Life with Aspergers

Last time I started discussing how senses affect our perception and I looked at hearing which is my weakest sense, and smell which is my second weakest. For me, even these "weaker" senses mix with memories and provoke both positive and negative emotions.  In this post, I'll continue the exploration of the senses; Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay I know that these days, it's commonly thought that there are more than five senses (including vestibular and proprioception). I subscribe to this view too but for the moment, in this post, I'm sticking to the main five. Taste In my case, taste is the weakest Of the remaining senses. My sense of taste has always been fine but there is such a strong link between taste and smell that my impaired sense of smell obviously affects taste. There are only two food tastes which I severely dislike; Sultanas and Orange Vegetables (Carrots, Pumpkin and sweet potato). Sultana's are easily the worst affecting me in several o...

I've been thinking long and hard about my own change resistance. After all, I've never really considered myself to be change resistant. I'm usually happy to test out new versions of software I'll ocasionally find new music that I like I'll generally take to a new car quite happily What could I be change resistant about? The funny thing is, that the more I try to find things that I'm not resistant to, the more I discover that I am actually very resistant. It turns out that change resistance isn't some giant misstep at all but rather a series of smaller resistances which build up over time. The Big Examples It's easy to find big examples of change resistance in my life because they're the things I feel strongly about. What is interesting though is that they're not all "sensible" things. In fact, often my change resistance overrules the sensible alternatives. House Change Recently we "moved house", actually since we did a knoc...

Patterns are an aspies best friend. We're fascinated by them and we tend to notice them everywhere, intentional or otherwise. Patterns for Walking Floor tiles are truly incredible. Whenever I'm out walking, I find myself subconsciously following their patterns on the ground - even when they cause me to take a less direct route to my intended destination. It doesn't have to be tiles though. Even if there appears to be no pattern, I'll find one. Sometimes, I'll define my own. Often, when walking I'll define a pattern on the pavement; step in the centre of the pavers, step in the top sections only or less often, step only on the cracks. It must make my walking look funny but I really can't help it. I even do it while running - and more than once I've tripped and fallen because of this curious obsession. Stimming on Walls Wall tiles with illustrations are even more distracting. With these, I'll catch myself squinting to blur the lines and make new shapes...

Stimming is a repetitive behaviour performed by aspergers and autistic children because it "feels good" or calms them. I've covered stimming before (see: What is Stimming and what does it feel like ). In today's post, I'm going to cover a very specific type of stimming - visual stimming. Visual stimming can often confuse parents and lead them in the wrong direction - to optometrists for eye examinations or to other specialists to discuss facial tics. Instead, a few well aimed questions at your child may put the record straight. My History When I was a child, I used to engage in visual stimming quite a bit. It wasn't until much later, after I had been doing it increasingly for years, that my mother asked me what was going on. Until that time, I was not aware that when engaging in the activity, I presented anything at all to the outside world. In reality however, my visual Stimming made me look like I had a very bad squint or like my eyesight was very poor....

Welcome to 2008! This post looks at the way in which people with Asperger's choose and wear clothing. This is another one of those strange posts that I originally thought was only me. After a lot of online discussion, it appears that there is a common thread amongst aspies. I don't think I've seen this discussed properly in the literature anywhere. Not following the the fashions Okay, this bit has been mentioned in the literature as a one-liner. I guess what is being said here is simply that aspies often are dressed like dags. This fits the "aspie as a nerd" image very well. Aspies generally don't like a lot of change and as result, they will often wear similar outfits all the time. In fact, on a recent shopping trip,when I found a shirt that I liked, I bought a couple of pairs in different colours and I was quite tempted to buy a lot more copies. What attracts aspies to clothing? Colourful patterns In my younger days, I had a vast array of extremely co...

Please note: This post has some deeper adult concepts in it and may be unsuitable for children. Continuing the discussion on depression (how depressing)... Difficulty reading other people's body language expressions and tone I think that I have already covered this one in other posts but I'll just go over a few important points to be sure. Conversation is a lot more than words. It includes hand gestures, body movements and facial expressions. It includes a variety of different vocal tones and it includes a lot of metaphors, colloquialisms, polite rephrasing and nonsense words and phrases. To interpret the full meaning of somebody's conversation you need to be able to read and process all of these cues at the same time. You also need to be able to understand how these cues inter-relate with each other. Aspies are well known for being very "single process" orientated in conversation. It seems that although we do take everything in, we are unable to process it all...

Continuing the discussion about how Asperger's traits can directly cause depression, I'll be working through the list from the end of my last post. Very good long Term Memory How can a having a good long-term memory be responsible for depression? The key to understanding this is to approach it from the point of view of an NT. Most of the time, it seems to me that detailed memories just aren't available for NTs without external assistance. By external assistance, I mean the use of video cameras or photo albums. In the movie One Hour Photo , Robin William's character says, while looking at birthday snaps, " Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget ". I think that this is particularly relevant to the issue because it means that NT's tend only to remember the good things in any detail. The Aspie however, with their long term memory often has perfect recall of past events and conversations. They will spend hours analyzing a conversation that ...

Patterns are the Asperger's child's dream come true. We see patterns everywhere, even when others don't notice them. Aspie behaviour is, to some extent, governed by patterns. Parents of aspies often think that their children don't show Asperger's tendencies towards patterns. Sometimes, you just need to know where to look... Example 1. My 7 year-old son seems to wander all over the place when we're walking in the shops. My non-aspie (NT) wife just thought he was mucking around but when I went with him, I immediately became aware that he was walking in patterns on the tiles. Since the coloured pattern zig-zagged across the shopping center and he was following it, he seemed to be all over the place. It should be noted that this is very similar to the notion that Asperger's children cannot "step on a crack". Of course, that reasoning is quite flawed and asperger's people can quite comfortably step on cracks depending upon the pattern that the...