Before I began learning about autism I didn’t know anything about the many functions the brain performs. Like most people I had some hazy idea that the mind was contained within the brain, but I had no idea how the structure of the brain controlled the way I thought. The mind I thought was controlled by me, isn’t in fact. I think a lot of people have trouble accepting this fact.
I read about the conscious and unconscious when I became interested in psychoanalysis as a teenager. I wanted to figure out how my mind worked so I could fix whatever it was that was wrong with me. I also began reading lots of self-help books and spiritual literature. It took me a long time to realise what my problem was; that I had an autistic spectrum disorder.
Although I’d read a lot about the conscious and the unconscious I never felt I had fully grasped what these terms referred to. I couldn’t picture them as real things. They didn’t seem real to me. They seemed very vague, nebulous terms to me.
The whole time I’ve been reading about autism and how the autistic brain works I’ve been looking for a definition of these terms and now I think I’ve got there. This may be obvious stuff to some, but for me it was a eureka moment, because I could finally attach these terms to parts of my brain.
My unconscious mind, I believe, contains my memory (naturally) and my feelings. I‘m still a little unsure of pairing my feelings with the unconscious, as I only have my experience as an autistic person to go on. I used to think that emotions began in the conscious mind, but my personal experience contradicts this.
If my emotions arose within the conscious mind I would be aware of them the moment they happen. But I’m not. The physical sensations of an emotion are obvious; blushing, increased heart rate, tears, etc… all of which tells me I’m having an emotional experience.
Subtle emotions though are more difficult to pick up on. Maybe it’s different for NT people. If I am having trouble telling when I have an emotion this is because it is still in my unconscious. It seems to me that the unconscious is determining which emotions are released and which aren’t which would suggest that this is where they are first felt.
The conscious mind though, is my awareness. It is a logical thinker and the knowledge it acquires is passed onto the unconscious to be stored. Our conscious mind must be able to contain a number of thoughts at the same time to be able to think. This is our working memory. It’s like a very think slice of memory, just enough to allow the thinking process to occur.
You could say the main role of the unconscious is to store, and the main role of the conscious is to think. These would be neat definitions, but not strictly true. The unconscious is also a thinker. When we can’t figure something out using our conscious mind we often wait for our unconscious to come up with something.
Lastly I would just like to say something else I noticed about memory. Our memory contains both events that have happened to us and knowledge we acquire. We acquire our memory of events without any conscious effort, but knowledge requires more effort before it becomes part of our memory. I think there are two different mechanisms at work here.
When we remember past events, these are usually things our unconscious has chosen to remember, when we are learning new knowledge these are things that our conscious mind has chosen to remember. Knowledge I think can be divided into facts and wisdom/lessons. Facts, if they don’t get used can be forgotten, or rather the link between the fact and our conscious mind gets lost. This happens to me a lot. Wisdom though, permanently alters our personality, and stays with us forever.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Word Retrieval
I have poor word retrieval. My sister (the one who maybe dyslexic) has the same problem. What happens when you can’t retrieve the word you want is that you either say nothing, or instead a different word is substituted. The substitute word, though associated with the word you wanted, it is not a synonym but instead is associated in some weird Freudian way, because that’s how the unconscious works. So the substitute word is in most cases inappropriate and leads you to say some strange things, which might not be rude but are still funny to your listeners and embarrassing to you.
Personally I prefer saying nothing to saying something daft. Most times I can tell the word I want isn’t coming and there is another word that I can use if I want. It’s a bit like playing Deal or no Deal. Shall I choose this word or not. It might make sense and end this awkward pause, or it might not. Sometimes you might be half way through a sentence in which case you it is better to just start the sentence again and choose slightly different words. So you would pause, then say ’What I mean is….’ and try saying it in a different way.
Sometimes you might be near the end of the sentence. If I’m near the end of my sentence and I think people have got my meaning then I will leave the sentence unfinished. Sometimes I do this even if I don’t think I’m going to get the words wrong, it saves me the mental effort of looking for them. This sounds really lazy, but the mental effort required for me to talk and look for words at the same time is harder than you know. I think this is why I come across as a serious person, because I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m saying all the time. I can understand why some autistic people don’t speak even though they can. The rewards simply don’t outweigh the work involved, for them that is, and as they can’t see your point of view, you feelings don’t get factored in.
