Autism and Anti- Bullying Week – Advocating & Acknowledging Different Autism “Fruit Salads”

The word “autism” is a describing adjective of and “experience” and multi-layered condition of “conditions” a “fruit salad” as the late Donna Williams had noted from looking at her own autism and observation of others through her consultancy work.

So with that in mind what can bullying be down to? Many factors of course can be noted such as perceived vulnerability and/or threat, a noted and/or varied amount of insecurities within the bully themselves and of course any other contributing environmental factors that propel and/or ignore or not acknowledge that bullying is happening so what can be the contributing factors? Within in a person’s “autism fruit salad”?

Social emotional agnosia

This is to do with social perception so if someone doesn’t read body language, tone of voice or facial expression all they have left is facts this could lead the person to being picked on, left out and struggle to integrate into conversations between their peers and/or left overwhelmed.

Simultagnosia (Object blindness) & Prosopagnosia (Faceblindness)

The person may perceive things in pieces and not wholes making visual tracking of the environment difficult to manage meaning they are “lost” and struggle to find connections and visual coherence.

They may also have faceblindness as well meaning blindness meaning that bounding with the peoples via their peers faces is difficult. Leading to errors in communication and not knowing who people are, this may lead to teasing and/or bullying by their peers.

Semantic Agnosia (Meaning blindness)

Seventy percent of information is visual so what if a person on the spectrum is only using thirty percent information to perceive? They may use their hands, feet, tongue and body to externalise their surroundings in order to internalise, this includes objects and people.

As this system may not be fully understood by their peers around them it may lead to social misunderstandings, fear and/or exclusion due to a person being highly tactile.

Integration of “Self and Other”

Some people with autism may struggle with a “shared” sense of “social” the developmental underpinnings are to do with development of language and possibly having a more multi-tracked system of bringing together multiple forms of information at once.

So the person may only be able to do “all self no other” meaning the person may seem to not listen to others and project, and/or not project and not answer when it’s the other way round “all self no other” this could lead to teasing because of the lack of fluency between the “switching” by peers.

Meaning Deafness

Differing levels of language processing means that the person may not be able to keep track of what is being said, its relevance and or significance. If the person is resorted to just hearing “sounds” and not bridging the sounds into “meaning” the person may struggle with interpretive language.

Exposure Anxiety

EA was first described by Donna Williams in her book “Nobody Nowhere” in 1991 and later and hand book on the condition in 2003. EA creates involuntary diversion and retaliation responses when a feeling of “exposure” is triggered the nervous system then reactions with such responses as echolalic litanies (that go nowhere), spitting, hitting (others and/or themselves), swearing, running away and/or freezing (mutism).

People are directly confrontational in their language to one another with EA the person may benefit from an indirectly confrontational approach. Peers may be baffled on/or even confused by the differing responses this may lead to being teased, left out and picked on.

Other Things To Consider

• Personality Types
• Learning Styles/Variations
• Dietary Disabilities
• Mental Health Co-Conditions

Conclusion

If we are looking at advocacy we must first look at all perspectives of what is being experienced by the person on the autism spectrum and their peers and bringing a hopeful inclusion tailored by

• Information sharing
• Perspective taking
• Healthy validation 
• Inclusion

Advocacy of Autism as a “Fruit Salad”

By looking at the multifaceted nature of the word “autism” one must look beyond the stereotypes, beyond the rhetoric and once people open up to being healthily challenged, empowered and acknowledged then we can look forward to the future.

Links

Books

Nobody Nowhere D.Williams 1991

Exposure Anxiety D.Williams  2003

Autism: An Inside Out Approach D.Williams 1996

The Jumbled Jigsaw D.Williams 2005

Living Through The Haze P.Isaacs 2nd Edition 2016

Understanding & Supporting Autistic Students In Specialised Schools P.Isaacs 2013

Blogs

What is Autism? D.Williams 2014

Differences Between Aspergers and Autism “Fruit Salads D.Williams 2012

There Are Two Types of “Social Emotional Agnosia P.lsaacs 2018

Visual Perceptual Disorders In Children With Autism D.Williams 2011

Tinted Lenses, Visual Perceptual Disorders and Bridging The Gap Between “Non-Visual and Visual Worlds P.Isaacs 2017

Was Michael Jackson autistic or one of the most famous people with Exposure Anxiety? D.Williams 2009 

Link to Original Article Anna Kennedy Online

Paul Isaacs 2018

Atypical Features & Androgyny

I have atypical eyelids, shaped eyebrows, a crooked mouth and nasal bridge however people have told me either I look like a woman and/or have features of a woman for which I am flattered by their optical observations of my variants of my somewhat fruitful and irregular visage.

Androgny can be a look as much as an attitude a timely peek into someone who is a mixture of masculine and feminine.

I am not perfect and that is what should be cherished a feeling of unshackled non-perfection I find solace and tempered grounding beneath my limbs in these thoughts and I can smile freely. 😊

Paul Isaacs 2018.

Autism & Personality Types? Why Aren’t They Being Looked at Too?

Autism  Personality Types? Why Aren’t They Being Looked at Too?

