Autism Difficulties: A Writing Assignment

This is from a writing assignment I am working on with my therapist.

1 – Write about 2 pages
   A – Something you learned about a challenge people with Autism Spectrum Disorder face
   B – How you have experienced this challenge personally – Provide at least one specific story
   C – What skills, behaviors, approaches you have used to manage or overcome this challenge.  Again, be specific

One thing I have learned about people with autism struggle with is processing time.  It can be hard for a person with autism to have a sense of how long an activity will take, or be able to wait for something.  I have a hard time while waiting for something.  If I have somewhere to be in a few hours, it can be hard for me to concentrate on any other activities while waiting for that appointment.  I can have a hard time gauging how long it will take to get somewhere if I have to drive there, and sometimes I leave extremely early, thinking it will take far longer than it actually does.  When I have multiple tasks or appointments to do in a day, it can be difficult to gauge how much time I might need for each activity.

Another issue that people with autism generally have is executive functioning.  I think this term executive functioning is a term more people should learn about.  It is a very important capacity to understand and develop, and to be aware of that people, not just those with autism, might struggle with.  I learned about executive functioning in an online chat I had with someone prominent in the autism community.  I told him I struggle to be able to organize my thoughts, my tasks, to be able to order my activity, to plan out or carry out steps of a task, to be able to judge the order of steps in which a task needs to be completed, focus on tasks despite distractions, determine and complete goals, etc.  If you want to understand an issue which a lot of people with autism struggle with, I encourage you to learn more about executive functioning.  It is something that will help you understand a lot that people not just with autism struggle with.  You, or someone you know, might struggle with executive functioning.  I would appreciate more people learning about executive functioning, and ways to help build up and improve, or help someone with difficulties they have in this capability.

Something that virtually everyone with autism has difficulty with is socializing, or social cognition.  I wonder if the components of the human neurological system that facilitate social actions, social perception, and social engagement or interaction are either impaired or undeveloped.  There are definitely neurological factors to socializing.  Every capacity for action or engagement with the external world and with other people requires some kind of mechanism to engage in that activity.  And I think people with autism probably have impairment or lack of development in those areas.  You can’t see if the biological components involved in vision are impaired or injured or did not develop adequately.  Just as the organs of vision capture visual information about light, and what is perceived, and the brain’s ability to process the visual data it receives, just as these organs can be impaired or impeded, so the same goes for social information, and social processes and behavior.  The brain and the neurological components that process what is going on socially with other people, between people, and the dynamic processes of social interaction and dynamics, these components must be able to process those principles and processes and concepts and ideas.  So, if a person with autism has those organs of social cognition, they might not be able to understand, consider and act on social understandings that a person with a nonimpaired or a superior or more developed system of social cognition and neurological equipment might be able to.  Some people are much more socially developed, skilled, and capable than others.  Others are very socially impaired or awkward, just because the parts of their neurology which would process social information and awareness and interaction, are impaired or undeveloped, so they just cannot perceive or process social data, in the same way that a person who is blind or visually impaired cannot take in or process visual data and sensation.  An autistic person cannot make sense of or act on a social matter, because they are in a sense socially blind.  A visually blind person does not see or process visual ideas and structures, whereas the socially blind or autistic person, does not have access to the social principles that are going on in the social activity around them, and between them and other persons.

