Welcome to From the Spectrum Podcast. This is a podcast about autism.
It is my goal to explain what is autism. I intend to use a mixture of scientific literature,
personal experience, and some opinion. With opinions, I will explain why I feel the way I do
and give examples. I will provide links to various references for each episode. For each episode,
we will discuss various aspects of autism. The From the Spectrum Podcast will mostly avoid
causes of autism. And I will try avoiding the increases of diagnoses of late. This is like
playing tug of war with barbed wire and I don't think I want to travel down that path.
For today's episode, I will spend time discussing symptoms from the DSM-5-TR. These symptoms are
crude and it tends to capture the spectrum. In addition, I will provide personal examples,
observations of others, and dialogue from others. First, a brief history of autism.
In 1943, Leo Kanner published a paper in pathology called Autistic Disservances of Effective
Contact. This paper has been cited 17,738 times. This paper begins by mentioning observing these
disturbances in 1938. A year later in 1944, Hans Asperger from Asperger Syndrome published Autistic
Psychopathy. This is the beginning of the phenomena. Autism is placed in the neurodevelopmental
disorders of the DSM-5-TR. Some related disorders within this section includes OCD, which is a
cyclical loop in the so-called cortical striatum salamos circuit, involving the cortex, which
is involved with executive functioning, planning, and running models about our world around us.
The striatum, which is in the basal ganglia in the so-called go-no-go area of the brain.
The striatum is related to go-directed motivation and habits that meet movement, motor movement,
and the thalamus. I like to think of the thalamus like a skyscraper in a big city. Many various
people are coming in the revolving door, and some are going to the same office, and some are going
to different offices. But they all make a stay and have different objectives while there. At the same
time, people are leaving through the revolving door and going to many different places about the
city or the world. This represents the many downstream destinations for our circuitry.
Now, with OCD, imagine someone constantly being stuck in the revolving door.
Also, ticks, turrets, speech and language, and schizophrenia. With schizophrenia, there are many
types. However, mainly, autism lacks the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, which includes delusions
and hallucinations. Here, there is a common gene linked here in the striatum called catnap.
Scientifically, it's called CNT-NAP2, and this is a protein that implicates the striatum.
The catnap gene also implicates focal epilepsy or focal seizures, which is sometimes related to autism.
Also in the DSM-5 similar to autism is Schizoid Personality Disorder, which is a cluster A
personality disorder. These are often referred to as odd and eccentric. Lastly, anxiety tracks
common with autism. There are three levels of autism based on needed support. I am level one,
which requires support. There is level two, requiring substantial support, and level three,
requires very substantial support. Now for the symptoms. Criteria A has three symptoms,
and is known as deficits in social communication and interaction.
A requires all three symptoms from current functioning or a history of the symptom.
Criteria B has four symptoms, and known as restricted and repetitive behaviors.
B requires two symptoms. In an episode of Peter Atia's Drive featuring my favorite psychiatrist
and neuroscientist, Carl Deisaroth, Peter calls autism something with superpowers
and super deficits. I will provide a link to the section they discuss about autism,
and we will parse that out when discussing Criteria A. In the meantime, I believe the layperson
and some professionals are hitched on Criteria A. This is because it is easier to observe,
and I have an opinion about humans investigative tendency. It has come to my attention, humans
love whatever makes sense to them, whatever they can make sense of. We get to a point and discover
an answer, and that makes sense to us. And we say, yes, that must be it, or yes, that is it.
However, something must be causing whatever that discovery is. So, as we review these symptoms,
I ask you to take notice of how restrictive and repetitive behaviors can complicate our socialness
and relationships. The restricted and repetitive behaviors mixed with a lack of opportunity
and ability to understand socialness causes a vast conundrum, a confusing paradox of socialness.
I suspect Criteria B causes Criteria A. Maybe not entirely, because of some other factors
we will discuss later. But a major contributor of the known social phenotype,
perhaps all of these things happening in our thoughts and imagination are, or over time,
become more and more interesting to us. And this is safer than the outside world.
In the Dicerothetia podcast, Carl mentioned something very interesting to me.
It is unknown if autism and whatever genetic mutations give the person the introverted phenotype
for protection because of the sensory processing challenges, or if this is possibly learned at
a young age, possibly in the so-called critical stage. Wonderful as usual by Diceroth. For context,
as a psychiatrist, autism is one of his two specialties. In his words, described in his book
Projections, he wants to help this underserved population. He also accurately mentions there
is no medical treatment for autism. It is my opinion we find our superpowers and do that.
Something that might help is increasing the understanding of what is autism.
