Copying/Mimicking

NT people often mimic each others behaviour, it’s a way of bonding with someone. If a person wants to show you that they want to be your friend they may copy a mannerism or part of your accent. It all sounds very bizarre to me, as an autistic person. Actually it took me a long time to even notice this behaviour in other people.

Autistic children have very poor copying skills. I’ve also hear T. Grandin say in a talk that autistic children have to be taught to take turns at something. I think copying and turn taking are both essential skills in social interaction.

Last year I had to go and see the Disability Employment Officer my local job centre, not long after I’d got my diagnosis. I didn’t want to go. I don’t like talking about myself as having a disability, I’m better now than I was then because I recognise the advantages of talking about it. But back then I wasn’t used to talking about autism. It’s still a bit a taboo with my family. I would rather we talked about it openly, but they all seem scared to, as if it’s something shameful.

The reason I’m going to tell you this little anecdote is because it illustrates the confusion and misunderstanding created between an autistic person and an NT person when the autistic person does not understand the codes of behaviour in social interaction.

The Disability officer turned out to be a nice, friendly lady and very sympathetic. Unfortunately she didn’t know anything about autism. I tried to explain, but I didn’t communicated what I wanted to say very well as I was too nervous. I dread people asking me to define autism because there are so many different symptoms. How do you sum it up in few sentences? I wish I’d had a leaflet to give her. There must be one out there, or maybe I could try writing one.

Anyway, when I’m nervous or worried I sometimes display this in my face. (It’s one of my few facial expression, that and smiling!). I do it in the hope that the other person will see my uneasiness and offer me some comfort. But it never seemed to work and the other person would just mirror back to me the same expression. I had no idea what was going on. I wasn’t comforted by this reaction, instead I was thinking, what could I have done to make them worried?

So this is what happened during my interview with this lady. Now I know she didn’t mean to upset me, she was very nice, so she could only have done what she did to be nice. I went over in my mind the things NT people do in conversation. I realised that all she was doing was showing me she was friendly by copying my expression. This was one of those eureka moments. I suddenly realised that all the time I’d been feeling rejected, I was simply misunderstanding the other person.

Now I understand this you might think the next step would be for me to adopt the same social techniques, but this would be very difficult for me to do. I’ve said else where that I am really bad at accents; I have difficulty with pronunciation and adding changes in tone and pitch to my voice. Also autistic people don’t use expressive body language, (if they have a mannerism it is probably a disguised stimming practice). Also my range of facial expressions is quite limited, I would never attempt to copy a facial expression without a mirror, I’d have no idea what I was doing otherwise.

The actions that people mimic when they’re talking to each other are either just impossible for an autistic person to copy or feel so unnatural the autistic person will have a very strong aversion. The whole thing would be done very clumsily, probably at the wrong moments, and the other person would either think you were making fun of them or were just some weirdo. But at least now I have an understanding of theses rules so there is now less chance of misunderstandings.

The Triad of Impairments - Communication

This includes both verbal and non verbal communication. In this piece I wanted to talk about the written word and the difficulties I have with it. I love writing; I have lots of thoughts throughout the day that I want to write down before I go to bed but there isn’t always enough time. I have three different blogs at the moment. One to record my dreams (I sometimes get useful information from them), my autism blog and another blog on my website which is basically a diary.

Although I love writing, I often struggle with the technicalities, mostly spelling and grammar. I haven’t ever analysed the language I use when I speak but I think if I did it would show the same problems to do with grammar. The good thing about writing of course is that you can edit it afterwards. The process of editing my own writing has been a good experience in that it has highlighted for me the different ways that autistic people use language.

I remember picking up a book my Temple Grandin one in WHSmith; it was about birds. I was really excited as I admire her a lot, also I like birds and now I knew she liked birds too. I read a few pages and noticed straight away the similarities with my own writing. There was an overuse of clichés and a repetition of particular words and phrases (I think this related to problems with grammar). Her sentences didn’t flow; they felt disjointed. I was pretty stunned. I had thought my difficulties with language were peculiar to me (I didn’t know much about autism at the time). Now I realised they weren’t.

