Anxiety

If you're a regular reader, or if you've read some of my older posts, chances are you'll know that alexithymia is one of the autism-related conditions I've got, which basically means I have difficulty expressing my own emotions in words, and sometimes even understanding them at all. So with that in mind it's hardly surprising that I'm only now starting to realise that I suffer more with anxiety than I ever thought I did. It's funny how things like this can be there and affect you without you even realising it. I can only remember a couple of times where I've noticed the classic symptoms of anxiety such as nausea, sweating palms and so on.

I've never been the most confident of people but I think there's much more to it than that. I'm always doubting myself, wondering if I'm doing the right thing, wonder if I/what I'm doing is good enough etc. For example, most of the time when I hit the Publish button on a new post I immediately wonder to myself if I've just written a load of crap. Someone on Twitter a while ago once said something that resonated with me quite a bit. They said that perfectionism isn't good because it's often driven by anxiety. I consider myself a perfectionist and I never thought of it like that before. One of my old jobs was preparing route packs for a distribution company and my my supervisor once praised me on how immaculate they are, but said I'm making them too perfect and spending too much time on it when I should be getting each one done as quickly as possible. This is most likely driven by anxiety that I want to do the best job I can because I don't want to get in trouble so I make it as perfect as I can, but that takes more time than they like. I ended up being made redundant from that job but my perfectionism isn't something I've ever been able to change. I'm very rigid in that sense, which is a classic autism trait. When I do something I has to be perfect, and more importantly it has to be right.

As far as I can remember I've always been one to look quite negatively on myself as well as things that could happen. If there's something that I can see a potential negative outcome for I usually spend a lot of time thinking "what if" although I like to think I'm also good at balancing out the positives and negatives and looking at the probability of each outcome. Whenever I get a notification for something on my phone, if the notification shows the first few words of the message I usually have a feeling of dread as though someone is definitely going to have a go at me, or give me some bad news or something. Somehow that doesn't tend to happen if it doesn't show the start of the message in the notification, and of course my feeling of dread is always wrong. There was one time recently where I'd done something wrong that annoyed my wife, and I spent a while thinking I'm a moron and what if she hates me and all those kind of things. This is when the logical thinking kicks in - sometimes on its own, sometimes deliberately. I start thinking that she's human and that she's an emotional and anxious person herself, and she'll calm down eventually, and whatever I did definitely doesn't warrant a divorce. I know she reads my blog so I just want to quickly clarify that I've never thought she was going to divorce me, but just using that as a worst case scenario that I can rule out to reassure myself.

When I first asked my GP back in 2017 to refer me for a second opinion on an autism diagnosis she refused and gave me the details for a self-referral mental health service that I then contacted, and they concluded that I had social anxiety. While I don't deny that I'm very socially anxious the help they gave me was a waste of time mainly because autism still wasn't addressed as the underlying cause of it. You may be wondering what difference it makes as autism isn't something to be treated or cured, but to a certain extent a diagnosis of autism can make a world of difference because it can be very validating and gives a much simpler way of explaining how you are to other people: "I'm autistic." Not that it solves anxiety - social or otherwise - but it certainly helps in my experience. They booked me in for CBT therapy and after a couple of months I realised it wasn't working and stopped. Shortly after that I went back and saw a different GP who then gave me the referral that lead to my diagnosis.

At the moment I'm fine with my anxieties because they don't cause much of an issue, but who knows - after lockdown is over my situation will most likely change so I may need to revisit CBT or a similar therapy depending on how things go. At the time of writing my employer are expecting me and the rest of my home working team to return to the office after lockdown (I've worked from home for a couple of years and we were supposed to return to the office in early April until the pandemic happend). At lot of people have come and gone in the office since I started working from home, so it'll be like going into a completely new environment when we eventually do go back. With that said, my son will be starting school in September which might give me more downtime to decompress and process things, so we'll have to see how it goes.

So there you have it. It's definitely possible to have anxiety without realising it, and I think it's safe to say that goes for almost any mental health issue as well. I'm still unpacking my anxieties bit by bit, but I hope what I've unpacked so far has been insightful and interesting. Please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Silhouette of a person on a chair, hunched over slightly holding their head. There are bubbles showing thoughts entering their head including "Don't," "Can't," and "What if..." Under the silhouette is the word "Autism" in rainbow colours and "Anxiety" in black under that.]

My Stims

I wrote a post a while ago about why I enjoy chewing. At the time that was my main stim. I do still chew my Chewigem button necklace, but my stims have evolved and changed since then. Either that or I'm just more aware of the things I do these days - maybe a bit of both. Because of that and because almost anything can be a stim I thought I'd go through a few more of the stims that I do.

Just as a reminder, stimming is short for self-stimulatory behaviour and the definition is a repetitive behaviour that appears to have no reason or purpose, although it helps autistics to regulate and ground themselves when they're overwhelmed or emotional.

Finger Stim (No idea what to actually call it!)
One of my more common stims that I've been doing for a while is running my thumb along the inside of my fingers on my right hand. I tend to do that when I'm talking to somebody as I'm often anxious during conversation. It's not usually something that I do consciously (which is the same for most of my stims) but I do notice myself doing it, and I think it's because it's quite a subtle thing to do, especially if I can put my hands in my pocket or something. I find that a lot of my stims are either subtle or "socially acceptable" which helps to avoid detection and awkward comments and so on. I also do it sometimes when I'm concentrating - in fact, I'm doing it now while I write this post. I tried to make gifs of my stims to demonstrate but I couldn't get it to work, so I'll just post a picture of each to help give you an idea. (Let me also apologise for my onesie and messy hair in the pictures. It was a busy day with the kids in self isolation, so I didn't get the chance to have a shower and get dressed until later on!)