Now let's review Criteria B. We will first review B to understand how this could implicate Criteria
A. I do not feel A can implicate B. Well, besides people interfering with the following symptoms
that we so much enjoy, these symptoms are not exhaustive, neither by the DSM or the ones that I
add to the conversation. B1, stereotype or repetitive motor movements, use of objects,
or speech. Anytime you hear stereotypy, it is wrong. Stereotypy or stereotypy suggests purposeless
behavior. This is a misnomer. There is purpose to these characteristics and movements.
Other examples include simple motor stereotypies. Remember that closeness to ticks. This is a
localized energy from a buildup of something. And this causes concentration to relieve that buildup.
The movements satisfy that.
I enjoy squeezing and rocking. Other examples include hand flapping, nail and lip biting,
hair twirling, clenching or grinding teeth, head banging, which I used to do as a child,
and staring at objects. I like to rub my hands across each other, sometimes squeezing quite
intensely, and sometimes rubbing softly. Or I like to rub my fingers across my palms. I like to
squeeze my hands. I like wadding up paper towels into a ball and squeezing in my palm, especially
the rough style paper towels. I often do this, including doing this during the entire time of
the 8-2 mod 4. I don't think this was caught during the assessment. I enjoy washing my hands with
rough style soap. When COVID happened and the so-called experts said to wash hands for 20 seconds,
I was confused. I thought that wasn't nearly enough time. And I thought that before, during,
during and after COVID. I thought it was 60 seconds. However, maybe this is just my preference
and experience with washing my hands for longer than the 20 seconds. In short, maybe this is my creation.
For clenching and grinding teeth, I do this. And I remember as a young child riding in a car,
I would clench and grind teeth and only release them when we passed an electrical
pole or sometimes called a telephone pole. Anything in between, I had to be clenching my teeth.
And it was very repetitive. It was almost necessary that I do this while traveling in the car.
I am that I am still fascinated with the rhythmic movements of the telephone poles
coming at me and passing me while driving or riding in a car. Today, I occasionally still
find myself doing the clenching and noticing the telephone poles passing by.
Other examples include lining up toys or objects. I like to straighten everything in lines
with perfect or similar gap or spacing. Everything in my work area desk table.
I like to have those in order stacked up neatly with the edges matching and everything spaced out
just right. Other examples include flipping objects and eco-lalia. Eco-lalia is mean.
It allows me to process and learn. And when we discuss criteria A, we will go into eco-lalia
a little bit more. People with eco-lalia can do this immediately or long after or both.
About a year ago, while grocery shopping, I heard I heard an old man while his wife put
something in the cart. The old man had a country accent and it was very capturing to me. And as
his wife put something in the cart, the old man said, well go on get you with you.
In a very country like accent, I don't know if it was the accent, the rare use of those words
or just a combination of it. But I was immediately hitched on this and I said it to myself immediately.
By the time I left the store, I must have said it dozens of times, eventually out loud.
I went on to say this over and over again for about six to eight months.
So much that my two teenagers picked up on it and learned it and they would randomly say it.
Until a point, they had enough of it and they said, Dad, you can't do that anymore.
We've had enough of it. I was reminded of a Seinfeld episode when they were doing this silly
hello out of the side of their mouth and eventually one or two of them just got tired of it,
even though one or two of the others still wanted to continue it.
People just get satisfied with something and it's just time to move on. Sometimes with
echolalia, it's hard to move on. It's almost like that cyclical loop. Now B2, which is insistence
on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior.
Examples include extreme distress as small changes, difficulties with transitions,
rigid thinking patterns, which is just no gray areas. Gray areas to me are complicated,
unnecessary and introduce many forms of interpretations.
People with autism or autistics, we are very literal. We need context. We enjoy the context
and structure. We have a strict obedience to rules, especially our own set of rules.
Remember our routines. This is what works for us. For those wondering, if you have something to say
to us, just say it. You don't have to beat around the bush or present, introduce it in gray areas.
Just say it. We also have a tendency for perfectionism, replaying events and conversations
we can overthink and overanalyze. This is a great source of anxiety and how this trait
implicates social life. Also, we miss sarcasm and humor. I tend to think about others in that
let me have it. You won't touch the degree of critic that I will have on myself or likely that I
already have had on my life or on myself regarding whatever it is, topic, discussion,
subject you want to talk about. Often, when people approach us for something wrong,
we have already analyzed it and exhausted it. I ask you to consider that degree of pressure
we have to fit in or adhere to those created social norms.