Sometimes, if you have very bad luck, a substitute word will stick. My sister says she often calls the kitchen the bathroom. It really embarrasses her. I told her this sounded logical to me. Both rooms have a sink, they are the only two rooms in the house where you meet water. For some reason they seem to be the coldest rooms in the house and the only ones without carpet; the only ones to be tiled rather than wallpapered or painted. There are lots of similarities.
Recently I was writing a story and I put down the word wave instead of flag. I actually had in mind a small flag to go on the bonnet of a government car and for some reason I put down wave instead of flag. I can see there are associations between the words; flags move in a similar way to waves when it’s windy and waving is also what you do with a flag.
Before we can think of a word the conscious mind must first have an idea it wants to express. Then it makes a request to the unconscious mind for the word that represents that idea. For instance you might be looking for the word ‘kitchen‘ or ‘flag’. Before you can say the word you must first think of the idea. I don’t know how the unconscious finds the correct word, there must be links then between ideas and the words we use for them. Maybe in autism these links are weaker. Hence the need for repetition when I am learning new words. These links can come and go, or maybe they become blocked, because sometimes I can think of a word and other times I can’t.
I find things drop out of my memory quickly if I don’t use them. After doing my French and German GCSEs, I’d say I lost most of what I’d learnt after a year. The same is true for numbers as well, I have forgotten my pin number numerous times because I didn’t use my card for a week. We have so many passwords for everything these days; bank accounts, email accounts, website accounts, etc… the only way I can cope is to use the same password for everything. Before then I was having to create a new password every time I wanted too buy something off Amazon.
Poor word retrieval I think explains some of the language difficulties I had when I was younger. Reading was hard for me. On the other hand I was good at maths, or rather I had a good memory for numbers. I could remember my times table up to twelve before anyone else in my class. Numbers are easier to remember because they have no associations. They mean one thing and one thing only and there aren’t so many to learn. Once you understand decimalisation, and you can count to ten you’re there. A word though is much more complex. Words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctives and other things besides. Plus your memory isn’t just linking one idea to one symbol when you learn a new word, it must be creating a whole host of connections with other associated words. However, if I don’t continue using words or numbers (like the answers to my multiple times tables), both can drop out of my memory.
Personally I prefer saying nothing to saying something daft. Most times I can tell the word I want isn’t coming and there is another word that I can use if I want. It’s a bit like playing Deal or no Deal. Shall I choose this word or not. It might make sense and end this awkward pause, or it might not. Sometimes you might be half way through a sentence in which case you it is better to just start the sentence again and choose slightly different words. So you would pause, then say ’What I mean is….’ and try saying it in a different way.
Sometimes you might be near the end of the sentence. If I’m near the end of my sentence and I think people have got my meaning then I will leave the sentence unfinished. Sometimes I do this even if I don’t think I’m going to get the words wrong, it saves me the mental effort of looking for them. This sounds really lazy, but the mental effort required for me to talk and look for words at the same time is harder than you know. I think this is why I come across as a serious person, because I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m saying all the time. I can understand why some autistic people don’t speak even though they can. The rewards simply don’t outweigh the work involved, for them that is, and as they can’t see your point of view, you feelings don’t get factored in.
Sometimes, if you have very bad luck, a substitute word will stick. My sister says she often calls the kitchen the bathroom. It really embarrasses her. I told her this sounded logical to me. Both rooms have a sink, they are the only two rooms in the house where you meet water. For some reason they seem to be the coldest rooms in the house and the only ones without carpet; the only ones to be tiled rather than wallpapered or painted. There are lots of similarities.
Recently I was writing a story and I put down the word wave instead of flag. I actually had in mind a small flag to go on the bonnet of a government car and for some reason I put down wave instead of flag. I can see there are associations between the words; flags move in a similar way to waves when it’s windy and waving is also what you do with a flag.
Before we can think of a word the conscious mind must first have an idea it wants to express. Then it makes a request to the unconscious mind for the word that represents that idea. For instance you might be looking for the word ‘kitchen‘ or ‘flag’. Before you can say the word you must first think of the idea. I don’t know how the unconscious finds the correct word, there must be links then between ideas and the words we use for them. Maybe in autism these links are weaker. Hence the need for repetition when I am learning new words. These links can come and go, or maybe they become blocked, because sometimes I can think of a word and other times I can’t.