 There are many stereotypes and reductive views about what autism is and how it is presented sometimes it is a whisper that becomes so overt that it travels lengthy ways and gets ingrained and not challenged by the people it is supplied to.

Challenging the Status Quo?

The late Donna Williams (Polly Samuels) always was the eloquent trailblazer of challenging the entrenched status quo of what the word “autism” means. In essence it is an adjective and observational social construct of a set of characteristics. Moving forward to her “fruit salad analogy” she breaks it down into different types of information processing of differing TYPES and differing DEGREES that present an array of differing CHALLNEGES for the person.

Personality and Development

I have always been interested not only the developmental aspects that come with autism but also how personality types and their disordered extremes seem to get ignored and/ or not event recognised as a part of the person. I often wonder how damaging that could be if the individuals personhood is not seen then what is left?

Personality Types, Different Motivations, Different Presentations

Human beings have up to 4 to 6 personality types some of them ride along with each other quite smoothly, others are direct contradiction to one another, others maybe a more even mixture while others are so wild in their differences that it’s hard to pick them apart.

Personality types within people means they have

• Different Drivers (wants, needs, belief systems and desires)
• Different expression of language (expression, interaction)
• Different ways of socialising (expression, understanding, preferences)
• Different personal motivations (friendship and relationships)
• Different “inner worlds” (mentalising and belief systems)

Example of “Autistic and Non-Autistic” Personality Types

Some of personality types may look more “autistic” in expression such as being conscientious and/or solitary while others not so much if not at all such as the mercurial and/or leisurely personality type.

Conclusion

What if some of the present issues in the person are to do with overlapping types that goes into “disordered extremes”?  And so the presentation is being inaccurately referenced, told and/or said to be “the autism”.

Paul Isaacs 2018

Autism, Musings of a Faceblind and Object Blind Child

As I child the lack of visual and facial coherence meant that the visual world didn’t pry for the bonding and connective meanings that relied of multiple visual stimulus’, faces meant nothing and visual association was hollow, flat and soulless so I didn’t apply the connections of “me”, you” and “I”.

My first friend was “water” not the interpretive word but the emotional recoil that I gathered and like a friend it was there to give and take. I would see the puddles, flush the toilets and knew from them what would come. A timely wave of energy which was a akin to expectation as the water flowed the twinkles of spray in the surrounding area and the light shards bouncing off the sun in the morning.

“Bear” was used as a transitional object he was large, course and scratchy and would sit next to me in the car when my parents went out and about.

The Mirror in the bathroom and other places was a constant source of fascination it took me until 16 to released that “him” was “me” but I found it a comfort not to be alone.

On a pre-conscious level I was “sensing” and “tuning in” to an apart of myself which I wasn’t able to make the connection with in real time so it was slow process from infancy to mid-teenage hood. Having a level of aphasia, visual-verbal agnosias delayed the process but I am thankful to have given myself a “project” to work on and to bridge the gap between my world, the world and other peoples worlds.

This was a feeback loop in which I was finding other through self and self through other (the sense that the person in the mirror was “other”) this brought upon the slow bridging between my internal world of sensing to a level of intereptation.

Paul Isaacs 2018

Autism – The Crossover from “Sensing” to “Meaning”

 

Note this is from a personal perspective

Talking yesterday to friend about speech and language I thought it was interesting to see progression the inner feelings of someone who has gone through significant challenges in receptive and expressive language. I can remember a whole host of disconnected emotions that came flooding towards my person when speech slowly developed in terms of expression, a whirl wind of patterns, phonics and placements in my collective unglued memory and figured out by the ages of eight a system of external placement, phonic placement and movement sequences that helped me connect with the outer world around me.

However what was challenging from both emotional and integration point of view was taking a step away from the system of “sensing” (Donna Wiliiams 1998) a state of pre-consciousness, patterns, thematics and “feelings” that answered and questioned, that supplied and didn’t demand, that sang but didn’t shout, that gave and took in relevance of the moment it was captured. A place which “being” was the name of the game and “storing information” was redundant and futile.

It was a world in which in my own way I had found connects through external sensory modulation as explained so switching my “systems” was much a painful and frustrating experience as I can ever remember my connected chatter annoyed and scared me and the connected words would then bring upon the attention of connected response to which I was not readily to respond.

So was it like losing a friend well at that point yes I was making subtle yet significant transition into the world of interpretation, cladding, hierarchy and applied meaning for someone who was profoundly meaning deaf and meaning blind to those concepts it certainly makes sense why I wanted to “go back” into a world of “sensing” it was in reflection both a prison and sanctuary, solitude and disarray and home and wilderness all at once.

We (human beings) all come from the system of “sensing” however my personal experience is being “there” for a longer allotted period and many ways I am still there with reflective gaining and personal developmental progressions that have come with it.

Paul Isaacs 2018

Egotisms vs. “Developemtnal Egocentrisms” – Understanding “Other Through Self” In Autism

Note this is from a personal perspective

To be a egotist one must have a self-inflated sense of “self” (the ego) in which everything has to be about them, for them and with them you could construed this a narcissism and unhealthy relationship with ego and the ability to get “other” as necessary part of life. This doesn’t mean that people with autism cannot be egotists by the way.