[Image description: My hand during the above stim. In the image my fingers are held together and my thumb is reaching down to my little finger. While doing this stim I rub my thumb nail up along my fingers, past my index finger and back down again repeatedly.]

Flapping

It's only recently that I actually realised I'm a hand flapper. Turns out I've been doing it subconsciously for ages, but because the way I do it down by my side and with just 1 hand is very subtle compared to the traditional autistic hand flap it seems to have slipped under even my own radar. It wasn't until just a few days ago when I was tidying up in the kids' play room that I noticed myself doing it. Something else I learned not long ago about flapping is that there are actually different kinds of flap. Obviously there's my own subtle versions like this, and the classic flap where you hold your hands in front of you and flap them up and down with your arms. But it's also classed as flapping if you do it with just a wrist flicking motion similar to how you would shake water off your hands after washing them. It sounds obviously, but I guess it's just one of those things that you don't always register. It wasn't until I realised a flicking motion is also flapping that I realised what I do is flapping. I guess it shows what a difference subtlety can make.

[Image description: My hand down by my side while flapping.]

Leg Swaying/Jigging

This is probably the ultimate in subtle stims because even though it's often noticeable (I used to get told off for doing it by the girl I sat next to at one of my old jobs), it's something that almost everyone does at some point so it doesn't get questioned. I haven't posted a picture because all it's going to show is my leg, but while sitting with my foot on the ground I will either jig my leg up and down or sway it from side to side. I think I do both about equally. It's jigging up and down that I got told off for because we worked upstairs on quite a wobbly wooden floor.

Rocking

This is a classic autistic stim. Typically it's done when sat down and by rocking your upper body either forwards and backwards or from side to side. I also do a standing up variation, usually while I'm waiting in a queue for example, where I shift my balance from one leg to the other and back again to rock myself from side to side. Other than that, the times I've found myself rocking most were when my son was a baby and I used to do the night feeds. I was half asleep and I never used to realise I was rocking until my wife told me to stop it. It was probably just a thing my body did to try to keep me awake long enough to get through the feed until I could go back to sleep. I've also found myself rocking while sat with my kids reading stories or playing with Lego etc. Again, no point posting a picture because it's self explanatory and wouldn't show much.

Bouncing

The last one I'm going to mention is bouncing on my toes, which comes from when my kids were babies. I used to do it while holding them to bounce them to sleep or just settle them down and it's just carried on from there. I only do it at home and it's when I'm waiting for something like my tea to brew. When I'm bouncing I tend to wander around as well in bouncy steps. I try to keep some sort of rhythm to it but I think I usually fail, but it keeps me occupied.

[Image description: Me bouncing on my toes around my dining room. One foot is completely off the ground while the other has just the heel off the ground. I keep my heels in the air the whole time I'm bouncing.]

These are just a few examples. This list is by no means exhaustive for either me or autistics in general and it's always best to remember that everybody stims in one way or another. It's just that autistics usually stim differently, whether that's more noticeably, more often and so on. Don't forget to please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

Autism Myths

When thinking of autism most people will conjure up images of some sort of stereotype, quite often in the form of either Sheldon Cooper or Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man. While some autistics may have certain qualities and/or "super powers" reminiscent of these stereotypes, autistics are much more than just the visible traits seen in the media.

Fellow autism advocate Christa Holmans (Neurodivergent Rebel on YouTube) did a short series of "You can't be autistic because..." videos on her channel that addressed some myths around what people think autism is/isn't. Just because I think she's bloody brilliant I'm going to use one of the myths that she busted as an example for this post. In one particular video she addressed the myth that "You can't be autistic because you have empathy." While some autistics do lack empathy (I do struggle with empathy unless it relates to someone I know and/or care about) the majority of us find that we either have too much empathy, or we just don't know how to show it even though we're feeling empathy. These could result in any number of outward responses depending on the person. Some may be overwhelmed by their empathy, some may not show any outwards signs because they don't know how to, and for others like me it varies depending on the person or situation. For me, even if I do feel a lot of empathy I don't really know what to do with it. If it's my wife who's feeling upset for example, I'll cuddle her and try to talk to her even though I don't know what to say. I don't think I'm empathetic to most people, and overall I'm more empathetic towards animals than people.

Judging by my dad's reaction to me getting assessed for autism I think the reason he's not convinced is because all he can see is the stereotype that we're all severely handicapped and dependent on full time care. Our needs are many and varied, and each person's needs are different from each other. In my case, I've been holding down a full time job for 9 years until recent weeks (I'm still working but had to go part time due to unrelated circumstances), I'm happily married, I'm a dad of 2, I drive, I do a lot of other things that a stereotypical view of autism wouldn't allow. I'm hardly handicapped. And while I admittedly think I'd struggle to live fully independently I'm independent enough to do all of the things above. There are definitely things I struggle with such as dealing with finances and remembering self-care aspects if my routine has been disturbed but I'm far, far from the image that my dad has of autism.

