My Autistic Traits: Difference Not Deficit! EP 13
In the episode I share how I rated my own autistic traits on a 1-10 scale and how I'm learning to think in terms of "difference, not deficit." Check out the blog post on charting my autistic traits here: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits [https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits]
Check out my blog Writing On The Spectrum here: BarbaraGraver.substack.com [https://barbaragraver.substack.com/]
If you like my content, please follow the podcast!
Full transcript below. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/ [https://www.autisticpov.com/]).
Episode 13 Transcript
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about autistic characteristics and I'm going to
0:32
be doing this through the lens of the characteristics I've identified in myself. I just try to steer away from speaking for other people because there's such a a wide range of experience and abilities in autism that I feel whenever I try to speak for anyone else, I always feel like I'm getting it wrong.
0:57
So this is purely from my perspective. The disclaimer is these traits are not necessarily going to present the way they aren't going to present the same way across the spectrum as they present in me because we're all different. So I talked a little bit during my autism and psychic ability series,
1:19
I talked a little bit about the idea of a linear spectrum, a spectrum from high to low, as is suggested by the DSM-5. And I talked about why I have problems with that. I think ranking across the board is problematic, although I do think autism is a constellation of traits.
1:39
And I do think it could be useful to do specific individual ranking in terms of trait by trait. I think that's helpful. It gives you a better picture of yourself and what your abilities and what your challenges might be. Ranking people as a whole, to me, I feel that's a little problematic for various reasons,
2:01
such as the many different comorbidities, apraxia, for example, anxiety. all kinds of comorbidities come into play, as well as inherent differences like talents and abilities and intellect. It's just there's so much at play that I think ranking from low to high is problematic. And it's also,
2:26
it causes people to fall into a way of thinking that I don't feel is very helpful. I don't think it's helpful to to think of people as more or less autistic or more or less challenged or more or less worthwhile. I don't think that's a good way to think.
2:44
And I think when you're ranking individuals from low to high, you're always going to kind of suggest that or lead people into that kind of thinking, which I don't like. So I did discuss this before, but I just wanted to put it out there kind of as a disclaimer.
2:59
So what I did, and I have a blog post on this that I'll link to. What I did for myself was I looked at the DSM-5. I don't like the DSM-5. I don't like that it calls autism a disorder. I don't like that it ranks people.
3:14
But I do think it does a fair job of describing observable traits in autistics. I don't find it totally useless, even though I have issues with it. So what I kind of did is I took the traits that were listed in the DSM-5 and sort of adapted them to better reflect me.
3:35
And I used those traits to come up with categories for myself. And I made various charts and put them in my blog, which people seem to like. I'll link to that. And the chart showed my different characteristics. And this is not an idea that's specific to me.
3:57
You could see a lot of people will be looking at autism in this way. It's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. It's more of like a radial spectrum, which I think is interesting. You know, it's kind of interesting in terms of dimensionality.
4:11
We think of a spectrum as high to low, and technically that's what it is. But that's a linear 2D kind of dimensionality, where if you want to think of it more 3D, kind of as a radial sort of thing, you could do that too. So what I did is I came up with 10 categories.
4:31
One of my things had 10 categories. One had 12 because it just worked better for the type of charts I used. But the categories I used were hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, hyper fixations, special interests, nonverbal communication. I don't like that word nonverbal, but I didn't know what else to use.
4:54
Some people will call it social cues, but I find that confusing too. But that's basically your ability. It should probably be called non-speaking communication, your ability to communicate and to read cues without speaking. Conversation. I use conversation. So instead of Expressive communication. I just kind of lumped conversation together. Relationships, transitions, echolalia, repetitive motor, and pattern recognition.
5:28
And then I rated myself. in each of these categories. And I think this is a useful exercise for everyone to do, and everyone's going to differ. But I think it's interesting to find that you will have some kind of, if you do this, you will have some kind of a relationship to each of these categories.
5:47
Even if you get a one, you'll have a kind of relationship to them, or that's what I found. So for me, fixations, hyper fixations, I gave that a 10. I'm not sure that might have been a little excessive, but that is huge for me. My special interests dominate my life. They dominate my thought processes.
6:10
They dominate the way I spend my time. They completely dominate my life. And I have tried to dial back I've tried to stop and I just can't function that way. This is how I relate to the world. And it kind of reminded me of there's episode in elementary where Sherlock says to Watson,
6:35
and I can't find the episodes. If anyone knows that, please tell me. But where he says to Watson, but we are what we do. And she says, no, you are. I'm not. And it's interesting, one thing I liked about that show is everything he does in that show, and I mentioned this before,
6:52
everything he does in that show, like all his friends, he interacts with them through his hyperfixation in solving crimes. And that's really the only way he could interact with people. And that's how I am. That's how my relationships are. My relationships with people are organized around an interest.