I find things drop out of my memory quickly if I don’t use them. After doing my French and German GCSEs, I’d say I lost most of what I’d learnt after a year. The same is true for numbers as well, I have forgotten my pin number numerous times because I didn’t use my card for a week. We have so many passwords for everything these days; bank accounts, email accounts, website accounts, etc… the only way I can cope is to use the same password for everything. Before then I was having to create a new password every time I wanted too buy something off Amazon.
Poor word retrieval I think explains some of the language difficulties I had when I was younger. Reading was hard for me. On the other hand I was good at maths, or rather I had a good memory for numbers. I could remember my times table up to twelve before anyone else in my class. Numbers are easier to remember because they have no associations. They mean one thing and one thing only and there aren’t so many to learn. Once you understand decimalisation, and you can count to ten you’re there. A word though is much more complex. Words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctives and other things besides. Plus your memory isn’t just linking one idea to one symbol when you learn a new word, it must be creating a whole host of connections with other associated words. However, if I don’t continue using words or numbers (like the answers to my multiple times tables), both can drop out of my memory.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Sequencing of Thoughts
You know, it’s strange how very disorganised an NT persons thought processes can be, or that’s how they used to appear to me. Now I know I just think differently. At university a number of people commented on my very clear and easy to read style of writing and the logical way I put forward my arguments. My essays always followed a very structured logical argument.
This though, is the only way I can write. I’d love to be able to write with a more carefree or loose style. I’d love to be able to write like Virginia Woolf, the way she wanders about between events that sometimes don’t even appear to be related and yet are.
When I was a film studies student we had to read lots of theoretical essays. Even though they were writing non-fiction, the style of these writers was very vague. They would jump around their subject and I found myself going back to certain passages to check what I’d just read. Sometimes I felt I was having to build the argument myself, other times I doubted there was one. Theses writers were explaining complicated ideas in a very complicated way. In what other subject would you find that? Even my NT peers would struggled to understand sometimes.
My dependency on logical and structured thought has its disadvantages in everyday life as well. One thing the psychologist recommended is that I go and see the Disability Employment Officer at the job centre. I had just found a job when I went to her. She gave me information on the things I needed to do before I started. This included making a claim for some new clothes to go to work in, getting a bus pass and finding which bus I needed to get. Also we talked about claiming disability allowance. The only problem was all this information was given to me quite randomly as we talked about the job I was starting.
I became very confused trying to put everything she was telling me into some kind of order so I could remember it. I asked her to repeat parts of what she told me, but it didn’t make any more sense. The speed at which people talk doesn’t help either. I tried a different tack and said it would help if this was written down for me. I told them how forgetful I was.
But I don’t think they realised just how confused I was, because they (she had a colleague observing) would begin repeating what they had already said. I think it was probably the third time I asked them to write it down, that her colleague put down some bullet points for me. There wasn’t much detail, but it was something. He wrote down disability allowance and then said ‘you remember where the link was for that?’. I wasn’t sure so he jogged my memory, but I knew I would probably forget these details once I had left.
NT people just think differently to autistic people. When they are explaining something to you, it could some instructions or they might be telling a story, they don‘t always follow a linear sequence. It is like they have a sequence in their mind and they can jump into it at any point and know where they are. The person listening is expected to be able to construct this sequence in their head also. Having a poor working memory I think affects my ability to hold a sequence of multiple events in my mind.
I find listening to people hard work in any case, it requires a lot of concentration. Trying to put what they’re telling me into some kind of logical order that I can remember makes it all so much harder. In a situation such as the one above I would normally just pretend I understood then go away and try and work it out for myself.
Since I’ve been diagnosed I’m trying to act more myself instead trying to act normal, which has meant I’ve started asking more questions and asking people to repeat what they’ve said. I was asking more questions at the meeting with the Disability Officer, but I didn’t come away feeling confident I had remembered everything. What I should have done, was take a pad and a pen and make notes myself. I could then have pieced everything together into a logical order later.
This though, is the only way I can write. I’d love to be able to write with a more carefree or loose style. I’d love to be able to write like Virginia Woolf, the way she wanders about between events that sometimes don’t even appear to be related and yet are.
When I was a film studies student we had to read lots of theoretical essays. Even though they were writing non-fiction, the style of these writers was very vague. They would jump around their subject and I found myself going back to certain passages to check what I’d just read. Sometimes I felt I was having to build the argument myself, other times I doubted there was one. Theses writers were explaining complicated ideas in a very complicated way. In what other subject would you find that? Even my NT peers would struggled to understand sometimes.