Oxford Living Definition

1.1 Centred in or arising from a person’s own individual existence or perspective.

‘Egocentric spatial perception’

“Developmental” Egocentrism

This on the “surface” in its multiple forms see like the “same” if a  person taps on the surface this could be as so but what is the person is trying (unconsciously in some cases) to understand other?

Faceblindness and Mirrors

It took me years up to the age of 16 years to realise that the “friend” that followed me into the bathroom and public toilets was “me” I sought a lot of comfort from “him” as I stared into the mirror I wasn’t aware that it was “self” so I played with the “friend” pulling faces, gestures, expression contorting my features etc. Transfixed I would struggled to perceive that was in the mirror was behind “me” leaning the toward the mirror I would try to pick things out of it not understanding the concept of “mirror” is reflection one’s own physical form.

Meaning Deafness and Echolalia

I would have contradictory experience with being profoundly meaning deaf all around me was fragmented people making “soundscapes” to one another this would both intrigue, annoy and frightening me depending on the context, the people and the situation. Listening to jingles, TV shows and VHS’ was indirectly and opening for “other” I could follow the patterns of the program endlessly as they were in the end a linear form of repetition of sounds, colours and movements.

Visual perception and Making Connections

Being both meaning blind and object blind meant my visual world was redundant and I was only using up to 30 percent of information (taking into account visual perception is around 70 percent of information). I would “live” in a system of sensing (before typical interpretations and applied meaning) for connected experiences they had to come from other senses, touch, taste, smell and movement gave “life” to my physical environment. I would connect with “people” in a fragmented manner smell, touch, patterns of movement etc.

Using One’s Own “System”

I have no doubt in  reflection on my experiences that I have made progression in many areas however the point I am trying to make is the context of autism is that “developmental egocentric systems” in my case were used as “bridge” unconsciously or otherwise understand “other”. The internal struggle was the blockages developmentally and neurologically to extract my own though systems, interpretive systems and inner/outer dialogue of coherence at time where I could not get a shared “sense of social”.

Paul Isaacs 2018

A Journey With Cancer, Treatments & Side-Effects

 

Cancer is a hard thing to talk about my Dad was diagnosed in 2009 with a type of blood cancer called Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia which attacks the white blood cells and comprises the auto-immune system. Early warning signs included fatigue and hard node underneath his armpit. After this diagnosis he got a second which would change the outlook of mortality and treatment in which he had genetic mutation of the p53 gene which is called the “guardian angel” gene for cancer. He in 2010 had been given three months to live if he didn’t have a bone marrow transplant (which came from Germany and the person had the same genetic deletion) it was then he had chemotherapy the the transplant.

He told me that one of the most difficult things prior was signing a piece of paper acknowledging that there is a 25 percent risk of him dying through this procedure. I am sad to say it but one of the worst things about the experience was the wards lack of knowledge on Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome and by letting staff members know actually made an already compromised and critical situation much worse he was name-called, laughed at and escorted out of his room during the his last day he belongings stuffed into black bags and told to wait in the communal room despite him almost dying almost three times in the 12 weeks due to fungal pneumonia. I trained them in autism for an hour.

The team gave him too much of the bone marrow donor swapping a life threatening disease to a chronic disease called Graft (donor) vs. Host (the person) disease which attacks the soft tissue, eyelids, foreskin, lips, mouth, gums etc leading to tooth decay, gum recession in my Dads case

The drugs he takes now is something called perdnisolone which was created in the 1940s in is a type of immune-suppressant which in the short term is very good but in the long term can have dramatic and even life-threatening consequences. My Dad has been on this drug for over six years and the effect on his life have been drastic mood swings, mania lasting days, explosive and odd reactions to sometimes the most trivial of comments, impulsive behaviours, personality changes (narcissistic and self-centred ideals quite the opposite to my Father’s kindly nature), psychotic episodes and paranoia. The hardening of the trunk of his body means he finds it hard to breath (dermatological disease), high blood pressure and muscle spasms and the constant flip-flopping of drugs (if you go over 20mg of pred you must take additional tablets to counter the side-effects of this). His body is steroid dependant meaning that I feel there should be alternate looks into helping a person safely ween off this drug.

Recently my Dad went “cold turkey” for over a month because of these side-effects his nervous system went into shock in the second week causing him to vomit, blood pressure to drop and so he self admitted to the triage in which he was giving pred as the only option. Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy and Predisoalone are all legal but destroyed and suppressed my Dad’s immune system to the point that he wasn’t my Dad anymore. I know there are other family members going through this I would like to say you have my sympathies.

I would to point out that my Dad is a positive and assertive person and through continued self direction, realist attitude, objectivity he strives to live his life as full as he can. 😊

#disablityandcancer #immunenology #autoimmunedisease #CCL#p53GeneDeletion #Aspergerssynrome #autism #sterioddependant #life#cancersupport #cancercare

Paul Isaacs 2018