I notice that when I am in situations where there are a lot of people, and they are interacting with each other, I can frequently have a hard time engaging with people, or initiating, maintaining or wrapping up interactions with other people.  Frequently this can happen at a church service or a party.  I recently visited someone for Christmas dinner.  I have a hard time initiating with new people, and most of the people at this party were people I had never met before.  I try to engage with everyone I can at least once.  But it is very difficult for me to engage with everyone at the same level.  So I try to maybe focus my interactions on one or a few people, hopefully finding some kind of shared interest with one or a few people.  And I try to ask people questions about things if I do not know of any shared interests.  At the Christmas party, one person is a religious education teacher at a Christian high school and I have a deep interest in Christian theology, so I was able to have a very deep conversation about authors and books I have read or know about, and I even looked through some of his books in the living room.  So, if I can find a shared interest with someone, it helps me to be able to engage other people in conversation.  For me, this is one reason I like to read widely on a wide variety of subjects, as it enables me to be able to talk about a lot of subjects, and I like to ask people what they are interested in and learn about subjects that interest them.  Just as a general strategy that helps me to engage and interact with others, I will ask people what they are interested in.  If someone is really interested in a subject I know little about, I often try to make an effort to read or learn about that subject, so that in future conversations I will have something I can discuss with them that interests them.  So, while i have a hard time with social processing, I try to take a long term approach or strategy to social engagement, such that if I find myself struggling to talk with someone, I will make a deliberate effort to learn what they are interested in, and learn more about it afterwards, so that on future interactions it will be easier to have a fruitful conversation with them.

So social processing difficulties can be quite profound with me.  It helps to have some kind of social environment or network or activities where I can get used to a certain social configuration maybe, where the activities and arrangement is familiar.  I found that I would get used to interacting with people at Friday night church services, and I would make a routine to go around and talk to various people before, during, and after the service.  But then when they would have services outside once a month during the warmer part of the year, I would be a little awkward because the arrangement was different.  Social engagement is difficult, but I try to use the strategy of long term approaches.  I also try to not overdo myself.  Sometimes I don’t know what to talk about.  So I will tell people this explicitly.  Sometimes it helps just to identify what difficulties I have, and it can be helpful to disclose them to others.  For example, I will tell people that sometimes I just want to say hi, even though I might not be able to have an extensive conversation.  Sometimes I want to touch base with someone, or just say hi on the phone, and I will tell certain people “Hi, I don’t want to have a long conversation.  I just want to say hi.”  This helps sometimes.  I might end up having a long or short conversation.  Or I might literally just say hi.  I will say “We don’t have to talk long.  I just want to say hi.”  This can help with when I want to keep in touch with people and let them know they are on my mind, but I am not sure I can handle a long conversation or I just don’t know what to talk about.  I know that a lot of other people with autism have more severe social impairments than I do.  I also know that some of the strategies I use might not work for others.  Or you might have to try certain strategies in combination with others, or fine tune them to what your goals are socially.  Some people might not have the reading ability that I have, so it might be hard to learn about subjects that others are interested in.  It helps to have some kind of shared activity or social environment you can engage in.  For me, most of my friends I know through church events and activities, and God and theology and prayer are huge interests to me.  So you might have to find some kind of shared interest or group to help you engage socially with others.  Maybe there is a support group or organization for people with Autism or Asperger’s.  I used to go to one many years ago.  They had pizza and game nights, and other activities.

I would like to write more about time processing difficulties and executive functioning difficulties and some stories and maybe strategies I have tried for those.  I personally think that just identifying that you have certain difficulties, learning that others have those same difficulties, and that a name has been assigned to identify and examine those problems and stories and strategies of other people’s experience and anything they have tried and that have helped is a good start.  Just being able to identify and talk about a problem makes the problem workable.  You can be able to talk about it with others, and see whether the problem is something common among your diagnosis, whether autism or otherwise, whether it has been given a name and identified and whether there have been some strategies tried already.  It is quite possible many other people have the same problem.  It could be that your difficulty is something unique and not well studied and examined.  But just discussing what you struggle with, you can find out if this is something people already know about, or not so much.  Then you can look at other people’s stories and experience, what has been tried and worked for others, and then you can adopt and try what you think might work in your situation and use those strategies or fine tune already existing strategies and possible develop some of your own strategies or applications to your own situation.  This week for my own stories and strategies I used I focused on social interaction and engagement, especially in complex social situations and environments, but I would like to develop the difficulties in time processing and executive functioning as well.