In my writing there is the same disjointed feeling. My sentences work on their own, but they don’t fit very well together. There is a rhythm lacking in my written work that is similar to the rhythm lacking in my speech. It sounds jagged and jumpy when you read it. I think that’s what I must sound like when I speak.

I remember a poetry teacher picking me up on this once and telling me I should try using more conjunctives in my writing, which I try to do. I have a list of them on a post-it-note stuck to my laptop. My writing goes through a lot of editing before I consider it finished as I want to make it sound as naturalistic as possible and I think I do a good job, for an autistic person that is.

The second major problem I have language is grammar. I have always found grammar difficult. Fortunately or unfortunately, the only grammar I came across at school was in my French and German lessons. I was mystified but I too embarrassed to put my hand up and ask what words like ‘past participle’ meant. My classmates seemed to have worked out the rules for themselves, or maybe they were getting extra tuition at home.

I don’t seem to have this inbuilt understanding that other people have. I learnt to speak and write by memorising phrases. When I was child I didn’t speak till very late. I’d started speaking by the time I got to school but half the time the teachers couldn’t understand me. Their solution was to give me elocution lessons (it was a private girls school). Really though, I should have been seen by a speech therapist.

My Dad told me that the first sentence he heard me say was ‘Put a sock in it.’. He was driving and me and my sister were in the back of the car. She was talking away, and me, who hardly ever spoke came out with this phrase. My Dad said he cracked up, it was so funny. I find it funny when I think about it, but I doubt I saw the humour at the time. The phrase is one my Dad used a lot, I was just copying him. I think this is how I learnt to speak; by memorising phrases, Which is why it took me longer than if I’d understood the rules. I still do this now as an adult. If I’ve been watching a film or something on television and I hear phrases I like I will repeat them to myself and then excitedly wait for an opportunity to impress people with them.

I think both characteristics of autistic writing (it’s disjointedness and the repetition of words and phrases) are related to the way we use memorised phrases (which we do because grammar is difficult for us). If you are using phrases you’ve memorised to write with then you are bound to end up repeating them. You will have your favourite phrases you use often. Cliches are memorable and you will use them more often than most people because it saves you from trying to phrase something yourself. Your writing won’t flow very well either, it may sound a bit like someone has cut up a magazine and glued sentences together from different articles. However, if you are aware of these issues and you have as good ear for literature I think you should still be able to write something pretty decent.

Relationships

I’ve just read Chapter Five of Victoria Bigg’s book ‘Caged in Chaos’. It contains lots of tips to help you improve your social skills. I was really surprised when I got to this chapter. I thought social difficulties were something only autistic people suffered from, but dyspraxic people have these same problems. Also dyspraxic people have the same honest disposition that autistic people have. This made me think the two traits must be linked, then I realised they are actually parts of the same trait. The social function has many filters for adjusting facts to make sure we are acceptable to others. Take away this function and you are left with a very honest person.

The social skills Biggs discusses include; eye contact, being able to detect sarcasm, pronunciation, taking language literally, style of speech, body language, facial expressions, humour, small talk, social etiquette. All things autistic people have problems with. She mentions autistic people and says that we also have these problems but that we seem to prefer being loners anyhow. This made me realise that it wasn’t the lack of social skills that made me anti-social, this is just an obstacle I have to get over when I need to be sociable. There must be something else about autistic people that makes us less desirous of having social interaction.

Then I remembered a short story I wrote for a creative writing class that the teacher had written ‘Relationships?’ in big red letters at the top of it. The story I had written was about a family. Although I had drawn realistic characters and created a plot, I hadn’t shown how the characters got on or what they thought of each other, I had failed to show the relationships between them. I wrote this story three years ago, before I was diagnosed with autism. I had written other short stories before this one, but they had either been about a couple, or people falling in love, or where monologues - basically situations where group dynamics where not an issue. I could talk about one relationship between two persons, but if I was writing about a group I was clueless - worse than that I didn’t even realise I was clueless.