7:11
And when that interest shifts, I can no longer really relate to that person. And I don't really have any face-to-face relationships at all, aside from my adult kids. But if that orientation shifts, I can't continue with the relationship usually. I just can't find the common ground in order to do it. But there is a
7:34
in my opinion, a good side to all these things. I don't really consider them deficits. My therapist said that to me. I was talking about communication and a problem I was having. And she said, is this making you more aware of your deficits? And I said, I don't really see them as deficits. I see them as differences.
7:53
I communicate differently. It's not wrong. It's not bad. Here I am on the podcast blabbing away because it's one-sided. It's not that I can't communicate. It's that communicate differently. So anyhow, hyper fixations, mine are books, media, mythology, ancient history, religion, the occult, like anything kind of under that umbrella, that mystical umbrella and writing and books.
8:19
So those are, are my hyper fixations. And that is what I spend my time doing. And I can't change that. Even if I want to, I can't. And there have been times in my life I really, really did, but I still couldn't. Another category I identified was hypersensitivity. For me, when I was little,
8:38
this had to do with feeling like wool burned and feeling like polyester cut. Like if you've read that poem by Emily Dickinson, A Panther in the Glove, that's what that's about. And it's A difficult thing because kids that experience these kind of hypersensitivities, they're subject to a lot of gaslighting because people will tell them, you're being dramatic,
8:59
you're making this up, you're being a prima donna, you know, all these things. And no, they're not, they're really perceiving it that way. And that kind of gaslighting is very detrimental for children, because it teaches them to dismiss their own perceptions and their own, their own impressions of reality, their own feelings.
9:21
And that's a very dangerous for a child, for and for teenager, it sets them up to all kinds of things, including exploitation. It's a dangerous thing. And it's something that people should be aware of. People are not overreacting. That's how people are actually that's a hypersensitivity. That's how they're perceiving things. So so Now I'm an adult.
9:42
I could wear what I want. It's not an issue, but I still have problems with lights. I have a lot of problems with sound, a lot of problems. I live on a very, very busy street. We have a business across the street. And for a time, people were leaving their vehicles running, including trucks,
9:57
all the time when they'd go into that business. And I went out and yelled at people. And it did not make me popular in my neighborhood, but I just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it. Traffic going back and forth, I got used to, but the idling, I couldn't stand it. People are better now. It works.
10:15
Eventually it works. And also I have noise canceling headphones and I do what I can. I mean, I always have white noise going, but I know I got that reputation in my neighborhood of like being a bitch, but it's not that. It's that it really is painful to people. It really is. And I also feel with hypersensitivities.
10:36
This is my own opinion. I have some intuitive abilities. I've had precognitive dreams. I've had a lot of experiences that I'm going to talk about in my memoir. I almost feel like that's an extension of the hypersensitivities. Hypersensitivities, the physical things, I feel like it extends into the energetic. I really do.
10:56
And hyposensitivity, that could be a tolerance to pain, for example. Even though I'm super hypersensitive, about certain things, I've got a fair pain tolerance. So it's kind of an interesting thing. So with hypersensitivity, I gave myself a 7. With hypo, I gave myself a 3. Pattern recognition, I gave myself a six because I'm not a genius.
11:20
I'm not spotting patterns nobody else could see. But I do tend to put things together. I'm not in a mastermind kind of way, but I put things together. I notice things. Part of it, I think, is detail, being detail oriented. Part of it is pattern recognition. I notice things that a lot of other people don't notice.
11:39
And that could come in very helpful for certain activities. It's good for like literary analysis. It's good with writing. It's good for spotting synchronicities. It's good for interpreting dreams. It's good for studying anything, but especially studying mythology. It has a lot of benefits. And for some people who are extremely intelligent,
11:59
that could give themselves a 10 in this, it can help make significant contributions to society. Pattern recognition, it's a big thing. Emotional intensity was another one I did. And I gave myself an eight on that. I'm not sure if that's really accurate anymore. I think that's probably part of sensitivity, general sensitivity. Meltdowns aren't simply emotional intensity,
12:23
but it's certainly emotional intensity plays a part. It's just trauma. Like a lot of people who are autistic have trauma histories. I mean, they may have been subject to exploitation. They may also have been bullied. They may have had experiences all through their life of being traumatized and just
12:42
being different is a little bit traumatic in and of itself. So I think trauma definitely can play a part in emotional intensity because if you get triggered with something, odds are you're going to feel intense. So in communication, which we talked about a little already, but I think that that is a big thing for me.
