Aspies For Freedom

I just wanted to throw out this idea.

(Background:  When I first read the DSM criteria B (2) --  "apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals"  my immediate reaction was the angry question: Nonfunctional according to whom?  Because I have LOTS and LOTS of routines, but I argue that they are quite functional.)

So here is the idea:  every routine that I have is an automization of a task that I do not want or need to devote brain space to, so I automate it, which frees up my brain for THINKING ABOUT IMPORTANT THINGS!!  Duh!  

Why shouldn't I have an inflexible routine for washing dishes, or taking a shower, or buying groceries, or whatever, because then I can THINK.  My favorite thing to do.  THINK.  I really think that neurotypicals do not get this.

No duh that the actual automatic pilot concept was thought up by Temple Grandin's grandfather!

Neurotypicals are generally a lot more cognitively "multitracked" than AS (for one thing, better multitaskers), so they don't really need an automated routine for things to allow space to think--they can perform tasks as they come and still have adequate space to think about stuff besides the task at hand.

I thought that part of the criteria meant aspies are infelexible to their routines and if they can't follow it, they get upset or they get anxious, get tensed, etc. That's what I was told anyway. I met it but do sometimes now. I have gotten better to be more flexible. Now I slip on and off that part.

To likedcalico:  I think Aspies are supposed to LIKE their routines, whereas OCDers are distressed by them.  It's complicated.  A compulsion is unpleasant, but my routines are not unpleasant.  

To Batman:  Your description of NTs sounds like magic!  I can't even comprehend what you're saying, aside from understanding the meaning of each word.  I read a book Alone Together written by an NT, and she describes her Aspie husband as having about fifty thoughts, all somehow connected, in the space of time that she has five.  How does she know this?  Just observation and talking to him, I guess.  I do know that thoughts fly through my head and if I had to insert boring routinized thoughts in, it would ruin everything.  As the saying goes, "I love my autistic mind."

To Ellen:  I've probably read this in several sources (given Temple's prolific nature) but I found a quote in the new edition of Thinking in Pictures on page 205:
"My grandfather on my mother's side was a brilliant, shy engineer who invented the automatic pilot for airplanes.  For over forty years his invention kept every airplane on course.  He worked toward developing this compass in a loft over a streetcar maintenance building, patiently pursuing his theories even though the scientists at all the big aviation companies thought he was wrong."

Routines can be highly efficient!  I guess the problem is when you are traumatized by having to break them (as life does require people to change plans on occasion).

I always take my shower in the same way. Shave my arm pits first, then wash hair, then shave my pubic hair, then my legs. But I am not rigid on what side I shave first.

RE: the bolded print:  are you saying that NTs utilize boring routinized thoughts?  I'm not quite sure what you mean, here.

Oh wow - me too! I love just knowing where everything is so that I don't have to turn on the lights. Very useful when having to get up for early shifts, feeding babies etc.

As for the routines; I have become more flexible as I have got older. Ask my mother what I was like as a child, though, and I'm sure she'll tell you that I was extremely rigid in my scheduling. When the world was desperately unpredictable because I had no way of understanding the non-verbal clues that the people around me were using (apparently - I have to take their word for it that they were using them! ) it was vital to my sanity to have rituals and set timetables.

As someone who probably had really bad OCD when I was younger (but wasn't diagnosed or anything, but it's an exact fit for the sort of things I did), that's exactly the difference, except that it's not as much that I enjoy routines that are related to being autistic, as that they are not unpleasant.

An example of fairly classic OCD ritual I had when I was younger was about stepping on lines on the pavement.  I first had a compulsion not to step on them.  Then I had a compulsion to step on them.  Then I had a compulsion to step as evenly as possible whether I stepped on one or not (but was constantly fretting about whether it was really even or not).

Those rituals were fueled by terror of getting them wrong, and they exhausted me.  Compulsions feel like someone is forcing you to do them, even though it's just your own brain forcing you.  And they feel like the entire world will end if you don't do them, and if you do manage to do them wrong you panic, not because of any functional effects on your life but because as far as you're concerned you've just broken some very important law or something, or even worse than breaking the law, and you think horrible things will happen.