There are misconceptions that we all have "super powers" in the vein of Rain Man who is able to instantly count the number of toothpicks being dropped. Some people do have intense skills not usually seen in neurotypicals, but not all of us do. I remember seeing something online a few years ago about an autistic artist who accurately drew the New York skyline purely from memory. In contrast I've got no intense skills that I know of, just a determined mindset when I'm trying to do something that sees me putting more effort in to achieve an outcome than neurotypicals would. When I used to go to the gym a lot in my early 20's my personal trainer told me I was one of the hardest workers in the entire gym. At work my team leader has got me involved in a project analysing the team stats because I like analysing figures and if I'm stuck I'll either keep working at it or ask for help from someone who knows what they're doing. It's this determination that gets me to where I want to be. In fairness, people with extreme skills might rely on determination like this a lot more than it seems from an outside perspective, but it could be a mix of society's view of autism as well as unseen internal effort that makes it look more natural and easy than it is.

People often don't consider that if somebody doesn't show any physical signs of disability it doesn't mean they're not disabled. Disabilities can also be mental/emotional, and regardless of whether it's physical or mental, a lot of disabilities can fluctuate meaning some days they're bad and some days they're not. Autism is referred to as the invisible disability for a reason and is legally considered a disability in the UK, although some autistics might not consider themselves disabled depending on how much it affects them in daily life. Things like sunflower lanyards are great for highlighting when somebody might have hidden struggles or need extra support while in a public space. In fact, I was recently on holiday at Butlins with the wife and kids, and when we were in the club one night for one of the shows there was a young boy at the table next to us with a sunflower lanyard. I did wonder if he was autistic but there are lots of other possibilities that it could be. Either way, I don't like to ask people if they're autistic - I let them approach me about it when they notice my "This is what autism looks like" hoodie, which has happened a couple of times recently.

These are just a few examples of the myths and stereotypes that surround autism, although there are many more. If this post has been interesting and you'd like to see more please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Question marks on a white background. The middle one is the biggest and is in rainbow colours to represent autism. The others are black, various sizes and scattered around the image. At the bottom of the image is the word "Autism" in rainbow colours and "Myths" directly under it in black.]

Survey Results

Thanks to all who took part in my autism survey during World Autism Awareness Week! There were 21 responses to it, which isn't as many as I'd hoped for but the results were interesting and I'm pleased to report them here in this post for you. Just as a reminder, these were the questions:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Are you/anyone you know autistic?
4. If yes, who?
5. What is your understanding of autism?
6. Is autism a disability?
7. Which of these terms are you familiar with? (there were several options including stimming, meltdown, alexithymia etc.)
8. Is there anything that you think autistic people can't do?
9. Is there anything that you think autistic please can do better than others?
10. What autism stereotypes are you aware of?

One of the most interesting things I've noticed from it is that all but 1 answered yes to being/knowing someone who is autistic. The first thing that this implied to me is that people don't seem to care or have any interest in autism unless they're either autistic themselves or have some involvement with autistic people such as family members, school pupils and so on. This is what we need to work on because if the general population aren't interested in autism they're going to know nothing about it other than maybe the common myths and misconceptions. In turn, if society doesn't know anything about autism it doesn't bode well for autism acceptance and creates an environment where autistics have to mask too much, suppress their stims and continue to live in a social environment that's very exclusive of us. Needless to say, that's what I and many others are working to change with blogs, vlogs, conferences, activism and everything else we do.

Age-wise, a third of the people surveyed are 18-25, another third are 30-50, and the other third (other than 1 participant) were under 18. Nobody over 50 took the survey. There were a couple of interesting points that the age of the participants showed me. Firstly, the lack of 25-30 year-olds which I don't understand what it means (if it means anything at all), but it's just interesting because it was unexpected. The other thing that's interesting is that there were no over 50's and there were more under 18's than I expected. I like to think that's an indication that times are changing, and despite the last paragraph it's showing that we are moving in the right direction - or at least beginning to. Speaking of things moving in the right direction, most of the participants answered that they're female. That could be an indication that autism in women is starting to be more recognised and understood, whereas previously it was thought to be an almost exclusively male condition.

Out of the people who answered yes to either themselves or somebody they know being autistic, 62% said it was themselves. 29% (including some of the 62%) said it was members of their family, which shows that there is definitely a genetic and probably a hereditary element to autism as I expected. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the others had autistic family members without realising it, just like I wouldn't be surprised if either or both of my parents are autistic. Some of the other answers include friends, neighbours and children they work with.

For the question asking what their understanding of autism is the answers were pretty much spot on with reality, which is to be expected given that most of the participants are autistic themselves. I was hoping for more non-autistic responses to give a more rounded picture of how society sees autism, but I am pleased that those who did take part have a good understanding of it as it can be difficult even for us autistics to understand. Most of the answers centered around it being a difference or a condition rather than a disability. It absolutely can be a disability, but everyone is different so not necessarily. The answer that stood out to me was that it's a condition that results in slowed learning but doesn't make the person any different. It's not a wrong answer, but because it's a broad spectrum there is more to it than our learning necessarily being slowed. Some might be unusually quick learners (a former team leader of mine at work used so compare me to a sponge because I take everything in), some might be slow, some might just be affected by any comorbid conditions they have, or any number of other factors. There are a couple of answers that used different wordings than I would have used and some that referred to stereotypes but nothing that was inaccurate because most stereotypes have at least some autistic people that relate to them.

