books. I also used to like sucking metal, because I thought it tasted nice.  I believe this is a condition often associated with autism called Pica. I also ate strange things like lemons and pureed garlic I still like tham now actually.

8. Great at some things and terrible at others – A lot of the time with autism you can be fantastic at one thing and terrible at another. People seem to think that because I am good at one thing I will be able to do another thing. But this couldn’t be less true. There are plenty of things which I am good at and plenty of things I am terrible at. A lot of people with an Intellectual Disability have the same level in everything! Whether their symptoms are mild, moderate or severe, people with an Intellectual Disability’s problems and are pretty consistent throughout. However with autism you often have ups and downs so cannot measure a persons ability with autism by their IQ. Some people have said ‘If your IQ is above 70 why do you need the support?’ There are people with autism who have really high IQ’s who really struggle. The ups and downs of ability add to the anxiety and depression. I am very aware of the things I struggle to do and I feel angry that I am not making independence at this point. Measuring an autistic person by their IQ can be like measuring someone’s mental Illness with an IQ.

9. Lack of impulse control – I often find that in general, I am like “Curious George”. When I have an idea in my head I am so curious to try it out that I will try it out. Sometimes I’m even aware that it’s a bad idea and the consequences will be terrible, but that’s not always enough to prevent me. One example of this is when I was 17, I gave away a YouTube password to a troll. Just because I was interested in seeing the account in the hands of someone else, and curious to see what a troll would do with my account. I knew it was a bad idea, but I was just curious that I couldn’t stop myself. But when he had my account, he started posting swearwords and sharing private information like my postcode and asked others to come and kill me and my family. I became very depressed and anxious. Now, I think other people do sometimes feel they want to do stupid things out of curiosity, but the majority of people would be able to say no to themselves.  My ability to say ‘No’ to myself is very weak.

10. Meltdowns – Meltdowns are a complete loss of control because the sensory overload has become too much. They are not the same as temper tantrums. I don’t have serious meltdowns very often, but I did when I was younger and I would self harm. I still have shutdowns where I go quiet and I am unable to function until it has passed. and I can feel very angry.

Stimming is something I do as well to learn more about stimming see you can see Alex’s films here  and here

To read Alex’s article on ‘The need to stim and why it should never be stopped’

To buy dvd’s of Alex’s talks see here

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