Now we can consider how our routines are preferred and entangled in us in our nervous system,
either from birth or learned from experience at that early age. However, I suspect this allows
us to consider the sense of a superpower. About 10 or 15 years ago, an animated movie came out
about bees called Bee Movie and it featured Jerry Seinfeld playing the main character
and he had a real close friend. They were adolescent in the movie about to graduate
high school or just graduating high school and Jerry was discouraged about the life within the
beehive. Everything was the same every day and it operated with extreme efficiency.
I don't think he liked that routine and he wanted to do something different.
As Jerry and his buddy Bee were talking, the camera panned out and it showed thousands
or hundreds of thousands, possibly a million bees buzzing around in extreme efficiency at high pace
and such a perfect secrecy. And as soon as I saw that, I thought, this is how I live. This is how
few things my sensations and autism is essentially a sensory processing disorder.
However, this allows for great efficiency and routine and we eventually prefer that.
Also, this suggests less room for negotiating with myself.
I see it. I see the pictures and movie is flowing in my head. Then I can over analyze it and plan it
and do it. I am very precise with my planning. I know the exact details. I will exhaust this out in my
reflection. However, sometimes because how unpredictable the world is, especially from a
social context, life doesn't work like that. Here I am speaking about other people or situations
complicating those plans or routines. Other symptoms include greeting rituals,
a need for same route or travel, need for same foods every day. Oftentimes, people will prepare
several items or sides for a meal. And this has always been strange to me. I don't quite understand it.
I love the same clothes. I have several of the exact items. If it makes sense, it makes sense.
I have severe B2. For me, this stampens my ability in socialness and certainly
building and maintaining relationships.
B3. Highly restricted, fixated interest that are abnormal in intensity or focus.
First, dissecting abnormal. This suggests this can be a super deficit. However, if known,
if applied to your life, abnormal is definitely a superpower.
This makes commitment nearly impossible in the social world. Certainly challenging.
This is another factor that lessens opportunity to develop social skills. A component with
commitment is worrying about an out. And will the relationship interfere with our time alone,
our time for our interest, the things that we would prefer to be doing? Also, I struggle with how easy
others can act, how they do. And what do I care about other trivial factors of their life? I don't
mean this to be rude. It's just there are many other things more interesting to me.
Other examples include a strong attachment to or a preoccupation with unusual objects.
Unusual is a poor use of information. To me and others, it is a form of removing our interest
more so we can act more like you. Not interested. I think do better. I think that decision of using
unusual is a hallmark example of someone or some people injecting themselves in what they consider
normal abnormal or unusual. Find your superpower and do that. Another example is circumscribed
or pervative interest. This is just repetitive behaviors.
I am happy to provide a link to an episode from the autistic woman called Meet My Autistic Brain.
She has a wonderful episode on this that is a great podcast worthy of checking out.
B2 and B3 are severe to me. However, having them and having them for most or probably all of my life,
they are awesome and I wouldn't change it. As a young child in the mid 80s, around five, six,
or seven, I was extremely fixated on the Vietnam War. I remember wanting to ask people about it,
but in a way they wouldn't comment on my obvious strong interest in it.
That in a combination of my poor speech and language, it was difficult. I could not form
proper questioning that would extract the information I wanted about the Vietnam War
while decreasing the risk of any comments made directed at me about this strong fixated interest.
It was very awkward for me. I remember that buildup of energy in my body wanting to talk about it,
the intensity of trying to ask about it, and the struggles of not getting it out at times.
Still today, I can talk about the Vietnam War. Remember when I was a child in the 80s,
it wasn't far removed, maybe 10 or 15 years after the Vietnam War.
In the third grade, I remember only wanting to write Vietnam novels. I would read children versions
of these books and piece together information that I did receive from other people and create
my own Vietnam books. Fiction, of course. These intense fixations have never stopped,
and they do get intense. Sometimes in my history, they have implicated relationships
in my social life quite severely. These fixations can happen and become so energized
that I thought something else could be wrong. It is extremely intense with psychology and
neuroscience. Our nervous system is so much. I wake up and do what is probably the normal waking
up process other people have. Slow to wake and eventually you come to and you're ready to
do on your task and get your day started. 10 to 15 minutes after I wake, my brain is blasting
out pictures as I provide dialogue to it. Whatever interest that I'm in at that time or that morning.
I am professing to myself and I suspect my learning accelerates because of this.
It is a wonderful phenomenon. It is a superpower. Then 15 to 20 minutes later,
motor movements begin. I will stem more, move my hands as someone does when speaking,
then it intensifies to me moving my lips. And finally, I will speak it out loud while pacing.