For the next question "Is autism a disability?" a strong 62% answered yes, which is interesting because it's certainly classed as a disability by legal definition here in the UK, and is commonly referred to as the invisible disability. With that said, I personally both agree and disagree with it being a disability. My view of it is that autism in itself isn't a disability, but it can certainly cause disabilities based on the varied ways that it affects each individual. More people said they don't know if it's a disability than those saying no, which I'm surprised at as I thought it would mostly be a black and white yes/no scenario.

Where I asked what autism-related terms people are familiar with it was a pretty well rounded response with nothing getting less than 76% - that is with the exception of alexithymia at just 52%. I expected it to have one of the lowest percentages because it's only in the last year or 2 that I myself discovered that alexithymia. If I'm honest, that discovery was probably the biggest "ah-ha!" moment for me but I've already done a post about that a while ago if you want to read more. Meltdown scored 100% which isn't surprising. I would have expected neurodiversity to not score as high as it did (95%) if it wasn't for the participants being mostly autistic themselves.

The next question was whether there's anything that the participants believe autistic people can't do. The answers were pleasantly similar here to the understanding of autism question in that they're pretty realistic and positive. There was a solid understanding that every autistic is individual with their own set of skills, strengths and weaknesses so there's nothing that just the fact that they're autistic means they can't do. Again, there were some stereotypes but I think for the most part these are based on issues that the particular person faces rather than autistics as a whole.

It was the same kind of response for the question about things that autistic people can do better than others - mostly realistic, positive and that it varies from person to person. What I like about the answers to this question though is how much it portrays autism as a strength. There were things like becoming experts/specialists in their special interests, strong sense of logic, and a few other things that I'm not sure whether to class as stereotypes or just extremely common traits that a lot of us share such as being direct and to the point. But overall they do agree that it's different for each person and that whatever each person's traits are it doesn't make them defective or broken.

The final question asked what stereotypes the participants are aware of. The biggest thing I noticed from this was an extension of a stereotype I was already aware of, which is that autism only affects white males and mostly children. What I didn't know was this this stereotype also extends to sexual preferences and gender identities. Apparently the stereotype is that those white males also have to be straight and cisgender. Of course in reality autistic people are as diverse as everyone else in race, skin colour, gender, sexuality, age and everything else. The other most common answers are that we're stereotypically rude, selfish, good at maths and bad at empathy. We're not rude, selfish, badly behaved or any of that. Well, some of us can be but just in the same way that some neurotypicals can be rude, selfish and badly behaved while others aren't. That's not an autistic thing but we're landed with the stereotype anyway. My understanding was that we're meant to be good at computing and science rather than good at maths but I suppose there's links between maths and science. Empathy is another big one. Some autistics aren't good at empathy (myself included), whereas others have lots and lots of empathy but their either considered weird when they show it or they just may not know how to show it.

So that's a brief analysis of the survey results. Thanks again to everyone who took part! Although there was a distinct lack of non-autistic input which wouldn't have been the case had my original plan gone ahead (bloody Coronavirus!), I'm pleased that the answers I did get showed a good understanding of autism. If this has been as interesting for you as it has for me please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

Skill Tree

I was watching a YouTube video earlier today about how to explain autism to people who don't understand it. While watching that I had my own idea of an analogy that could help explain autism to people, so I wanted to post it here and see what people think. One of my biggest self care activities is playing video games, and I'm a fan of video games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Assassin's Creed where you build up your character by earning skill points that can be exchanged for skill from a skill tree. Obviously you'll be stronger and have more abilities and tactics at your disposal with each skill that you unlock, but each given one tends to be optional.

So I came up that this skill tree analogy, where we imagine life as the game that we're playing with a largely neurotypical society being the setting for the game's events. There's an image near the bottom of this post to help explain the analogy, but in this scenario neurotypicals naturally have most - if not all - of the skills shown in the skill tree image. Conversely, autistics tend to naturally grasp few - if any - of these skills although it's not unheard of for autistics to study, learn and achieve some of the skills. If we look at the example image, we can take the example of small talk that neurotypicals tend to naturally be good at and comfortable with. I on the other hand, can't do small talk to save my life. I myself have never taken the time to do some people-watching to study social interactions and try to learn how they work, but there are certainly other autistics who have, and had success with it to the point of being able to effectively "fake" small talk. With that said, how comfortable they may or may not be at the time is a completely different issue.

Empathy is also something that autistics stereotypically struggle with. The reality is that yes, some autistics (myself included) do absolutely struggle to feel empathy, although many other autistics do feel empathy but either express it differently or don't know how to express it at all. Sometimes, an autistic person can feel so much empathy for a person that it overwhelms them and the outwardly become what neurotypicals would deem to be overly emotional. I've never been one to feel or express a lot of empathy in face to face situations, although my empathy has really improved at work where I deal with customers over webchat instead, so the only contact I have with other humans is through a computer screen via instant message. Even then, it took a long time and a lot of work for me to learn when I should show empathy and what I should do to show it properly. If I'm completely honest the empathy is entirely fake, but it's the way that it comes across that's important in a job like mine, rather than whether you mean it.

This will make sense to fellow gamers like myself, but I hope I've explained it well enough for non-gamers to understand as well. Obviously everybody is different whether neurotypical or neurodivergent so each neurotype could have any combination of skills and abilities, but as a generalisation, neurotypicals will have many more of these skills than autistics. It's also worth pointing out that the skills shown in this skill tree image I made are by no means exhaustive as I made it purely for the purposes of example and demonstration.