My dependency on logical and structured thought has its disadvantages in everyday life as well. One thing the psychologist recommended is that I go and see the Disability Employment Officer at the job centre. I had just found a job when I went to her. She gave me information on the things I needed to do before I started. This included making a claim for some new clothes to go to work in, getting a bus pass and finding which bus I needed to get. Also we talked about claiming disability allowance. The only problem was all this information was given to me quite randomly as we talked about the job I was starting.
I became very confused trying to put everything she was telling me into some kind of order so I could remember it. I asked her to repeat parts of what she told me, but it didn’t make any more sense. The speed at which people talk doesn’t help either. I tried a different tack and said it would help if this was written down for me. I told them how forgetful I was.
But I don’t think they realised just how confused I was, because they (she had a colleague observing) would begin repeating what they had already said. I think it was probably the third time I asked them to write it down, that her colleague put down some bullet points for me. There wasn’t much detail, but it was something. He wrote down disability allowance and then said ‘you remember where the link was for that?’. I wasn’t sure so he jogged my memory, but I knew I would probably forget these details once I had left.
NT people just think differently to autistic people. When they are explaining something to you, it could some instructions or they might be telling a story, they don‘t always follow a linear sequence. It is like they have a sequence in their mind and they can jump into it at any point and know where they are. The person listening is expected to be able to construct this sequence in their head also. Having a poor working memory I think affects my ability to hold a sequence of multiple events in my mind.
I find listening to people hard work in any case, it requires a lot of concentration. Trying to put what they’re telling me into some kind of logical order that I can remember makes it all so much harder. In a situation such as the one above I would normally just pretend I understood then go away and try and work it out for myself.
Since I’ve been diagnosed I’m trying to act more myself instead trying to act normal, which has meant I’ve started asking more questions and asking people to repeat what they’ve said. I was asking more questions at the meeting with the Disability Officer, but I didn’t come away feeling confident I had remembered everything. What I should have done, was take a pad and a pen and make notes myself. I could then have pieced everything together into a logical order later.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Repetition and Memory
My memory skills vary for different kinds of information. Facts, like dates and names, are difficult for me to recall and consequently my general knowledge is very poor. I love quizzes but I always do badly at them, or rather the results don’t really reflect my intelligence. People think if you are good at quizzes you must be clever, what it means is you have a good memory for facts.
What I am good at remembering are concepts and theories. This is very useful to me at the moment. Writing a blog like this where I am analysing my behaviour would be very difficult if I didn’t have a good memory for the theories I’ve read and also a good memory of my different behaviours. In this way I am able to apply theory to my behaviour and find the reasons to explain why I do the things I do.
Having a poor memory for facts and a good memory for ideas seems to be contradictory at first. When I am engaged in daily activities, it is usually details I am good at and generalisation I am poor at. So why when these enter my memory is it the other way round?
Something you should know is that memory is a scare commodity for me. I put as little in it as I can. Basically because I don’t trust my memory, I know it lets me down. Sometimes I think this is because so much of my memory is used up doing tasks that other people use their thinking processes to do. An NT person will know the rules governing social interaction and use this to guide them, whereas I use past experiences and my memory of other events to guide me. NT people learnt the rules of grammar to be able to speak, whereas I memorised phrases as a child.
I don‘t like people giving me information during conversations because I‘m so forgetful, and I never seem to have a pen and paper when I need it. Emails and texts are good because then I always have something to refer back to. If I know there is somewhere I can go to find the information later then I won’t bother even trying to remember. For example, if I know it is a film someone wants to see then I shall go onto the cinema’s website later to find the details, or jog my memory. If it is a reference for an essay, I shall just try to remember which book it was in.
To remember things I need to have them repeated several times, which can become very frustrating for the person you are speaking to you if you keep asking them to repeat stuff. A fact is a very small thought, forgetting a fact is a bit like losing some change down the sofa, you don’t notice it’s gone. A concept or an idea though, now that’s a big thought and big things are more difficult to loose. Big things seem pass into my memory with much greater ease, there is no need to keep repeating them.
I never thought of thoughts as having a size before, but I suppose they must have. I suppose it’s because we don’t tend to think of thoughts as having an actual physical presence. Any mystic or psychic however will tell you that they do. In which case they must also have a mass or a charge, but I think I need to do some research.
What I am good at remembering are concepts and theories. This is very useful to me at the moment. Writing a blog like this where I am analysing my behaviour would be very difficult if I didn’t have a good memory for the theories I’ve read and also a good memory of my different behaviours. In this way I am able to apply theory to my behaviour and find the reasons to explain why I do the things I do.