And often the pacing can intensify. It's like I am professing to a class on whatever topic,
subject or interest that I am in at that moment. I think this is indeed a method for that accelerated
learning. Another personal example is I worked in an engineering department for about 10 years
for a machining operation. Now, the machining operation would take raw materials and machine
these down to certain dimensions. And each part had a blueprint with a few dozen dimensions listed
on them showing the nominal, usually in millimeters and the tolerance level in microns.
And my department was responsible for cutting up the machining and cutting tools for the machines,
the CNC and lathe type machines. So the cutting tools had their own sets of dimensions and
tolerances. I got to a point where I can memorize both the part dimensions and tolerances and the
cutting tool dimensions and tolerances. This allowed me to work at extreme efficiency at high
rates of speed. So much that others thought I must be skipping steps. Superiors, coworkers,
other departments and other engineers, I was very entry level as point suspected that.
And it got to a point where I could just I would name off dimensions to them. And it took a while
for them to accept that to qualify that I was right. That what I was saying was indeed correct.
And I thought, this is taking too many trials. I don't understand why it's just not believed.
But with human social tendency of just speaking, often I think others just speak without providing
much context to the conversation. Now back to the dimensions. It took too many trials and I'm not
the type of person nor other autistics or people with the social phenotype to just say stuff,
just to be saying stuff. This was very odd and a good example of how our superpowers aren't quite
accepted or are they take longer to accept than what they should. However, this allowed me to work
at that great efficiency. And I eventually made promotions, a few different promotions while
working for this. This company is a very tall corporation, meaning there is layers into the
hierarchy. It's very there are many layers to the hierarchy. And I worked my way up quite a bit
and had a decent job. In a future episode of from the spectrum podcast, we will go into the anxiety
and just the social exhaustiveness of the outside world and including employment. Employment is very
difficult. Lastly is before, which is hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest
in sensory aspects of the environment. Apparent indifference to pain and temperature. Adverse
response to specific sounds or textures. Excessive smelling or touching of objects. Visual fascination
with lights or movements. This sensory input is it. This complicates socialness and eye contact.
If you know, you know, meaning if this is you, you know. If this is not you, then you don't know.
Visual and sensations are like watching TV and fast forward, maybe two and a half or two times
speed. This is a wonderful example of superpower and super deficit. So what socialness is hard
and making eye contact is hard. It's hard to keep up with. Socialness and eye contact are two
different things. I am talking about super deficits here. Before I continue, I will say this eye
contact as a component of socialness is a very human thought and creation, meaning it doesn't
impact the conveyance to me. So what if someone is not making eye contact with me while speaking
to me? Speech and language or speech and language and eye contact. If I could teach people one
thing in life, a major consideration for this one thing would be never underestimate a human's
capacity to think. How is that relevant here? That's a good question. It is relevant because
as the receiver processes the spoken information, the receiver at some point, you make a decision
that the speaker isn't making eye contact and therefore the message or the spoken words are
implicated. But are they? Or is that created by the receiver? The eyes are for image forming
and non-image forming parts of our biology. The ears are auditory. This suggests the use of eye
contact is needed for conveying speech and language and that is created from human thought.
Questions or comments, please reach out. However, as I mentioned earlier about superpowers
and super deficits, these visual inputs, along with other sensations, provide opportunity for
extreme efficiency. It allows opportunity for increased processing and visualized thought
and seeing things in real time and prior to things happening. You might often hear about
pattern seekers or pattern thinkers with autism. So if you think about visual thinkers and pattern
thinkers, think about those hyperconnected sensory processes. After all, it seems autism is simply a
sensory processing phenomena. And I like that. In some cases, or maybe most cases, autism spectrum
disorder can be considered autism spectrum phenomena. As a side note, because my tribe
often have trouble with marketing and advocating for ourselves, From the Spectrum podcast offers
t-shirts. Right now, we have one saying From the Spectrum podcast and one saying Autism Spectrum
Disorder with Disorder Marked Out and phenomena written under it. Look out for more information
on these. Now, mostly I have talked about visual sensations. Mainly humans have a dynamic visual
system. The eyes are indeed brain. The eyes are not an independent connection to the brain.
And we certainly use the eyes to navigate the world. Now, as mentioned with v2 and v3,
I have severe b4 as well. As we wrap up today's episode on criteria b, I asked you to understand
how these symptoms implicate our ability to socialize and build and maintain relationships.
If you know someone with autism or in a relationship with someone with autism, please understand this.
You often cannot see criteria b. It is very hard to discover from the outside as a spectator
and to investigate. In future episodes, we will review scales and tools associated with criteria b.
Please consider the various challenges discussed today. And thank you for listening to the first
episode of From the Spectrum podcast.