Relationships become much more complicated in a group. It’s no longer just a questions of whether two people share the same interests or get on. I shall give you an example. (This is also to show how much I have learnt since I wrote my above short story!). It is a plot outline for a short story with four people - a single mum with one daughter and two sons:

The daughter is an insecure girl and is afraid son no.1 who is doing better at school than she is will become the favourite sibling. She works hard helping her mother around the house in order to win her affection. Son no.2, sees what is happening and thinks he would like to stir things up a bit more. He begins complaining about son no.1 being lazy and never doing his fair share around the house. The daughter realises she has an ally and joins in. Mother catches on and soon son no.1, through no fault of his own, becomes a victim of bullying in his own home. He becomes very unhappy. Over the space of a year the situation escalates to the point where he takes an overdose of paracetamol. Nobody understands why. The family say he was a loner.

This might sound like a simple example to you if you are NT - but three years ago I wouldn’t have been able to write the above outline because I wasn’t asking the right questions, e.g. how I thought they might react to each other. In my short stories I had been presenting the world from an autistic point of view. My characters were honest, they never tried to manipulate each other and they weren’t constantly having an emotional crisis. Relationships like the ones in my imaginary family, are complicated because people were being manipulative and deceitful, and basically dishonest - although not all to the same degree, dishonesty can range from a little white lie to committing a crime.

Relationships for autistic people are difficult. We often forget people aren’t always going to be honest like ourselves, also our lack of social ability means people misunderstand us and we misunderstand them. We don’t see the complicated relationships that are forming in a group which can also lead to us ’putting our foot in it’. Writing about relationships for me then, is more difficult for me than it is for my NT classmates because I’m not writing from my personal experience as they are but from my observations of other people. They are NT people writing about relationships between NT people. I am an AC person trying to write about relationships between NT people.

Now I can work out relationships between people do it in fiction, I need to apply it to real life. Celebrity Big Brother is on at the moment, it has just started, the celebs went in tonight. There are a few big names in there, people even I recognise and one lesbian rapper I don’t, but she seems nice, like a mini Mel C. I watched the show afterwards were Davina speaks to members of the public and gets their take on the housemates. They showed some of the comments on twitter about BB. People were speculating about who was going to get with who, who will have a fight with who, what roles people were going to play in the house.

I realised that none of these questions had occurred to me. I had simply been watching the housemates go in, and trying to decide whether I thought they were nice people or not and whether I would trust them. I wasn’t thinking in terms of relationships.

I think the key to being able to work out these relationships is about being able to see multiple points of view at the same time. Autistic people, as you’re probably tired of hearing me say, only see from one point of view - their own. Maybe this is why I spend so much time alone. You don’t miss what you never had, i.e. if I don’t have a brain with a social function able to see different points of view I can forget that there is social world out there. I’m pretty much the same person around other people as I am when I’m alone. As I don’t think in terms of relationships I don’t go out looking for them. That’s not to say I don’t get lonely, I still have the desire for human contact, maybe not as often as most NT people but still, it’s there. Which I think is pretty amazing considering the stress it causes me and the countless bad experiences I’ve had.

Speech

If you listen to autistic people speaking you will notice they usually speak in a serious, monotonous voice. When I talk I try to inject some variety into the tone of my speech, it doesn’t always work, but I try. There is a similar difference between NT men and NT women. An NT woman’s speech is much more intonated than an NT man’s speech. If I were a man I would feel more comfortable speaking in my serious, monotonous voice; but I’m a woman, and people have expectations of me based on my gender. I think this is why my speech is not so stereotypical of an autistic person (most autistic people are male). I try hard to add colour to my speech, I probably sound a bit strange, but that’s better than sounding boring.

Another thing I do when I speak is pause a lot, at strange moments. I’m not doing this to create emphasis on particular words, or because I’m thinking hard about what I want to say because it’s so important. I do this because I’ve come to a word that I need to think about in order to pronounce. If I’m unsure how a word should sound I will repeat it in my head a couple of times before saying it. This isn’t just with words that have lots of syllables. If I’m tired or under stress simpler words can also cause me trouble. Sometimes it’s comes down to a lack of confidence; I think I‘m going to go wrong when I‘m not, so I pause, bracing myself for the next phrase.

Often while I’m pausing and thinking, there’s a bit of lip smacking or lip chewing going on. This is just a bit of limbering up. I’m reassuring myself my lips are there and working okay. My lips you see are a bit of hazy area; I sometimes forget where they are(and spill my drinks down myself), and they feel very strange, dead almost. I suppose I don’t know where they are because I can’t feel them. I think that’s why I touch my lips a lot and why I chew on them, just to create a sensation.

