Profound Autism? Or More Complex Autism “Fruit Salads”?

Different Fruits Salads? Different Realities?

Some people have more complex autism “fruit salads“ which means the ideas around need certainly to addressed. Terminology does become polarising and inclusivity means looking at all realities, including one’s which challenge people.

Difference In Information Challenges?

Complex autism “fruit salads” may have these pieces. There are significant differences in Asperger’s and autism “fruit salads”. To say they are the same is misdirected.

Profound “autism fruit salads” could look like as follows-

Language processing disorders (aphasia/verbal agnosias).
Visual Perceptual disorders (face, meaning or object blindness).
Oral or full body apraxia and other communication challenges.
Body disconnection/body blindness (body agnosias) making one prone to self harm.
Underlying gut, metabolic or auto-immune challenges to information processing.
Acute levels of Exposure Anxiety.
Secondary Mood, Anxiety and Compulsive disorders that may have been present infancy.
Are still living in the System of Sensing.
Overall higher levels of visual-verbal information processing challenges.

Conclusions

Identity?

This means that you understand the pieces, produce competence and intelligence and never over invest in these challenges being “them”.

Politics?

Advocacy should always be a balanced, inclusive narrative. I see it as a professional responsibility not to feed the masses fables, buzz words or rhetoric.

Being Authentic & Objective?

It’s about being real and if that makes people uncomfortable then one must reason our why and come to a place of peace.

Paul Isaacs 2021

NAS Lambeth/A2ndVoice Workshop – Autism & Language Processing Disorders Workshop

This workshop is about language processing disorders in the context of autism. Hosted by Venessa Bobb.

Further Information & Reading

Autism and Language A Journey To Functional Speech – Donna Williams

Wretches & Jabberers DVD Trailer

Paul Isaacs 2021

The Problems With “Autistic Identity”& Stereotyped Perceptions

“Neurotypical” A Word Misused & Inaccurate?

There is no such thing as “neurotypical” in terms of a collective definition of people, viewpoints or principles.

It’s a word I never use as it seems to adorned a slur like status in projection. Bigotry is as such is not only based on stereotypes but I feel hinders more balanced narratives and objective dialogues and information sharing.

We Live In A Human World First Identities Come Second

This isn’t a “neurotypical” world either it is world full of different and sometimes conflicting ideas, notions and perceptions of “other” which then lead in extreme cases to towards conflicts in bias.

Autism Militant Projection & Distorted Narratives

Militant narratives burns more bridges than it claims to build, by having a narrow lense of how someone who isn’t on the autism spectrum acts, thinks, feels etc.

How does this build a platform for idea sharing, life sharing and forming healthy agreement and disagreement?

Non- Autistic Realities & Autistic Realities – All Human Beings Are Walking “Fruit Salads“

There are different forms of non-autistic realities and some parts of those realities may be relatable to an “AUT-istic” experience such someone whom has faceblindness, object blindness or language processing disorder. In other words there are multi- faceted realities of being “non-autistic“.

For the AUT-ism is not a collective reality either, not everything is sensory, not everything is language processing, not everything is dyspraxia etc.

For these are potential facets of an AUT-istic experience but are separate and identifiable pieces in their own right, that can exist on their own terms and have different presentations.

The Problem With Identity- First Narrative

That is why Identity-First language is misleading because what “parts” one is choosing to relate may not be the “autism” (in their “fruit salads) anyway.

Paul 2020

NAS Lambeth/A2ndVoice Workshop – Autism As A Fruit Salad & Sensory Perception Issues

This workshop is about Donna Williams’ “Fruit Salad” analogy of autism and sensory perceptual challenges and agnosias in the context of autism. Hosted by Venessa Bobb.

Further Information & Reading

What Is Autism?

Common Pieces In Autism “Fruit Salads“

Sensory Perception in Autism

Paul Isaacs 2020

Autism Bucks Workshop – Autism & Sensory Issues

This is the third workshop presentation is about autism and sensory issues, such as integration, agnosias and sensory amplification.

Further Reading & Links

Sensory Integration Disorder

Sensory Agnosias In Autism

Somatic Amplification (Common with Mental Health Conditions, Asperger’s Syndrome and Alexithymia)

Visual Perceptual Disorders In Autism

Body Agnosias In Autism

Pain Agnosias In Autism

Paul Isaacs 2020

The Problem With School Reunions?

I was speaking to my Father today about why I wouldn’t go to a school reunion, to reclaim the past you cannot move forward by going back.

It would be a hopeless, emotionally draining affiar which with even the suggestion of going back would recoil me. I have no desire to revisit a place of trauma and abuse. I have set my own goals and objectivity on this and gave got closure.

People Change

My wish for the people whom bullied me on a daily basis is this recognise the damage you caused first, internalise and move on, the same goes for me, you never knew I was developmentally disabled contextually that is fine, however your harm was done but “done” is not “now”.

The positives are this

• You gave me a framework of how not to treat others.
• You gave me an understanding of how damaged and unhappy people emotionally project
• You gave me a concept of emotional survival and resilience in “sink or swim” environment.

Conclusion

So for those of you whom observed and/or were apart of this whom have families and loved ones? Just make sure you do not let your little ones to bestow on to others what happened to me (bigotry can be unlearned). I hold no bitterness.

I have no regrets, no desires for past changes only to learn that failure is your friend and that they’re stepping stones for self awareness.

Paul 2020

Why I Have Chosen Not To Have A Family & Thus Not Have Children?