On the other hand, as an autistic person, routines and rituals are functional to me.  The person who wrote the criteria of "non-functional" did not understand the many reasons for autistic routines and rituals and the fact that they do serve a purpose for us.  "Non-functional" is a judgment from the outside, it has nothing to do with our internal experiences.

And my internal experience of my autism-related routines and rituals is that they serve the function of decreasing the amount of work I have to put into things.  This can be because of the amount of perceptual effort involved in looking at everything in a new situation and being bombarded with new information and such until I shut down, thus making it easier to do things the same or similar ways every time.  

It can also be because I have trouble with movement (in ways that, if not autism-related directly, are at the very least more common in autistic people) and have to get an entire routine into motor memory, which takes a long time, or else be unable to do it.  One example is my last apartment.  It took me the five years I lived there to get to the point of being able to walk around it properly, and that was by sort of wearing a "groove" mentally into a certain path around the apartment, by walking it over and over again.  Then the only effort I had to put in was to walk off of the path and towards what I wanted at the right time.  It would look non-functional to walk in circles, from the outside, but I walked in circles because it was the way I'd trained my body to walk in that apartment.  It would have been more non-functional for me not to walk at all.

I didn't exactly enjoy walking in circles, any more than most people consciously enjoy how they walk, but it was a functional way to get from Point A to Point B for me, and it was not like a compulsion at all.

Also (grr we need an edit button) about having everything so same you don't have to turn off the lights, my mom used to rearrange the furniture all the time and my dad and I (he's autistic too) would often bash right into it.  Interesting that blind people, who also prefer things to stay in one place, are not considered rigid for it, it's considered to be a normal adaptation.

Does anyone else have a need for things to stay the same, but is unable to implement it?  For example, I get less functional the more messy my house is, but don't possess the capacity to keep it clean (and that capacity diminishes the more messy it is).

Re: the bolded print:  yes I am very much like that.  I can only tolerate a certain amount of stuff thrown around all over the place, before it starts to bother me.  When I finally do get around to putting stuff in the right place, it feels like a sensory "weight" has been lifted off me, or something to that effect--I *like* that order has been restored, it feels good to me.

Anbeund, I think you mentioned before that you "cannot" clean a floor or you have extreme difficulty doing so.  I was wondering if the reason you have difficulty with these things is along the same lines as mine:  do you find that you cannot do it, if it can't be done "exactly right"?  And that to do it "exactly right" would take too much energy, so then you're inclined to not even try at all?

I've read some people on the autistic spectrum have this problem of needing things "just right, or not at all" and I think I have this problem almost in the extreme.

Has anyone else read the book Cheaper by the Dozen?  This was a major favorite childhood book, and I remember very clearly how the dad wanted each kid to shower in exactly the same way every day to maximize efficiency.  He was an efficiency expert, but now I'm wondering if it was more than that!  And yes, me too, same exact procedure there, though (sadly?) not every day like you cleaner-than-me ladies!

Anbuend wrote: The person who wrote the criteria of "non-functional" did not understand the many reasons for autistic routines and rituals and the fact that they do serve a purpose for us.  "Non-functional" is a judgment from the outside, it has nothing to do with our internal experiences.

EXACTLY my thoughts.  So very many of the "criteria" seem to have at least some element of this.  If they would just ASK us maybe they could get a clue.  But they are too busy speaking for us.

Yes indeed.

Wow, I used to do this A LOT as a child. It was kind of my salvation and escape from a world which I didn't understand, which made no sense and in which I not only had no true friends but was also bullied and abused daily.

I talied off as I entered my early 20s - mainly due to medication.
It has started up again recently (especially now that I have stopped taking a particular medication that made me very ill) and I realise now that I had underestimated how important it is for me to have this device as an escape. Going into my own world is what keeps me (just about) sane!

I remember this film. I really liked it - it had a kind of charm about it.

I agree with this too. "Nonfunctional" is simply a judgement imposed by people who don't understand and who think they are in a position to decide what is 'functional' and what is not.

I just wanted to thank everyone for the replies.  I really think we need to define ourselves, by deconstructing how "they" have defined us.  This is just one step in that direction.  NTs have been studying autistics for decades, and they have made some valid observations, but I think the interpretations are skewed by their lack of insight.  It is up to us to explain the phenomena they have discovered, I think, and we will all benefit.