I think it’s a muscular thing. When I say a difficult word, for example ’pronunciation’, the movement I have to make with my lips feels odd; as if I’m doing it for the first time and the muscles in my lips aren’t used to the movement. It’s feels a bit like when you’ve overworked a muscle, you try to do something else and it doesn’t want to cooperate. It’s a bit like that (minus the shaking and tiredness).

If I’m not concentrating on my speech while I’m talking then my words will come out a bit slurred, and I’ll miss the beginnings or the endings off words. Sometimes I won’t finish a sentence but leave the listener to complete it themselves, to save myself the work of pronouncing the missing words. This sounds like extreme laziness but this is because you haven’t experienced the mental effort required for me to enunciate my words correctly.

I have to concentrate on each word to make the correct noises come out. Of course if I’m concentrating on making my lips move then that’s less time I have to concentrate on what it is I’m trying to say. I would have to have prepared it in advance, which you can’t do if your having a conversation with someone.

I can’t copy accents either. This isn’t a major obstacle in my life but it does mean I’ll never be very good at foreign languages. I’ve always been in awe of anyone who has mastered a foreign language. I did French and German for GCSE, but they were hard work and I knew I’d be rubbish at them if I tried doing either at A ‘level’.

I learnt these languages by memorising phrases. Grammar is very tricky for me, and similarly are the rules that govern the pitch and tone of language. Grammar at least I can take a stab at, but pitch and tone are much more difficult, there’s no apparent logic. I had a boyfriend who could do a good welsh accent. One day he said ‘I’ve got a letter see, from my mother’; it was a line from a television show. For some reason this stuck in my head. My brain must have been having one of it’s non-autistic moments. But I remembered it and have never forgotten it since. I can’t say anything else in a welsh accent, just this line.

I have a twin sister who is very good at accents and she also had many boyfriends. From about the age of fifteen I don’t think she has ever been single. She went with boyfriends from various parts of the country. She had a boyfriend from Newcastle for a while, and for the time she was going out with him she also had a Newcastle accent. We used to joke that her accent would changed whenever she got a new boyfriend. I’ve noticed as well that her accent changes slightly when she changes jobs. People in groups often create little phrases and nuances to their speech which are peculiar to that group. It’s a way of bonding. My sister has very good social skills. Which is fortunate for her because she does a lot of stuff that upsets people, but she always seems to manage to smooth things over.

Triad of Impairments - Social Ability

Social ability is one of the triad of impairments which affects autistic people. It doesn’t really tell you much though. It’s very vague. When I tell people that being autistic means I’m not good with people, they don’t seem to take me very seriously. They think, So? That’s not such a terrible thing to suffer with. I have a friend who’s very shy. Or they think it’s something that’s fixable. That I can be taught how to get on with people better, if I just came out of my shell and gave it a go. Well, I tried for 34 years to give it a go before I got a diagnosis and figured out why I was never going to be like other people.

Edgar Schneider says in his book ‘Living The Good Life with Autism’ that the emotional deficit is the most significant element of autism. He has Asperger’s Syndrome. I thought about how not understanding emotions relates to social interaction and realised my lack of understanding of my own emotions, probably explains my lack of understanding of others.

If you have had conversations with Autistic people you have probably noticed that they tend to speak a monotonous, serious voice. I say they, because most of the time I’m aware of this and try to speak with a variety of tone. People who know me might disagree with this. I know it sometimes comes out sounding strange, and maybe I sound more serious than I think.

The problem is that the variety of tone in an NT person’s speech is created by emotions. A lot of speech is simply about communicating how we feel. If I’m not feeling anything when I meet a person (note this isn’t any judgement on that person) I might try and fake some with a few pleasantries or more likely I’ll start talking about something serious i.e. something factual that doesn’t involve this emotional chit chat. Perhaps autistic people come across as serious because when we talk to people we tend to talk about factual, serious stuff. Maybe that’s why I watch so much comedy when I’m alone, like comedy is a counter-balance.

The simplest emotion to communicate is I’m happy to see you. Simply talking to someone can communicate that you like that person. Hence not talking to people can be read as meaning you don’t like a person. I have offended many people in my life simply by not talking. It took me a long time to work out what I was doing that was offending people. I would think to myself, I haven’t done anything to harm this person, why are they being horrible?