I feel to have children you have to an emotional mindset that in turn is the ability to look after someone’s physical and emotional well-being.

The responsibility to be their primary care giver for a large portion of their lives is a massive ask.

I do not have the requirements to do this task as I struggle to do some of the most basic things. In and around daily living skills and porting over those skillsets into a parental framework would not be able to happen.

It would be neglectful on my part to also bring another life into this world under the false obligation that is what “adults do”. If you do something do it for connected reasonings.

Thinking you are up to a task and knowing are two very different frames of thought and it’s fine not to be a parent. As it is fine not to have children nor families.

Paul Isaacs 2020

NAS Lambeth /A2ndVoice Workshop – Autism & Exposure Anxiety

This workshop was about the crossover between Autism and Exposure Anxiety. Presented and Hosted by Venessa Bobb.

Cross overs with Pathological Demand Avoidance, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder & Passive-aggressive Personality Disorder.

Additional Links

Autism & Exposure Anxiety By Donna Williams

PDA & EA Cross Over By Donna Williams

Paul Isaacs Personal Experience of Exposure Anxiety

Paul Isaacs 2020

Autism Bucks Workshop – Autism As A Fruit Salad

This second workshop is an expansion of autisms using Donna William’s “fruit salad” analogy as the basis. I shall be adding links to expanding on some of the aspects which I spoke about.

Further Reading and Links

Autism & Social Emotional Agnosia

Autism & Alexithymia

Autism & Simultagnosia

Autism & Faceblindness

Autism & Auto-immune Disorders

Autism & Genetic Syndromes

Autism & Dietary Disabilities

Autism & Language Processing Disorders

Autism & Communication Disorders

Autism & Dyspraxia

Autism & Self and Other Integration & System of Sensing

Paul Isaacs 2020

“Autistic” Identity & Sense of Self?

My autism dances with my personhood… and my personhood must also dance with my autism yet whilst not separable, nor are they interchangeable with each other.

Autism, Identity First Language, and Identity Blog 2014

Donna Williams

What is “Autistic Identity” is this narrative helpful? Or is its own simplicity, stereotypes, static and linear narrative actually causing more harm than good? Are people who do not fit the “look” being dismissed because of politics and hidden agendas?

 

Personality Types & Disorders in Autism

 

For example let’s look at personality types and autism – all humans beings have these mine are mercurial, idiosyncratic, serious, self-sacrificing and solitary this tempers my perspective, tolerance, outlooks and even my belief systems to some degree. When they become disordered this in term has an impact on presentation.

 

Social Perceptional Challenges 

 

Now there is sensory perception social emotional agnosia (not seeing body language, facial expression and tone of voice) and alexithymia (emotional awareness) is not SENSORY perception but SOCIAL perception.

 

Sensory Perception and Sensory Integration? Different Origins?

 

SENSORY perception simultagnosia, semantic agnosia and associated visual agnosias in which the person struggles with context, faces, people, visual mentalising and secondary factors with language processing what about that reality? Sensory sensitivities associated with psychosomatic amplification are different.

 

Language Processing, Perception & Articulation 

 

Then there is in language processing such as verbal agnosia the perception of words, receptive and expressive aphasia and ability to filter interpretation, sentence structure and may have secondary communication disorders such as body and oral apraxia. What about that reality?

 

Mental Health – Does This Change Presentation?

 

What about people who have mental health presentations such as dissociative disorders, attachment disorders, psychosis, anxiety disorders and impulse control disorder. What about that reality?

 

What About People With Impacted Health Systems?

 

What about people with gut, autoimmune, metabolic or collagen disorders in which they gave associated challenges around these conditions in top of any further information processing challenges above? What about that reality?

 

Autism “Politics” & Fixed Narratives 

 

What about people whom claim that people aren’t on he spectrum due to personal and potentially mitigated circumstances? An inability to see their reality, ideas or perspectives? So potentially setting up an assassination of character and allowing others to go along for ride? How is that care, compassion or inclusion?

 

I would like to further add that if someone whom was diagnosed in the 1960’s with “childhood psychosis” (which is what they thought autism back then) and later had been diagnosed with autism in the 1990’s along with other conditions throughout their adulthood (such as visual perceptual disorders, atypical epilepsy, dietary disabilities, malabsorption, collagen disorders/ehlers danlos syndrome), whom for many years their diagnosis was considered to be “fake” and a “fraud” despite historical evidence. Is that correct?

 

Is it fair that their character after over two decades of physical and sexual abuse (they had a mother whom was a attachment disordered serial pedophile and abuser) whom acquired PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder to be given the mantle of “fake”? Personality disordered? Emotionally dysregulated? Violent and infantile? I ask these questions because its certainly clear to me that it isn’t and yesterday it brought me great sadness because I know in my heart that this isn’t truth. Its not the writer of such things I upset by its the teller of those things. 

 

They are not here to defend themselves so the least I can do is send out a clear message do not dictate someone’s character second hand. Its that simple.

 

Identity vs. Reality 

 

“Autistic Identity” is a it’s own separate social phenomena in which people can at times cherry pick what “is and isn’t” their autism. One can supply facts with empathy and I have always remained objective and moderate in the world of autism. Let’s start acknowledging that “autism” was never one thing in the first place.

When someone is diagnosed with autism? Are there other aspects we have to consider?

So for example if someone sees there whole being as “Autistic” is that accurate? helpful? Should we be allowing this to happen?

Paul Isaacs 2020