13:06
And it impacts relationships, it overlaps kids, therapy, friendships. life it's it's definitely impactful however I kind of feel like I personally don't want to be part of the negative kind of spin on autism because I I like my communication style I I write I express myself through writing or through one-sided
13:32
things like this podcast and I I my Receptive communication is different too. I receive information differently. I receive a lot of information through studying and reading, which there's an intuitive aspect and a pattern recognition aspect that comes into that. So it kind of all mixes up together. But I think I gave myself probably like, I closed it,
13:55
but I think I gave myself like a seven on communication because I don't necessarily feel... I don't necessarily feel that I'm terribly, terribly challenged in communication. I'm just different in communication. And I think that's true of all these things. You could flip all of them. And I feel like people, I like to see people do that more.
14:15
Because I feel... It's easy to feel bad about yourself and about your life. And it is difficult. I mean, I'm not saying it's not difficult. My life, I'm writing this memoir. If you read it, you'll see my life got pretty grim in a few spots. But I think we have to see that we're different for a reason.
14:37
And I think it's important difference. And I think there have been a lot of contributions made to society by autistic people. And one of the reasons for it is because of these different traits, these different ways of interacting with reality have a lot to do with that, in my opinion.
14:55
So, um, repetitive motor, I scored real low in that. I mean, I have a tiny bit of that, but I scored low in that. And also in echolalia, I scored low and the echolalia, like I gave myself a one. I probably maybe should have gave myself a zero, but then I thought I do have this repetition thing.
15:14
Like in writing, I have this thing in writing and One of many problems I have with writing, not problems, differences I have with writing that are autism-related, is it's very hard for me to refrain from saying something three times. If I say it twice, it's very hard for me to not say it three times.
15:36
Sometimes that's kind of poetic. Sometimes it's just stupid, but it's something I do. The other thing, executive function, I gave myself a seventh. But that, again, is related to the hyperfixations to a large degree. Because if you're writing 12 hours a day, you're not going to get a whole lot done. And if you can't, and also transitions.
15:58
I gave myself eight on that because it's very hard for me to stop an activity, a special interest activity, whether it's reading, whether it's media, whether it's writing. It's extraordinarily hard for me to stop. And I do. I'm much better than I used to be.
16:15
I mean, we have dinner at a different time every night, but we have dinner. And that's like huge for me. It's like a huge victory that I could stop and make dinner. And sometimes somebody has to come get me, but I can do it. And that's big for me. And it's very hard.
16:32
And that too can really interfere with your life. I mean, it can make you late. It can make you neglect things. it could just cause all kinds of problems really. But the thing is with this, is it a problem because we're a problem or is it because our society is set up
16:50
obviously for neurotypical people who function in neurotypical ways. So it's not, it's not geared towards, it's not geared towards autistic people. So there's always going to be that, that disconnect, that problem, that clash, that, way that things just don't quite align. That's why I don't like to think of it as deficits,
17:13
because I think part of it is just we're trying to fit into a paradigm that doesn't really suit us. And if we were the predominant neurotype, which who knows, maybe someday we will be. Some people think that. I don't know about that, but it's an interesting idea. And I think autism and autistic traits are valuable,
17:35
whether they're valuable as an evolution of consciousness, debatable, whether they're valuable as an outlier perspective that contributes greatly to society. I think Definitely, I think definitely that's true. And like all these things that people say that are negatives, they're not actually negatives, they're deviations from the norm. And the more we understand the specific characteristics,
18:02
and the walls we run into in dealing with, quote, normal society, the easier it is for us to reframe some of the stuff. And it's not really just about feeling good about yourself. It's about being the person you're meant to be like if you if you could see some of these
18:20
things like I see my hyper fixation as a strength does it mean I can't have a quote normal life with like a husband and a ordinary day job and yeah it does kind of mean that so does it cause me distress yeah it definitely does but I still see it
18:39
as a strength because I feel that's the person I was meant to be And I feel like we all need to do those things that we're put here to do. And I think that our traits and our characteristics are part of that. And I think it's good to look at them through that lens.
18:59
And that's what I try to do now. And I'll talk maybe a little more about that in the next episode. And I'll talk too about how you have to make accommodations and stuff like that too, I think in the next episode, but this is what I wanted to share for here.
19:13
And I will link to this blog post. It's called charting my autistic traits. I'll link to that in the description. You, you might like that. It's real visual. I made these, you can make these great charts with canvas. So of course I did.
19:28
And maybe do your own inventory of traits and look at them and see where you could flip those things and where you could see the advantages and the strengths in it. It doesn't mean you're not going to struggle. We're always going to struggle. It's just a given. But I think the key is that...
19:45
you want to understand why it's worth it i think that's important so that's it for this time i i hope you enjoyed the walk through my autistic traits and i will link to the blog post in the description and next time we'll talk more about
19:59
accommodations and and maybe a few more specifics on this topic so until then this is barbara graver of autistic pov and thank you very much for listening
_________
Autistic POV theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band