Having a poor memory for facts and a good memory for ideas seems to be contradictory at first. When I am engaged in daily activities, it is usually details I am good at and generalisation I am poor at. So why when these enter my memory is it the other way round?
Something you should know is that memory is a scare commodity for me. I put as little in it as I can. Basically because I don’t trust my memory, I know it lets me down. Sometimes I think this is because so much of my memory is used up doing tasks that other people use their thinking processes to do. An NT person will know the rules governing social interaction and use this to guide them, whereas I use past experiences and my memory of other events to guide me. NT people learnt the rules of grammar to be able to speak, whereas I memorised phrases as a child.
I don‘t like people giving me information during conversations because I‘m so forgetful, and I never seem to have a pen and paper when I need it. Emails and texts are good because then I always have something to refer back to. If I know there is somewhere I can go to find the information later then I won’t bother even trying to remember. For example, if I know it is a film someone wants to see then I shall go onto the cinema’s website later to find the details, or jog my memory. If it is a reference for an essay, I shall just try to remember which book it was in.
To remember things I need to have them repeated several times, which can become very frustrating for the person you are speaking to you if you keep asking them to repeat stuff. A fact is a very small thought, forgetting a fact is a bit like losing some change down the sofa, you don’t notice it’s gone. A concept or an idea though, now that’s a big thought and big things are more difficult to loose. Big things seem pass into my memory with much greater ease, there is no need to keep repeating them.
I never thought of thoughts as having a size before, but I suppose they must have. I suppose it’s because we don’t tend to think of thoughts as having an actual physical presence. Any mystic or psychic however will tell you that they do. In which case they must also have a mass or a charge, but I think I need to do some research.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Space
Space like time, is another illusion of our universe. Like events in time, objects in space have a beginning and an end. We live in a world of beginnings and endings, and some people even believe that they have an end, that they will cease to exist when they die. However, our concepts of time and space where created to give us a specific experience that we could learn from.
By giving us lifetimes that have a beginning and an end we are able to learn much more quickly than we would otherwise. Our memories of any other lives we’ve had can be veiled and we can start afresh in a new life. We are given as many opportunities to learn as we need.
Science now tells us that time and space can be warped, and that theoretically it is even possible to travel through time. If this is so, how can anything have a beginning and an end, least of all ourselves?
Space is a concept I find difficult to navigate my way through. I can’t see it. I don’t think in terns of three dimensions. When I’m in a crowded space where there are lots of people I panic. I think everyone is going to walk into each other, including me. I’ve talked about this before. The reason I wanted to bring this up again was an experience I had a few days ago in the supermarket.
As I was entering the store, straight away I saw two people coming my direction. One was coming from my right the other from my left. I tried not to panic. Normally I would increase my pace to move out of the way as speedily as possible, but instead I decided to try and imagine where they would end up if they carried on in a straight line. I could see their paths crossing but this would be just after I had passed them, and that’s what happened. Everything was fine.
Crowds are usually a source of much anxiety for me, but I felt a bit calmer going round the shop that day. I couldn’t keep up this mental imaging though. It takes a lot of mental effort. Especially when I’m also struggling to find my way round the shop in an order that means I can get everything on my list without walking round the whole place ten times.
So shopping is really difficult for two reasons, I’m trying to create a sequence in my mind of the things I need to get, whilst avoiding running into people. I could try to work out the order I get things when I make my list, which would take some of the pressure off. Then I could concentrate on not walking into people.
I think pointing should also come under the category of space. I’ve been doing some more thinking on this point, no pun intended. When I saw those two people coming towards me and I projected their paths, I realised this is the same thing people do when they point to things.
However there is another element to pointing that makes it harder. If the object being pointed at is too far away for me to hold both the hand and the object in my vision, I am stumped. This is because I can’t hold the space occupied by the hand in my mind. As soon as I lose sight of that hand I no longer know where it is in space so I can’t project it’s line. I wonder if this is because I am such a poor visual thinker. Not all autistic people are like this, some autistic people think in pictures. I can only think in words. Maybe visual thinkers don’t have the same problems with navigating crowds and pointing?