Let me know what you think of this analogy. As far as I'm aware it's completely original and I hope it proves to be a helpful way to explain how autism works to people. Please remember to click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

Theory Of Mind

I thought I'd do something a bit different this week. Every now and then when I'm catching up on the autism conversation I hear about theory of mind. It's something I've looked into before but only very briefly so I'm not really sure what it is. What I thought I'd do for this post then is research what theory of mind is and report my findings here. Please feel free to sound off on whether I've got it right in the comments or on social media.

So here we go... Theory of mind is basically how you understand and anticipate other people's reactions and behaviours. Despite being called theory of mind it's not so much a theory in the sense of a wider known philosophy, instead it's your own theory about the way other people's minds work and their mental state. So for example, if you give somebody some news you'll usually try to predict how they'll react. That's your theory of how their mind is regardless of whether your prediction is right or wrong

Theory of mind wasn't something that was discovered until people started researching autism. Although it's not exclusively an autistic trait (it can be seen in all neurotypes) it seems to be most prevalent in autistics. A child's theory of mind starts to develop around the age of 4 or 5, which would explain why my nearly-3-year-old doesn't seem to grasp that things affect other people quite as much as her 4 year-old brother does. If you're good at putting yourself in other people's shoes that would indicate that you've got a good theory of mind, whereas if you struggle to understand other people's points of view that would indicate that you've got a poor/lack of theory of mind.

So long story short, theory of mind is really the understanding that other people have different thoughts, different feelings and different experiences than you. It sounds like something very simple that anybody should be able to grasp, but in reality it's not that easy for people like me. I remember one point in my teens not long after I left school a friend was talking to me about his complicated love life while we were hanging out one day. I was quite happily listening to him when he mentioned that he doesn't think I understand what he's talking about. I 100% understood the events that he was explaining to me, but I think what he was getting at is the emotional side of it and what affect things had on him. I had completely missed that whole part of what he was telling me because he didn't specifically say it with words, which would definitely be explained as a lack of theory of mind now that I know a bit more about it. In this way theory of mind has also been liked to empathy, and everyone knows the stereotype that autistic people don't have empathy at all. If we go back to purely theory of mind in itself though, there have always been little hints in my personality that my theory of mind isn't very good. I've always struggled to understand how some people don't like wrestling or don't like Nightwish (my favourite band of about 10 years or more). When I'm upset or angry I also seem to automatically think that people will know why even if they've had no involvement in the situation. This isn't helped by my alexithymia meaning I struggle to put words to my emotions.

There is a common theory of mind test that psychologists use on children when assessing for autism. It's called the Sally Anne test and consists of showing the child 2 dolls (called Sally and Anne, hence the name). One doll has a basket and the other has a box. The assessors will then put a marble in Sally's basket, Sally will go away for a bit, and Anne will take the marble and put it in her box. When Sally comes back the assessors ask the child where Sally will look first for the marble. The idea being that children with a good theory of mind will understand that Sally hasn't seen the marble being moved so she'll look straight in the basket where she first saw it. Those with poor theory of mind tend to believe that because they know the marble has been moved it means everybody including Sally knows that the marble has been moved, and they will usually say she'll look in the box because that's where it actually is. I wasn't given the Sally Anne test during my diagnostic assessment, but now that I know about it I'm starting to understand more about certain parts of my assessment and why the assessors did certain things.

For me, learning about theory of mind is one of those light bulb moments when you look back at yourself and think "That's me!" The same kind of moment happened when I learned that alexithymia is a thing, and I hope that by doing posts like this it helps other autistics understand themselves better, as well as helping neurotypicals understand us better. If you've enjoyed this post please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Black silhouette of a male head on a white background with rainbow-coloured cogs in the brain area. At the bottom of the image is "Autism" in rainbow colours and "Theory of Mind" in black.]

Autism Advocacy

It's World Autism Awareness Week so I thought it would be an ideal time to discuss what autism advocacy means to me and why I do it.

I started this blog just over a year ago in the run up to last year's World Autism Awareness Week partly because I wanted to raise money by doing a 10 mile walk with the blog being a way to spread the word of what I was doing, and also to raise autism awareness in general. After I did the walk I carried on blogging once a week because with my busy schedule of work and parenting it's all I've got time to do in terms of advocacy. I wanted to make sure I was at least doing something.

So what is autism advocacy? It's a way for people (usually autistics themselves) to actively engage in the conversation around autism as a condition and to ultimately aid society's understanding and acceptance of us as people. I sometimes see debates online where people argue that we need to focus on autism acceptance rather than autism awareness, and therefore they disagree with things like World Autism Awareness Week. While I do agree that acceptance is the ultimate goal, I also think they go hand in hand. In my opinion, to achieve autism acceptance people need to understand autism, and the way to understand autism is by advocates such as myself explaining it - i.e. raising autism awareness. Autism awareness is about more than just letting people know that autism exists. I don't believe that you can have one without the other, so for that reason I think World Autism Awareness Week is a great thing despite the fact that in an ideal world we shouldn't need to dedicate a specific day or week to it, it should just be the norm. But obviously not much in this world is ideal.

I do wish I could do more for the cause, but my hours at work will be changing very soon so maybe that'll give me a bit more time to dedicate to advocacy in the future. World Autism Awareness Week is 30th March to 5th April.

For now though, I'll just remind you to please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: The word "Autism" in rainbow colours on a white background. Directly underneath it are the words "Awareness", "Accessibility" and "Acceptance", all in smaller black text. Towards the bottom of the image are the hashtags #ActuallyAutistic and #Asking Autistics. This is the image used on my Instagram to promote this post.]

