Language and the use of it can be varied to the point that if you tried to think about all the language that people process and the variety of differing ways people interpret, receives, express, share, not share, avoid, connect, disconnect etc it is rather big and somewhat scary!
I can rote learn fun lines from advertisements, jingles, songs. Metaphors are some of these funny lines. I can learn metaphors as fun lines just like any other. And I commonly jumble them or use them in the wrong places, boldly certain I’m being linguistically creative and sounding like a total pratt. It is many the time I have looked at a supressed giggle or cringed at the overt ones as I fall over metaphors. I like metaphors, they are funny, but there’s a difference between learning language through rote and grasping, retrieiving and applying it based on interpretive understanding.
But to say Autistic people can’t understand metaphor is also a myth.
I may struggle with metaphors I haven’t had fully explained to me but boy oh boy… my entire life is like a metaphor.
My late Grandfather was literal, pragmatic and had social emotional agnosia so he had a very linear, direct and conscientious in his way of expression. I have met others who are very much non-linear with their language tumbling, with neologisms, idiosyncratic and poetic . I have meet people who sense rather than interpret and other who interpret rather than sense.
It is in the end a massive melting pot of expression.
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.
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.
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. 😊
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”.
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.
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.
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?
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”.
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