Welcome to From the Spectrum Podcast. This is a podcast about autism. It is my goal to explain what is autism.
I plan to use a mixture of scientific literature, personal experience, and opinion.
With opinion, 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.
For today's episode, we will discuss autism and relationships.
Now, my warning is, I don't have a lot of history with relationships, so I'm going to speak on it from this perspective.
Things that give us difficulties with that relationship component.
Now, socialness is likely the easiest trait others can see and understand.
Before we begin, I think it's important that we discuss social communication and interaction between the speaker and receiver, or speaker and receivers plural.
We will discuss it from both points of view, meaning the speaker and receiver, and the potential implications from an autistic.
The speaker is generating abstract ideas based off of a couple of components.
There are a couple of inputs here. Their knowledge, their ability to formulate speech and language, and their idea of the information.
And then they process this through speech and language to the receiver.
Additionally, the speaker will use different gestures, body gestures, and eye contact and eye gaze.
This is all to kind of help the attention of the receiver.
This all helps with the conveyance of that message, turning ideas, turning information over to the others, inviting them to understand and participate.
And the receiver or receivers, they have to follow along with the spoken language, the gestures, the eye contact and eye gaze, and make sense of everything happening.
Now we've discussed visual thinking, listening, and hearing that information, and then transposing that into visual thinking, keeping pace with this, keeping pace with the speech and language that is coming,
and making sense of the gestures, all the social norms, the eye contact, eye gaze, autistics, remember, autistics, see things, and imagine things from detail to general.
So it's maybe a different process, processing speed.
We see the details and then work our way out as we're building the details up to make a concrete image, a conceptualized, concrete understanding of the spoken language being received.
Now I know that's a lot, that's a lot to keep up with and try to understand, but there's a lot going on in socialness and human interaction.
Remember, it's very unpredictable too.
Remember B2.
Remember we need structure.
We don't like the abstraction as much as concrete ideas.
And consider how each environment or each interaction is kind of context dependent.
There are different rule sets based off of the environment or the setting.
And remember one of the overall goals of the prefrontal cortex is being a flexible rule setting machine as far as giving us ideas or instructions, I should say, about what to do in certain environments, the healthy versus unhealthy adaptive responses.
And also imagine the back and forth with the processing challenges or differences, and then exchanging the information or communication.
And remember, autistics typically bond to each other easier than a non-autistic and an autistic.
And I suspect for these reasons, and please don't underestimate just simple small talk or simple back and forth.
Now imagine, based off of everything we just discussed about the speaker using the knowledge, the ability to articulate the message and their intelligence, their information about the topic.
And formulating that into an conveyance for the receiver.
Think about the gestures and the eye contact, all those social norms to being a contributing factor.
Now think about an autistic's ability to process all of this, to integrate all of those components and use them for their speech and language.
It's not uncommon that someone with autism gets labeled like odd, eccentric, or they lack emotions or they're kind of dull in social settings.
And maybe lastly is remember the amount of metabolic energy all of this processing requires.
And the ability to kind of use the resources for that and being able to sustain that.
And think about being able to fit in the social awkwardness and burnout.
Regarding the biology, remember the implications to oxytocin and even serotonin and the poor connectivity to certain brain regions and how that implicates what we're talking about.
We need to consider and understand the biology that gives us autism, gives us complications with socialness and relationships.
Frankly, relationships are challenging.
One consideration based on previous conversation with Dr. Leanna Hernandez from UCLA is the sex differences and brain connectivity.
We covered oxytocin and serotonin must converge in the nucleus accumbents for social reward.
It appears boys and males lack this connection.
Further research lacks for the girls and females, meaning most of the scientific literature published are on boys and males.
As you know, the boy bias with autism is a consideration.
Mostly I will discuss the boy perspective.
Any differences on this topic between boys and girls could differ.
There is a chance autistic girls are opposite, meaning they require higher social affinity, connections and so forth.
I think the lay public and even professionals, the default will be criteria A, social communication and interaction.
That's external. That involves the environment and others.
However, criteria B, restricted repetitive behaviors is internal within the self.
So it goes within the self to outside the self, the environment, others, those external factors.
Remember me saying, are you even interesting? And remember me saying autism gives us the ability to be comfortable within ourselves.
Remember neuroplasticity as well, becoming who we are and our preferences creating this so called autistic phenotype.
Remember that rate of information moving from the outside or external to the inside, sensory processing, external to internal.
That is sensation to perception.
Now it is true social skills and the ability to process the external world is involved.
But the barrier is those internal factors explained by the crude symptomology of criteria B, restricted repetitive behaviors.
I think for this topic of autism and relationships.
B2 and B3 are most prevalent.
B2, insistence on sameness and flexible adherence to routines or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior.
This encompasses a lot of predictableness.
Remember the conversation about brain connectivity and adaptive responses and so forth.
