Andrew Marsh’s Post

Environmental sensitivities and autism Many autistic people are particularly sensitive to the environment around them. These can be light, noise, touch, smells, surfaces like floors, wall textures, clothing and the like. These sensitivities aren’t just being a “little edgy about it” but quite serious and often debilitating conditions that impact on their health and ability to function in those circumstances. Two of my big sensitivities are light and noise. Sudden bright light or loud noise can stop me in my tracks and that “freeze” or “discomfort” often means that I have to get away from that environment to somewhere quitter or have lower light so that I can decompress and calm down from the onslaught. Bizarrely, in some circumstances I can take loud noise, like going to a concert or putting on music at a high volume, particularly rock or classical music. I find that very destressing and invigorating at the same time. I think it is the nature of the noise. For a concert, I am pre-prepared for the noise and know it is going to happen and I enjoy that particular noise/music. I must admit that after a concert, I do need and enjoy to be in a quiet place, again to decompress from that activity. If you work with or have friends and family who are autistic, just be aware that they might and probably do have some form of environmental sensitivities and see how you can help them adjust to what is around them. #aspergers #aspergerssyndrome #actuallyautistic #autism #theresilientasperger #environmentalsensitivities #accommodations

LinkedIn now has AI to write your posts for you. A dangerous precedent. I make a post weekly on LinkedIn, usually about something related to autism and/or Asperger’s Syndrome in some way. I usually do it on a Tuesday morning and earlier this week when I made it there was a prompt in the posting box informing me that AI could help or write my post. It said “Try writing it with AI.” Um, NO with whatever expletive you want to put in front of the no. Is this what we have become? Automatons to some big all powerful system that is slowly taking our originality and thought from us? This is dangerous, more than dangerous, it is insane. What next? Is everything we see online just a computer guess of what we might be thinking? Or perhaps, even worse, what we SHOULD be thinking? I am no expert on civil liberties and such like, but what the actual????? Have we all gone to sleep and woken up in some nightmare dystopian mind control state? I’m sure there are some politicians in power at the moment who wish we were. I am numb with the prospect of this growing and overtaking our free original thought and where that will lead in just a few years’ time. What next, a microchip in our necks keeping tabs on where we go, who we see and what we do 24/7? And what happens if what we do, who we see and do doesn’t meet with someone’s view of what is “acceptable?” Scary, very scary. #whatfuture? #AIlunacy #nannystate #dystopiannightmare 

Dealing with uncertainty As we go through life, things happen. Some are planned and some hit us blindside on an everyday Tuesday afternoon for no apparent reason. Those things have consequences. As an autistic person, uncertainty causes me problems because I do not know what is going to happen. That not knowing isn’t something I can just dismiss, shrug and hope that soon, a solution or action will correct it or make it better. Life isn’t like that. The curve ball will always come back. Recently, my wife Leslie has had to have some tests for medical reasons. This has gone on for about six months. One test led to another, then another and so on. Sometimes, she got results quite quickly, within a week or two, but some have not been reported to her for many months. This is not just frustrating for both of us, it causes worry, why wouldn’t it? If there is something wrong, we need to know what it is, what can be done and what the likely outcome(s) is/are. But this being in limbo waiting is bad for both of us because we simply don’t know and that uncertainty starts the brain off in various, often unhealthy, tangents about potential bad things. Surgery, or worse. Leslie has medical training, she was a vet nurse for a long time, so she understands more than the lay person what some test result mean and what some symptoms might indicate. And, if, the less that great situation develops time becomes critical. Some solutions and interventions may not be suitable after a prolonged wait or delay. This places us both as individuals and as a couple under a great deal of stress and for an autistic person like me that can be very debilitating and can and does cause my own health issues to flare up. It becomes its own vicious circle gnawing away in the back of my head and this can be destructive. It feels as though we are just passengers in what is going on and neither of us like that one bit. #aspergers #aspergerssyndrome #actuallyautistic #autism #theresilientasperger #healthissues #uncertainty 