Echolalia

Echolalia is a common trait among autistics, and is simply the act of repeating words or phrases that other people have said. Very similar to this is palilalia, which is repeating your own words or phrases rather than those of others. For the purposes of this post, because echolalia and palilalia are almost exactly the same thing (both repeating words of phrases in a manner that might seem meaningless from an outside perspective) I'll refer to them both as echolalia, but of course please do be aware that the two different forms exist.

When I first discovered what echolalia is a couple of years ago it rang some major bells as it's something that I vividly remember doing as a child, and to an extent I still do it now. I remember when I was young (around primary school age although I'm not sure exactly) my mum's friend who used to cut our hair was at our house with her 2 kids, the oldest of which is the same age as me. I can't remember what I was talking to the 2 brothers about, but the oldest one noticed that I was repeating myself under my breath and commented on it. I think he had probably noticed it a few times before as well because from what I remember it's something that I used to do quite a bit. I'm not sure why but I took the fact that he'd commented on it as meaning it was something I shouldn't be doing, so I started repeating myself entirely in my head instead. Looking back, I'm not sure if there had been some sort of negative reaction to it before that. It's just making me wonder because a) why would I instantly take his comment as a negative thing when there was really nothing negative about it, and b) if I was going to repeat myself why would I only do it under my breath instead of out loud?

Anyhow, as well as repeating things I've said, I also repeat things from other people - also mainly in my head although I have been known to do it verbally when I was younger. What I've noticed about this though, is that it doesn't seem to happen in normal, everyday conversation. It's only when someone has said something funny I find myself involuntarily repeating it in my head over and over and over. I've found myself in awkward positions a couple of times because of it. For example, I had an English teacher in year 10 who was hilarious, and because of my echolalic tendency I would often replay the joke over and over in my head and I ended up still laughing at the same thing after everyone else had stopped. I did this with comedy shows on TV as well. I was a big fan of shows like Harry Enfield & Chums, and The Fast Show. But obviously laughing at the same joke for ages in your own home is a lot more comfortable than in public.

That leads me on to some of the reasons that people might repeat things that they or other people have said. In my case the reason depends on where the repeated phrase comes from. If it's from somebody else it's usually just because it's funny and therefore enjoyable. If it's from myself then it's for a more analytical reason. I often find myself repeating words and phrases to check if I could have worded it better, or to break a word down into pieces to help me work out the meaning/origin of it. Just as a quick demonstration, I like dinosaurs as much as the next person which lead me to thinking about the origins of some of their names. I broke down the word Triceratops into Tri-Cera-Tops. I won't bore you with how I reached my conclusion, but I worked out correctly that it translates literally to "three horns on its face". These are the main reasons for echolalia, although it could also just be a pleasurable sound that is used as a verbal/auditory stim.

As always, I hope this post has been informative and maybe even given a bit of a light bulb moment like I had when I first heard of echolalia. If you found this post helpful and interesting don't forget to subscribe with the button at the top of the page, follow me on Twitter @DepictDave and retweet this post to spread the word!

Sensory Differences

At its simplest, autism is a difference in brain structure. This difference in the brain can cause all sorts of differences in how the autistic person experiences and processes any and all sensory stimuli. I briefly touched on sensory processing when I wrote-up my support sessions that I had a few months ago, but I wanted to go through some of the atypical ways my senses work in more detail.

There are 5 classic senses that everyone knows about; these being vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. During my support sessions when they asked us what we think the 6th sense is I joked about seeing dead people, but in all seriousness there are vestibular, proprioception and interoception, making 8 senses in all.
Vestibular is the sense of balance and spatial orientation, co-ordinating the two for movement.
Proprioception is the sense of positioning of the body and its parts in 3 dimensional space and involves the effort that's used in movement.
Interoception is the sense of what's going on inside the body and helps to understand whether you're hungry, in pain, tired etc.

With any of the senses, the person can be either over-sensitive (hypersensitive), under-sensitive (hyposensitive), or both depending on the person and the situation. Hypersensitivity can lead to things like meltdown through the stimulus being too much and triggering the person's fight/flight response. It can also cause burnout through the person having to process so much at once, especially if it's over a prolonged period of time. Hyposensitivity is often found in sensory seekers where they need to find or create additional sensory input to get the amount they need. I personally haven't had any experience of being both hyper and hyposensitive interchangeably, but it can change depending on the situation, the person and the sensory input.

The first of my sensory differences that springs to mind is my hyposensitivity to pain. This explains why I enjoy getting tattooed as it's a sensory seeking activity for me as much as it is about the tattoos themselves. It also explains why when I was hospitalised a few weeks ago with appendicitis I a) struggled to rate the pain out of 10, and b) decided it was around 6 or 7 whereas most people with appendicitis would rate it higher. It felt horrible as it was, so I dread to think what it would have been like if I had a neurotypical pain tolerance! My experience of getting admitted to hospital didn't help as I was on my knees in the A&E waiting area in agony and vomiting for quite a while before I was given a bed or any pain relief, but I digress. My last thing to mention in regard to pain processing also relates to my preference for chewing. Before I got my chewer I found myself biting my fingers to shreds and I often found it enjoyable to bite my fingers hard enough for it to hurt. I do miss the pain of it, but now that I've got my chewer it's much better for my fingers and I get enough out of it when I need to.