You can see B2 involves some external.
Our brains or more accurately our nervous system is a prediction machine.
It just wants to respond with little to no work.
Little energy as possible.
That metabolic bank account versus the perceived amount of metabolic energy required.
Do we have enough metabolic resources for this task, the plan, the environment, etc.
We have a default response.
Okay, this can be explained in different ways based on the same meaning.
And that's the English language.
Phenotype is how we commonly define it.
A description of this is, when we encounter something in the environment, we respond to it in a certain way.
This solidifies B2.
However, the environment is mostly unpredictable.
So we need, humans need a flexibility in their phenotype, an ability for adaptive responses.
Remember the conversation on the medial prefrontal cortex.
And this takes us to the prefrontal cortex, which is a flexible rule setting machine that allows us to respond in healthy, adaptable ways.
Remember, with little work, little energy as possible, the human body intends to be efficient.
When we are metabolic deficient, that metabolic bank account, when we overdraw these resources, we remove ourselves from the demanding environment, which is common for all humans.
However, with autism, it appears more frequent.
We need breaks.
B3, restricted, fixated interest.
Now, the book says that are abnormal in intensity or focus.
But it's foolish to say abnormal when discussing interest, intensity, or focus.
We don't have to discuss how this implicates or interferes with relationships.
Autistic phenotype can zone into a topic like no other.
It is a superpower.
Society and education, as a component of that, wants to throw lots of randomness at us.
At all people during childhood.
This is not us.
We hate it.
It prevents autistics from doing wonderful things.
You heard it on this podcast from Dr. Catherine Lorde.
The one and only Dr. Catherine Lorde.
If the child wants to stare at lines, stare at lines.
One, remember thinking in pictures.
Well, this is well understood with autism.
You cannot possibly understand what is occurring when a child is on one object or subject.
Maybe those lines are creating an incredible and interesting imagination.
Something others will never know or understand.
But maybe this will lead to engineering or creative arts.
Anyway, we will have an episode on B3.
In short, this interest is mostly more interesting and safer from the outside world.
Now, consider how this implicates making friends.
And implicates keeping friends at any ages.
This occurs to all ages.
Let's imagine how intense interests are most salient in our attention.
In other words, we don't want to attend to the environment.
Those criteria B2 and B3 are indirect impact to socialness.
In the first episode, I mentioned criteria B causes criteria A at minimum.
Criteria B accelerates or implicates criteria A.
I need a long time to attend to fixated interest.
Remember from the first episode, the reference to B movie.
Now, we will discuss direct social interactions.
Typically, autistics have low acceptance from others.
Lack of understanding, fitting in, a history of poor relationships, low self-esteem,
a pressure to fit in, anxiety, tantrums, lack of understanding or enduring social norms.
Can you fit in or not?
Are you like the so-called normal people or not?
The lack of understanding is crucial.
Others, at some point, others try to change the autistic person because they are different.
Do you think that helps or hurts?
Humans love to inject themselves into others.
Not interested, and this is especially true during childhood to adolescent.
Mainly, the child is surrounded by people that are so-called trained to help.
I've mentioned, I believe, I supplement relationships by having utilizing these thinking and pictures and curiosity of others.
I can see other people's lives in my thinking and pictures head.
Also, I can have many hypothetical conversations and imagination using this autistic trait.
That said, I and others, it doesn't mean we don't want relationships.
Mostly, it centers around being able to balance criteria A and criteria B.
Remember these things.
Social, emotional, reciprocity.
Difficulties with back and forth.
Starting and ending conversations.
Inability to know how much to share.
Poor verbal and nonverbal communication.
The pressures and complications with eye contact.
Society says we must.
We must use the eye contact.
Our biology says, hang on, this is a lot.
Remember, vision is roughly 70% of our sensory processing.
Also remember with socialness.
Autistics have a very strict adherence to rules. They're very rigid.
Also, the restricted behaviors implicate shared interest.
Meaning inflexible to want to do other things.
Rigid thinking. Remember my personal experience with breaking plastic toys, playing cops and robbers as a child.
When the other child changed the rules of the game.
Basically, changed the rules in real time without any notice to me.
This is a normal child thing during play. But it wasn't from me.
To the outside, one could say that is a barrier to a friendship. Acting out like that.
However, maybe not considered. More from the autistic's perspectives are.
One, why would we want to interact with that?
And two, it makes more sense to follow a strict or rigid set of rules during the interaction.
Two separate perspectives.
Now understand the autistic phenotypes perspective.
In scientific literature, or maybe you even recognize this, that two autistics can form better relationships.
It's easier because of the rule setting is what I think.
And remember the role of the prefrontal cortex, that flexible rule setting machine that governs our social interaction.
Remember the discussion about brain connectivity, not reaching these critical brain regions and networks.
Remember that about autism. It's not just because.
All of our behaviors are based on the social norm.