I have been monitoring my own pointing. At first I wasn’t sure that I did point, but now I can say that I do. I don’t point to indicate the whereabouts of objects, but I do point to give directions to people. If someone asks me the way I might indicate left or right by pointing. (I’m not good at telling left and right, I have to imagine myself doing the brownie salute first). So there are two uses to pointing, one to indicate an objects position, another as a kind of sign language.
By giving us lifetimes that have a beginning and an end we are able to learn much more quickly than we would otherwise. Our memories of any other lives we’ve had can be veiled and we can start afresh in a new life. We are given as many opportunities to learn as we need.
Science now tells us that time and space can be warped, and that theoretically it is even possible to travel through time. If this is so, how can anything have a beginning and an end, least of all ourselves?
Space is a concept I find difficult to navigate my way through. I can’t see it. I don’t think in terns of three dimensions. When I’m in a crowded space where there are lots of people I panic. I think everyone is going to walk into each other, including me. I’ve talked about this before. The reason I wanted to bring this up again was an experience I had a few days ago in the supermarket.
As I was entering the store, straight away I saw two people coming my direction. One was coming from my right the other from my left. I tried not to panic. Normally I would increase my pace to move out of the way as speedily as possible, but instead I decided to try and imagine where they would end up if they carried on in a straight line. I could see their paths crossing but this would be just after I had passed them, and that’s what happened. Everything was fine.
Crowds are usually a source of much anxiety for me, but I felt a bit calmer going round the shop that day. I couldn’t keep up this mental imaging though. It takes a lot of mental effort. Especially when I’m also struggling to find my way round the shop in an order that means I can get everything on my list without walking round the whole place ten times.
So shopping is really difficult for two reasons, I’m trying to create a sequence in my mind of the things I need to get, whilst avoiding running into people. I could try to work out the order I get things when I make my list, which would take some of the pressure off. Then I could concentrate on not walking into people.
I think pointing should also come under the category of space. I’ve been doing some more thinking on this point, no pun intended. When I saw those two people coming towards me and I projected their paths, I realised this is the same thing people do when they point to things.
However there is another element to pointing that makes it harder. If the object being pointed at is too far away for me to hold both the hand and the object in my vision, I am stumped. This is because I can’t hold the space occupied by the hand in my mind. As soon as I lose sight of that hand I no longer know where it is in space so I can’t project it’s line. I wonder if this is because I am such a poor visual thinker. Not all autistic people are like this, some autistic people think in pictures. I can only think in words. Maybe visual thinkers don’t have the same problems with navigating crowds and pointing?
I have been monitoring my own pointing. At first I wasn’t sure that I did point, but now I can say that I do. I don’t point to indicate the whereabouts of objects, but I do point to give directions to people. If someone asks me the way I might indicate left or right by pointing. (I’m not good at telling left and right, I have to imagine myself doing the brownie salute first). So there are two uses to pointing, one to indicate an objects position, another as a kind of sign language.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Time
I know what it is and I can read a clock. But it’s not something that I am aware of a lot of the time. I am very poor at guessing how long a task will take me and when I am involved in a task, I am not aware of time passing. I often lose track of time in the shower and find I have gone wrinkly before I realise how long I’ve been stood there. I am a great time waster too. I will wonder from room to room picking things up, or just be sitting, messing about on my laptop before I realise it is lunchtime and I haven’t done anything constructive. I don’t like to feel rushed, people have always commented how laid back I am, that’s because I don’t have a clock inside me telling me when to do things.
Why do we separate time into sixes? Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour and why 24 hours in a day (6 x 4). All our other systems of measurement are decimalised. I have a real difficulty calculating in my head the distance between two points in time. I can work it out if I have a pad and a pencil. But twice this week, today and yesterday I found myself in a tricky situation because I was couldn’t do these calculations with the same lightening speed as other people.
At the clinic yesterday when I went to book an appointment the receptionist told me she had an appointment available at such and such time that afternoon. I wanted to know how much time that meant I would have to wait but I didn’t know what the time was at that moment, so I asked her and she told me. But by then I had forgotten what time she had told me the appointment was. So I asked to repeat this which she did. I was trying to compare the two times in my head. If the time is in round hours that’s fine, but as soon as people start saying twenty to three or ten past two, I’m lost. Luckily she saw I was lost and told me I would have to wait half an hour to see the doctor which I did.
