I’m thinking today about time, repetitious thoughts and Autism.

What if fixated thinking is the way our Autistic brains have rewired, as a workaround the gaps that Autism created? What if that rewiring resulted in unique mental capacities?

An #ActuallyAutistic THREAD:

CW: ABA

So, I was pondering today why changes in routine are so difficult for me, like not just emotionally, but mentally, I can’t seem to hold the change in my mind, especially changes in schedule.

Everyone always tells me to set reminders on various electronic devices, and I do, but when they go off, I’m inevitably taken aback every single time, like I completely forgot the appointment existed until that moment, and if the reminder is for the day before, I’ll forget again.

But, when the appointment is a repeating appointment at the same time every week, I seldom if ever forget it. Today, I realized why.

It isn’t because it is predictable... which actually was a surprise even to me. It isn’t because it’s easier to remember even, at least not in the traditional sense, I think.

The reason I never forget a fixed appointment (therapy for example)...

Is because I hold the time in my head all week, and I think about it again and again. I’m able to do this because I develop a cognitive routine of mental repetition, and I hold it in a constant loop, always.

Now again, this might sound strange, like, why can’t I likewise do that for a schedule change?

I was pondering today as I made my coffee, while I took the exact same steps I always take to make my coffee, that the same thoughts were going through my head as well, every day at the same time of day about me being ready for my weekly appointments at such a same time/place.

I realized in that moment, and it was like a lightning bolt realization, that I absolutely have to do this in order to remember anything. I HAVE to fixate on a thing in order to hold it in my mind. And that realization suddenly made so many things clearer about the way I think.

When I compare this to areas in my Autism testing, labeled “narrow” or “fixated” interests, I see the same pattern, but what I’m suddenly realizing is that so many people (and many Autism professionals) likely have a key causal relationship of “repetition in Autism” in reverse.

Repetition is not a thing that prevents us from living “normal” lives. Actually quite the opposite. We use repetition to fill in processing gaps. (I say “we” here because I believe I’m likely not alone in this, but I acknowledge this is my personal experience.) #ActuallyAutistic

This is critical, because (as so many of us who are Autistic have been screaming at the top of our lungs) this is yet another reason why ABA is not only problematic, but counter productive to helping Autistic individuals to thrive.

I’ve seen ABA first hand as an assistant teacher in a high support needs educational setting in which I was a one-on-one support for an Autistic high school student.

This student was constantly repeating phrases about pinball and Mario, and he was constantly being scolded for doing so. He was also constantly forgetting tasks he was assigned to complete, for which he was also constantly being scolded.

I look back on this experience with horror, because I was the person responsible for keeping this student “on track” with the ABA goals that basically constantly made him miserable. I ended this job by telling his parents to pull him from the program, and I ghosted my employer...

But it took me two years to get to that place of realization, and I still hate myself a bit for the times I was an extension of those ABA goals.

I thought I was helping. I was gentle, way more than they asked me to be. But I consistently did try to hold this student to “task.”

What I’m now realizing as I process my own Autism (which unsurprisingly I came to see with increased clarity the more I worked with Autistic students)... Is that the repetitive nature, which ABA seeks to remove from the Autistic mind, is actually the thing that makes us function!

I certainly have a gap in my ability to sense the passing of time, and to adapt to schedule changes especially. I am not sure what it would even look like or feel like to have a brain that could do those things.

What I have is a mind that can bore a hole in nearly any subject I set my sights on. I can learn a subject into the ground and knock tests out of the park... I have to be passionate to get hooked, admittedly, and this can be a challenge when I’m unable to find that hook, but...

What I’m trying to say is that this is how my mind WORKS. In other words, without this mental device, this intensely focused constant loop of repetition, my mind simply does NOT work.

The gears don’t turn at all. By way of analogy, unless the top is spinning, it is motionless.

The tragedy about ABA is it fails to see the repeating mind as the actual bridge for the Autistic mind to find and connect with the world... which (in my experience) is absolutely what it is.

We need to spin to function. That is how we move forward. That is how we move at all.

Instead of grasping how Autistic minds work, in loops of ever deepening comprehension, our high need to repeat is pathologized and targeted for removal. This can only lead to the dismantling of an Autistics ability to process information, and maybe even think or communicate.

I yearn for the day when who we are as Autistics will FULLY be accepted.

The first step in that process is understanding how our own minds work. The second step is helping the world understand and accept how we function best.

We are not wrong, we are just Neurodivergent!

We come up against the same challenges in life that our Neurotypical peers face, we simply mentally conceive of and solve those challenges in perhaps a completely unique way, because of what our cognitive processes look like.

What would be most helpful to us, is simply being allowed to think the way we think, problem solve the way we problem solve, and never be shamed for being who we are.

The End/

And...PS: For the love of all that is Neurodivergent, please don’t change plans on Autistic people!