I've always been aware that my sense of smell isn't brilliant compared to most people. I do detect smells in the air but not always, and if I do smell anything it's often only after somebody else has mentioned it that I notice it. I also really struggle to identify what a smell is. Being a parent of 2 young kids has taught me to identify the smell of a nappy that needs changing (and sometimes even which child specifically needs changing!), but even then I don't always pick up on it. It's a similar thing with taste in that I often can't identify a certain taste without knowing what it is that I'm eating. But they do say that smell and taste are pretty much the same sense except one is in the tongue and one is in the nose.

The last one I'm going to mention isn't so much a hyper/hyposensitivity thing, rather it's more to do with the processing of it. This is my auditory processing difficulty. The example that I used in my autism assessment is that if me and my wife are both in the bathroom and one of us is in the shower while she's trying to talk to me, because of the noise of the shower I struggle to hear what she's saying even though I can hear her voice talking to me. My brain struggles to decipher both at the same time, so because the shower is the simpler one to figure out (it's a shower - it makes a shower noise) I can't figure out the words that Sarah is using despite the fact that I can hear her voice loud and clear. Looking back to when I was younger and used to go on nights out every weekend I now realise that my auditory processing issues were quite obvious back then as well. Everyone seemed to be able to hear each other absolutely fine over the music in whichever pub/club we were in but I struggled to make out what anyone was saying to me. This lead to people thinking that I needed to get my hearing checked when in fact my hearing itself has always been fine, it's just processing multiple sounds at the same time that I struggle with.

These are just the sensory differences that I'm aware of. I've been diagnosed for almost a year now but following diagnosis the journey of self-discovery and realisation can last a lifetime. There's also the fact that things can sometime change as we grow older, so I'm sure there are plenty of other differences that I'll notice and come to understand in myself as time goes on. Speaking of being diagnosed for a year, I'll be doing a special Q&A post on the week of my 1 year diagnosiversary (that's officially a word as of now), which will be in 5 weeks' time on 6th December. Please ask any and all questions that you've got for me on Twitter using the hashtag #AutQA and I'll answer them in that post next month. It doesn't even necessarily have to be about autism - depending how it goes I might answer some non-autism questions as well.

That's it from me this week. As always, please click the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page to follow the blog, and also please follow me on Twitter @DepictDave. It helps you keep up to date with the blog, and it helps me get the word out there for autism acceptance.

5 Gifts For Autistics

Christmas is only 68 sleeps away and whenever people ask me what I want for Christmas or birthdays I've never known what I wanted, but since being diagnosed autistic I've come to realise that there are quite a few different things that I could do with. This could be either because it's beneficial, or just because I like it. So here's a list of a few ideas that you could buy for the autistic in your life. Please also be aware that this post contains Amazon Associate links, which means that if you purchase the items via the links I will earn a small commission. The exception to this is the very first link, which is to Chewigem, not Amazon, so it's not part of any affiliate program.

Chew Toys
Last Christmas is where I really started to realise that I had a problem with chewing. When I say "problem" I only mean in the sense that because I'd never had a chew toy at that point I resorted to biting my fingers and left them in a pretty bad state. At the time I didn't know what was available for a chewing need like mine, so I asked in a Facebook group and people suggested a few different places. The one I ended up going with was Chewigem who sell a whole variety of chew toys as well as other things like noise cancelling ear plugs for example. I'll leave the link here for the button necklace I've got from them, but obviously it's best to have a look at their full range and see what you/the person your buying for might prefer. One bit of advice to bear in mind is that each chewable item they sell shows the durability, flexibility and firmness of the item you're looking at. You'll need to check these to make sure you get a chewer that's right for you/them. I didn't know about this when I ordered my first chewer and got one that I chewed through pretty quickly because I'm a heavier chewer than I realised.

[Image description: My button necklace chew toy. It's circular and grey with a scaly pattern. The cord is black with a clasp in the middle and wrapped around in a circle-shape. The cord is tied to the chew toy through a small hole near the edge. The whole thing is sat on a wooden table.]

Fidget Toys
Some of Chewigem's items do cross over into the fidget category, but when I say fidget toys I mean things like fidget spinners, fidget cubes, stress balls, squishy putty and a whole lot more. One of my mutuals on Twitter posted a short video of her playing with some Thinking Putty which caught my eye as it looks great to play with. Another mutual uploaded a link to an Infinity Cube which also looks fun. There's a picture down below, and the link to the pictured Infinity Cube is here.

[Image description: A black Infinity Cube on a white background. The cube resembles a 4x4 Rubik's Cube and all the segments are joined by small hinges so that it can be unfolded, separated and played with.]

Sensory Aids

Depending on the needs or preferences of the autistic person you're buying for they may need any of a number of items to help with their sensory needs, and a lot of them fall within a reasonable gifting price range. The most common things are sunglasses and sound cancelling headphones but autistics can have a whole host of sensory issues so it's worth speaking to the person you're buying for if you're not sure what sensory preferences they have. It could be something as simple as loose fitting clothing for example.

[Image description: Sunglasses shown from the front on a plain background. The frames are thick and black, and the lenses are tinted blue.]

Weighted Blanket

This one tends to be quite expensive, but they can be quite helpful to a lot of people, not just autistics. My weighted blanket definitely helps me sleep, which is something I need since I work late and get up early with the kids. In fact, ever since my wife bought me it as an early birthday present a few months ago I've slept under it every night instead of our duvet. She got me it in the middle of summer when it's been quite warm, but I'm sure I'll use it a bit more in winter when I could do with a blanket while I work or while I play video games. My wife got me it quite cheap (we're talking under £30, as opposed to the usual hundreds) from a shop on Amazon that was quite new so they obviously wanted to get their foot in the door and some good ratings on the page. It's gone up in price since then as the shop gained more traction, but you can find my specific blanket here.