The same thing happened in Boots today when I went to pick up my prescription, only the lady behind the counter wasn’t as nice. She told me the Pharmacist was on her lunch break and would be back at such and such a time and did I want to wait? Only while she was asking me she had taken my prescription off me and was tearing part of it off. I was totally confused., why was she doing this? I had no idea how much time I would have to wait or why she had taken my prescription. She had assumed I was able to work out how long I would have to wait and also assumed that I knew what happens when you take a prescription in. I’ve taken a few in, but there are such large gaps between my visits I have forgotten what happens by the time I go back.
I asked her why she was tearing my prescription, and she asked me again if I wanted to wait. I asked her to repeat the times, which she did. When I said I wasn’t going to wait (I pretended I knew how much time that was) she gave me back the prescription. I stood still for a few moments not sure what to do. In my mind I was thinking she was going to put my prescription on the Pharmacist’s desk so she would have it when she came back from lunch. I assumed this because she was tearing it while she was asking me if I wanted to wait. It took till I had walked out the door (all the while listening to her laughing with her friend about my strange behaviour) that she was just a bossy woman who thought by taking my prescription off me before I had answered her question would mean I would have to wait whether I wanted to or not.
The first example was not so awkward as the second example; in fact the second was quite upsetting. The reason example two was upsetting is because the lady (who was supposed to be assisting me) was doing the classic NT thing of not meaning what she was saying. She didn’t really care if I wanted to wait or not because she had already taken my prescription. Being autistic I didn’t catch onto this till after the conversation, by which time she busy making fun of me to her friend.
The problem in these examples is that I was pretending to be normal. I pretended I could work out how much time I had to wait; I think part of me thought I might actually be able to. If, instead of asking the receptionist or the shop assistant to repeat the time, I had just asked how much time I would have to wait I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment. I’d also have saved myself some brain power and might have figured out the prescription part instead of standing there looking dumb.
Why do we separate time into sixes? Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour and why 24 hours in a day (6 x 4). All our other systems of measurement are decimalised. I have a real difficulty calculating in my head the distance between two points in time. I can work it out if I have a pad and a pencil. But twice this week, today and yesterday I found myself in a tricky situation because I was couldn’t do these calculations with the same lightening speed as other people.
At the clinic yesterday when I went to book an appointment the receptionist told me she had an appointment available at such and such time that afternoon. I wanted to know how much time that meant I would have to wait but I didn’t know what the time was at that moment, so I asked her and she told me. But by then I had forgotten what time she had told me the appointment was. So I asked to repeat this which she did. I was trying to compare the two times in my head. If the time is in round hours that’s fine, but as soon as people start saying twenty to three or ten past two, I’m lost. Luckily she saw I was lost and told me I would have to wait half an hour to see the doctor which I did.
The same thing happened in Boots today when I went to pick up my prescription, only the lady behind the counter wasn’t as nice. She told me the Pharmacist was on her lunch break and would be back at such and such a time and did I want to wait? Only while she was asking me she had taken my prescription off me and was tearing part of it off. I was totally confused., why was she doing this? I had no idea how much time I would have to wait or why she had taken my prescription. She had assumed I was able to work out how long I would have to wait and also assumed that I knew what happens when you take a prescription in. I’ve taken a few in, but there are such large gaps between my visits I have forgotten what happens by the time I go back.
I asked her why she was tearing my prescription, and she asked me again if I wanted to wait. I asked her to repeat the times, which she did. When I said I wasn’t going to wait (I pretended I knew how much time that was) she gave me back the prescription. I stood still for a few moments not sure what to do. In my mind I was thinking she was going to put my prescription on the Pharmacist’s desk so she would have it when she came back from lunch. I assumed this because she was tearing it while she was asking me if I wanted to wait. It took till I had walked out the door (all the while listening to her laughing with her friend about my strange behaviour) that she was just a bossy woman who thought by taking my prescription off me before I had answered her question would mean I would have to wait whether I wanted to or not.
The first example was not so awkward as the second example; in fact the second was quite upsetting. The reason example two was upsetting is because the lady (who was supposed to be assisting me) was doing the classic NT thing of not meaning what she was saying. She didn’t really care if I wanted to wait or not because she had already taken my prescription. Being autistic I didn’t catch onto this till after the conversation, by which time she busy making fun of me to her friend.
The problem in these examples is that I was pretending to be normal. I pretended I could work out how much time I had to wait; I think part of me thought I might actually be able to. If, instead of asking the receptionist or the shop assistant to repeat the time, I had just asked how much time I would have to wait I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment. I’d also have saved myself some brain power and might have figured out the prescription part instead of standing there looking dumb.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
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.
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.
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