That's the comparison. Is the autistic person acting in adherence to social norms?
Let's discuss how different types of relationships require different amounts of time.
We've discussed problems in autism and employment.
Co-workers require a significant amount of time.
We briefly discussed romantic relationships in what is autism part two of criteria A.
Romantic relationships require the most time commitment.
Think about the challenges with that co-habitat, the daily activities, the amount of time here interacting.
It's very demanding. It's very complicated.
It's probably difficult for you to even consider or even try to understand.
Don't underestimate that background noise even, even if it's not direct interaction.
Just other people being around in the environment.
Think about that resting state of those fMRI studies about that brain activity being activated just during resting states.
And the sensory processing problems that is very demanding.
My biology kind of prevents me from having this type of relationship.
I am not equipped with this.
Temple Grandin, probably the most famous autistic person in the history of humanity, discusses this.
Discusses how she never married or had children.
In large part, my romantic relationships, the ones that I've had in the past,
they've all had a, or most of them have a distance barrier protecting me, if you will.
There was a distance between her and I.
And I believe this helped. This helped minimize that interaction.
As you increase time with another person, more challenges are potential.
There are more opportunities for just being exhausted, being torn down and worn down.
That's why we need breaks. We often just leave.
It's very tough for you, probably, to understand.
I can't underestimate the role in just how people do things and how we do things.
And how we think, well, it ought to be done that way because we've exhausted the process out
and we've discovered the one that makes most sense, that maybe even uses less energy
or requires a less, least amount of time.
Simple things like that is constant in our thinking.
And if you go back to autism and employment, this is a superpower.
Well, quite frankly, it's a superpower in all aspects of life.
But it really starts to interfere with those relationships that you do have.
And it's understandable.
And now we can even talk about B2, that insistence on sameness
and that needing those schedules, everything being the same, those routines.
All of this is connecting here.
So more of that autism and adaptive responses, remember that episode, and the oxytocin,
those roles with oxytocin with the pair bonding.
Something that has fascinated me, recently there's some information come out about
do people with autism kind of outgrow the autism.
And maybe this is true, but this is what I do know.
One, as we age and we learn more about ourselves, this helps.
But two, and I think something that carries more weight than the first one,
that first example is we can better control the environment.
Now, these two things, learning about ourselves and controlling the environment,
are kind of entangled, whereby we can better prepare and recognize,
just understand everything around, understand the environment.
Remember on previous episodes discussing social interactions,
well, I'll just say that I'll just leave, I'll just leave that social encounter
or the environment, and I've made jokes like the gathering will gather without me.
This is something that you come to terms with and accept.
However, a topic that's more challenging to accept,
something that is maybe even more important to me and is very challenging, is parenting.
So, what I don't think about when autistic people have children,
they become parents, and think about that interaction.
With everything that we've discussed, this is very challenging.
It can be very challenging because it's quite demanding.
It's a wrestling match, it's a tug of war between managing your sensory processing
just the biology that gives us autism, all of those crucial components, how we interact.
Versus wanting to be there, wanting to be active and being able to sustain that
for so-called normal durations.
This is a conundrum for me and maybe for others too.
But something that I want most in life, something that I want to be good in or good at in life,
is very hard at the same time.
And the level of intensity and degree of difficulty increases as the ages increase.
And there's a little bit more freedom and ability to just grow into themselves
while understanding both criteria A, the social communication and interaction,
and the criteria B, that restricted repetitive behaviors.
Younger autistics will have more, let's say, attention on them.
More adults trying to help them.
And this will kind of limit what they can do or who they are, I should say.
And it is true we already have this limited amount of ability to fit in.
And we've discussed the adaptive responses and how much that interferes with, or the lack of, adaptive responses.
And it interferes with our ability to socialize and switch behaviors depending on context.
Remember the Medeo-Prefrontal Cortex, kind of a context-dependent behavior region.
And another thing that kind of implicates this is that excitation inhibition balance, or imbalance,
because the excitation kind of is too much.
There's too much going on within that brain energy.
And that you want the surroundings to be calm.
That's why we prefer that.
This makes a lot of sense if you think about it this way.
The surrounding areas needs to be calm.
This isn't limited to autistic parents and their children.
This is all relationships and really all environments.
Husbands and wives, or live in, or roommates.
Things like that is very challenging.
Just that daily activities, keeping up with your activities, being able to make plans.
There's a lot of opportunities here to establish expectations.
Being able to predict.
Therefore, the autistic person can better approach and commit and sustain the social interaction.
Never underestimate the need for outs when we commit to something.
We need to know and predict what will happen and when will it end.
This is very comforting for autism.
Try to remember some of these things discussed today when you're interacting with someone with autism.
Don't make things worse just because they are different than you and different from others.
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You can contact me at info.fromthespectrum.com.
And thank you for listening too, from The Spectrum Podcast.