[Image description: My weighted blanket laid out neatly across my bed. It's a king-size bed with stripy, flowery bedding in grey and white. The blanket is dark grey with a soft and slightly fluffy top side.]

Special Interest Gifts

This one is pretty obvious, but any autistic loved one would be over the moon any gifts related to their special interest. Everyone has different interests but mine is professional wrestling. Last year one of the presents my wife got me for Christmas was a Becky Lynch action figure after I saw one in a shop and posted a picture of it on Twitter. This went alongside the John Cena figure I already had, and since then I've added Tyler Breeze and Alexa Bliss to the small collection. I'd be more than happy with almost any wrestling-related gifts. The kid in me would love a replica Universal Championship belt, but they're far too expensive and we've got nowhere to put one so that's not going to happen.

[Image description: The photo of the Becky Lynch figure that I posted on Twitter. It's from the Elite Collection and is from before her "The Man" gimmick as she's wearing her steampunk gear in the form of a long, black coat and brown top hat with goggles and a feather attached to it.]

These are my 5 gift ideas that you could buy for your autistic loved one(s). With any luck it's been helpful and given you some inspiration if you've been stuck on what to buy for them. As always, don't forget to follow me by hitting the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page, or on Twitter @DepictDave. It helps me out a lot!

Stimming: Why I Chew

First of all, sorry for not posting last week. There was too much going on for me over the course of Friday and Saturday so I didn't have time to commit to blogging. But that kind of leads me nicely into what I want to talk about this week, which is why I stim by chewing.

Let me start by explaining what stimming is. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as:
"The repetition of apparently purposeless movements as a pattern of behaviour seen mainly in persons with autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders" 

That's only the external, neurotypical point of view and doesn't explain the reasons behind it. The purpose of stimming is for self-regulation. Everybody stims in one way or another because we all need a certain degree of sensory input to be able to function. The difference in autistics is that we find that we have to create or seek the sensory input ourselves. This could be for various reasons depending on the individual, but for example they might need more input than a neurotypical person, or they might not respond as much to whatever stimuli is in their immediate environment as a neurotypical person would.

So one of the many things that kept me busy last weekend was that we thew a surprise 60th birthday party for my aunty. All the family was there, and as usual I wore my chewer which is a button necklace from Chewigem (you can check them out here). I was playing around with my kids to keep them entertained when my dad noticed my chewer around my neck and asked about it, so I explained what it is. He didn't say anything about it but his look and his tone were very disapproving. Thinking about it, I'm not sure what he disapproved of more - the chewer itself, or the fact that I said the words "I'm autistic" out loud in public. I'm fine with what happened because people are always going to have their own opinions however closed minded they are. It's just annoying that my dad shrugs his attitude and ignorance off about this and lots of other things as just "old fashioned".

I've been inclined towards chewing for a lot longer than I realised until recently. It's only when looking back the other day that I realised how long I've displayed a tendency to chew. The earliest I can remember was when I was in primary school. I can't remember what school year I was in, but at primary school age I must have been between 5 and 11 years old. I was sat in lesson next to a small bookcase and I must have had an urge to chew something because I found myself trying to chew the corner of this bookcase. The teacher noticed and said if I'm hungry it's not long till dinner time. I also used to bite my nails quite badly when I was younger and I think this was more for the chewing action than anything to do with my nails.

Over recent years I've found myself chewing my fingers whenever I've been stressed. That ended up ruining the skin on my fingers, which is why I then bought my first chewer from Chewigem at the start of this year once I discovered that you could buy things like this. We spent last Christmas at my in-laws' house, and because my wife's got such a big family there were too many people there for me, there was too much going on and it was too loud in parts so I found myself later on in the day sat in the conservatory away from everyone else and biting my index finger to shreds. This is what finally prompted me to have a look online and see what I could find in terms of adult human chew toys, and once I got my first chewer it really saved my fingers. Going back to the situation with my dad, my wife tried to explain about my fingers to him as well, but it still didn't make any difference.

I really like Chewigem as a sensory shop but there are lots of others that were suggested to me when I asked around online in the hunt for my first chewer. I've only ever used Chewigem so far so I can't comment any any others, but it's always worth searching online and most stores who sell this kind of thing seem to have an eBay and/or Amazon store that you can find easily. The problem I've got with chew toys (which isn't even an issue with the actual toys) is that I'm a much heavier chewer than I first realised so it's not as long before my chewers get damaged as it would be for other people. My first chew toy was a hand fidget (pictured below), which isn't as durable as I need it to be so I soon ended up chewing right through it and having to get the button necklace that I've got now. Even that's starting to wear down now but it's taken much longer to damage this than it took to damage the hand fidget. That would be my advice if you're looking for a chew toy for yourself; be aware of what kind of chewer you are (light, heavy etc) and make sure you check each toy for its flexibility, durability and firmness which are all displayed clearly on the product page for every item from Chewigem.

[Image description: Me chewing my hand fidget with a thoughtful expression on my face. My hand fidget is a small, circular silicone toy with a black, grey and white camouflage pattern, and it has a bar in the middle which holds a black ball intended for spinning and fidgeting with. I'm holding one end with my hand while chewing the other end.]