This lack of social reciprocity has its basis in the lack of shared emotional experiences. Shared emotional experiences enables people to bond. Without these, even faking a few pleasantries can sound insincere. Also I have become more distant as I’ve got older. I don’t try to fit in so much, most of my experience with people has taught me to be wary.

My naivety meant I was easily deceived and mislead. Now I am aware of this, when I do have interaction with people, this is what I am thinking about. There is little room for enjoyment when all your attention is focused on deciphering what people are saying to you and checking it for possible innuendos, hints, insults and deception. I tend to operate a wait and see policy with people these days. People always end up revealing themselves eventually.

Emotions can be painful and uncomfortable. I wonder sometimes if like physical pain, people have different thresholds to emotional pain. My emotions seem super sensitive. Another good reason for avoiding interaction with people. I often shield my eyes in the cinema if I’m watching an emotional scene. Often these are moments I consider awkward, or embarrassing. I can’t bear for the other person (even though I’m aware they are actors) to be made to look foolish. I get a similar feeling when going over a conversation I’ve had and realise someone was making fun of me, it really is painful. I can’t watch soap operas because of the constant emotional tension, there is always a crisis happening, people shouting, fighting, crying.

My emotions are a bit like my other sensory issues. For example my hearing, sometimes I don’t hear anything, other times the smallest noise seems very loud. The same with my emotions, sometimes I can’t bear to recall an awkward situation without feeling very upset, other times I can see a person crying and I don’t feel anything. I remember when my granddad died, I was only young, but while my sisters began crying out loudly, I ran to the other end of the room to get away from all the noise. I don’t remember being upset, even though I liked my Granddad, I remember his lovely smiley face. I think we’d have got on.

I think emotions go through a similar process to other physical sensations. There must be a part of the brain that receives a signal from the nervous system, which I guess must also have something to do with our emotions as well as physical sensations, and then part of our brain decides how big or small the sensation should be. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, I’ve grazed my knee and I immediately feel the appropriate amount of pain. Your brain is mediating all the time. Which takes me back to my inability to make decisions and prioritise, because I can’t measure how important something is. Or can’t decide how much I like something. In a similar way my brain can’t decide how important an emotion should be and how much pain or pleasure should be attached to it.

Being able to make good decisions is dependent on having good information. If the information my decision maker is receiving is inaccurate, it is going to be difficult to make decisions regardless of how well my decision maker is functioning.

The Triad of Impairments - Imagination

All people with autism share an impairment in the following three areas; language, social interaction and imagination. These are known as the ‘triad of impairments’ which affects all people with autism. This triad of impairments describes what you will observe if you meet someone with autism. They don’t really tell you what is going on inside the autistic person’s head. They don’t tell you why an autistic person struggles with language, or talking to people or why they lack of imagination. By the way, I’m autistic, but I went to art college, I’ve done creative writing courses, film making courses. There’s no problem with my artistic imagination.

I think what they really mean is that autistic people prefer routine and don’t like change. There is little imagination in how I live on a daily basis. I tend to eat the same foods (I don’t like going food shopping, I can never decide what I want.). I tend to wear the same clothes over and over even though I have draws busting with other items (I certainly don’t follow fashion). These are just a few examples.

What they show though is the difficulty I have in making decisions, even about little things. In my head there is no difference between big and little, I will spend as much time deciding what to wear as I will choosing where I want to live. This inability to make decisions means I tend to fall into routines because they don’t require decision making. I read somewhere there is a part of the brain that contains the executive function, this is the part of the brain that makes decision, I think it’s on the right side of the brain, in the frontal lobe. (Interestingly this is where I used to get my migraines.) In autism this part of the brain develops differently.

We can only make decisions through a process of prioritising, (attaching different degrees of importance to each option) and on the basis of whether we like something or not (another problem I have, I find it difficult to choose what to wear or eat because I have difficulty deciding if I like something or not).