What goes on in my Aspie brain. You know that moment when you realise that few of your peers can do the thing that you do all the time and perhaps take for granted? That. It happened to me during the process of getting my Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis and I was stunned into silence. It was a total mind freeze when that comprehension landed. You see, my brain is on the go 24/7 and not at a snail’s pace. And not only that, but it computes scenarios that follow on from that thought. Outcomes, you might say and for good measure takes them to extremes of possibility in an instant. Let me try to give an example. Let us suppose that I am walking down the street and a group of young lads are heading in my direction. And to be completely clear, they are doing nothing wrong at all, they are just young men enjoying the company of the others and perhaps give the others a playful punch or tap on the arm when explaining or laughing at something. As many do all the time. I see that and my brain goes into its what if routine. What if one of them bumps into me and in having the protection of the group give me grief about it, perhaps push me harder and so on. My brain goes into escalation mode and in my head I am standing outside a court having just won my case for assault against the man/men where one of them ended up being pushed through a plate glass window of the shop we were outside. That scenario happens in my head in a heartbeat. Just like that, as Tommy Cooper would say. And my brain does this for every situation I am in every second of the day. Each situation taken to nth degree of possible outcomes, so that one event could have ten outcomes and each of them a further ten following outcomes, adding up to a hundred things going on in my head. This is what I have in my brain and in my autism assessment the specialist said that most people don’t have that, it’s uncommon. This is just one of the peculiarities of my autistic brain. It doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else, just different. And that difference is something I have embraced since getting my diagnosis almost nine years ago. It has been one hell of an interesting ride, that’s for sure. #aspergers #aspergerssyndrome #actuallyautistic #autism #theresilientasperger #thebrain

I don’t write using contractions. One of the things that I notice I do is that I generally don’t write using contractions. This becomes evident when writing novels and particularly everyday speech parts. Yet, somehow I write the full words out long form and when I edit, I then shorten the words to make them more realistic. I’m not sure if this is an autistic trait or just a peculiarity to me. I haven’t sought the opinion of other autistic people to check. It would be an interesting exercise to see whether other autistic people do this, or if, as I may suspect, that it’s just a me thing. When I read a piece of work that I have written for the first time, it really grates when I see the long form and yet, after all of these years and over twenty books written, I still do it for new writing. I suppose it might be a reflection of my schooling and upbringing, but I know many school friends who so not do this, so I may be stretching it a bit thin here. So, where does this come from? To be honest I have no idea. It’s a mystery that I have just done with it’s. I typed out it is, not it’s. How bizarre! All I can say is that if it is an autistic trait, try to be gentle on your autistic friends and colleagues, they may not be doing it on purpose, just like me. #aspergers #aspergerssyndrome #actuallyautistic #autism #contractions #theresilientasperger

I was on a stall this weekend So what? You might ask. But let me explain. The way that I live is determined by what I can do that is familiar to me and makes me feel as safe as I can be. This means that I do repeated things because I have a better understanding of the variables involved and will, by and large, know what will happen. The challenges that I face are when things change or I am put in a position where I don’t know what will happen, I have less or no control of all the variables. The unknown to an autistic person is fraught with danger and threat and this puts them, or me, on high alert. Back to the stall. This is a huge challenge for me because I will be interacting with people and as I have said many times in my previous posts, people are my greatest challenge for a host of reasons, mostly because they are inconsistent. It means that people will come to the stall and ask questions, pick up things and not put them back where they got them from, and whether they know it or not can create chaos in my local environment and my mind. So many people with so many agendas and with that comes the banal and the rude, the ignorant, those who are just out to cause mayhem for others because they have nothing better to do. Of course there are also the nice people, the friendly ones and those who brighten your day, they come along too. And there is me, in a small space with my sensers at full range and maximum setting to try and keep me safe in a situation where anything can happen and quite often does. And none of it in my immediate control, other than how I react to it. Overwhelm doesn’t get even close to how I feel when on the stall, or doing something new. Complete breakdown of human function is a far closer expression of what awaits at any moment. The stress that I am under just to keep a semblance of a smile and pleasant demeanour is almost impossible to describe. I am already on Defcon 3 and it would not take much for that to escalate to Defcon 1 in an instant. And, I would remind you that I have sixty years of lived experience to get better at being around and interacting with people. It’s not that I’m a slow learner, it is just that the task is so monumentally difficult every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I think I need to invent a new word for it. #aspergers #aspergerssyndrome #actuallyautistic #autism #people #overwhelm