So in summary, a lack of imagination comes down to a preference for routine, which comes down to a difficulty in making decisions, which comes down to not being able to decide how important something is and whether we like it or not. These are two separate skills. Sometimes decisions involve both, e.g. do I prefer fried eggs to boiled eggs? This means deciding if I like something and then deciding how much I like it. There are situations where my preference is taken out of the picture, like if I’m at work and I have two jobs of a similar nature to do then I have to decide which is the most important.

I’m having difficulty thinking of a situation when I only having to decide if I like something or not. It’s always do I like this, or do I prefer this. To know if you like something is to know yourself. I think I have the same difficulty knowing if I like something as I do trying to get in touch with my feelings.

Planning and organisation

I have a big problem with planning. At the moment my day has totally gone to pot because I’ve been ill, but when I’m firing on all cylinders I get everything done by making lists. I get up in the morning and make a list of what I need to do that day. I try to prioritise but some tasks are harder than others, so it’s the easiest things that usually get done first. I don’t normally get everything done on the list either.

My problem is the slowness at which I do things. Often I have to bribe myself to do stuff with treats, like two episodes of the golden girls then I’ll tidy up, or something nice to eat then I’ll sort through my mail. Things I don’t like doing are generally physical tasks; tidying up, brushing my teeth, having a shower, getting changed, washing up, ironing, anything that involves interaction with the physical world. Sometimes I think I’m in danger of going into a coma I sit still for so long. Which is why writing is good for me. It keeps me mentally alert at least.

Tasks that require a lot of concentration are also harder, because I find it hard to stay focused. I’m a terrible day dreamer. I remember my Nan once saying to my mother when I was about eight, ‘Victoria has such good concentration, I called her name the other day and she didn’t hear me, she was so engrossed in what she was doing.’ I didn’t hear her call my name, not because I was concentrating, my hearing just plays tricks on me (an autistic thing), but from that moment on I always considered myself to have good concentration. It wasn’t till I was older that I realised I didn’t. When I was studying for my A level’s, I sat in the dining room all day, for every day we were given off to revise. I wasn’t revising the whole time, I would often drift off, but I knew if I sat there all day I would get at least half a days work done. (I didn’t do very well, but that’s because I hadn’t been studying the rest of the year).

There are some tasks I can do quickly. I type quickly. I remember our typing lessons at school, we were given a book to work from and a typewriter, the teacher sat at the front of the class. It was very hard not to look at the keys while I was typing. But it paid off, my friend confessed she cheated and looked at the keys, I think most of the girls were. Anything which involves working on a computer, like data entry, I am fast at. My mind still wanders, but somehow my hands carry on doing the task without much input from me. Mindless tasks I am fast at.

It’s not just concentration that’s a problem for mental tasks. I think it’s also a dyspraxic thing. Not being able to organise my thoughts. It takes me a long time to write an essay than most people, finding out what I want to say and putting all the information in an order which leads the reader to the conclusion. No matter how soon I start my essays, I never seem to have enough time. I’ve been reading a book by a dyspraxic girl and she talks about having similar problems.

This is my problem with trying to organise my day, I‘m not able to organise my thoughts. Autistic people are really bad at sequencing. We have difficulty ordering events it time. This sounds very similar to the dyspraxic thing and about being disorganised. I’m not sure what the different is really. I have a very poor short term memory (common to both dyspraxic and autistic people). I tend to walk in out of rooms a lot. I frequently walk into a room, forget why I’m there walk out, try to do what I was doing then remember what I went in there to get. Walking into rooms without a plan is also dangerous because I am easily distracted by something else I find to do there.

Sometimes though, my mind makes sudden leaps forward and does something I haven’t seen it do before. Like this one time, when I managed to create a sequence in my mind with absolutely no prior planning or even intention. It hasn’t happened again since but it did give me an insight into how an NT person’s mind might work.

I had been thinking about brushing my teeth before going to bed, I was lying on my bed but hadn’t got in. I made the decision that I would. As soon as I had this thought another followed almost simultaneously. I could see the second thought ahead of the first (that I should make a hot water bottle), and there was another beyond that and then another, like a line stretching into the distance but inside my head. It was as if my first thought had set off a chain reaction, and all of a sudden I was certain what I was going to do. There was no lengthy deliberation involved, trying to figure out what should come next. I thought, this is how NT people must think, lots of thoughts happening almost at the same time, miraculously putting themselves in order! If only I could think like this all the time.