In the episode I share how I rated my own autistic traits on a 1-10 scale and how I'm learning to think in terms of "difference, not deficit." Check out the blog post on charting my autistic traits here: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits

Check out my blog Writing On The Spectrum here: BarbaraGraver.substack.com

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Full transcript below. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).

Episode 13 Transcript



 












Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about autistic characteristics and I'm going to







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be doing this through the lens of the characteristics I've identified in myself. I just try to steer away from speaking for other people because there's such a a wide range of experience and abilities in autism that I feel whenever I try to speak for anyone else, I always feel like I'm getting it wrong.







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So this is purely from my perspective. The disclaimer is these traits are not necessarily going to present the way they aren't going to present the same way across the spectrum as they present in me because we're all different. So I talked a little bit during my autism and psychic ability series,







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I talked a little bit about the idea of a linear spectrum, a spectrum from high to low, as is suggested by the DSM-5. And I talked about why I have problems with that. I think ranking across the board is problematic, although I do think autism is a constellation of traits.







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And I do think it could be useful to do specific individual ranking in terms of trait by trait. I think that's helpful. It gives you a better picture of yourself and what your abilities and what your challenges might be. Ranking people as a whole, to me, I feel that's a little problematic for various reasons,







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such as the many different comorbidities, apraxia, for example, anxiety. all kinds of comorbidities come into play, as well as inherent differences like talents and abilities and intellect. It's just there's so much at play that I think ranking from low to high is problematic. And it's also,







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it causes people to fall into a way of thinking that I don't feel is very helpful. I don't think it's helpful to to think of people as more or less autistic or more or less challenged or more or less worthwhile. I don't think that's a good way to think.







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And I think when you're ranking individuals from low to high, you're always going to kind of suggest that or lead people into that kind of thinking, which I don't like. So I did discuss this before, but I just wanted to put it out there kind of as a disclaimer.







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So what I did, and I have a blog post on this that I'll link to. What I did for myself was I looked at the DSM-5. I don't like the DSM-5. I don't like that it calls autism a disorder. I don't like that it ranks people.







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But I do think it does a fair job of describing observable traits in autistics. I don't find it totally useless, even though I have issues with it. So what I kind of did is I took the traits that were listed in the DSM-5 and sort of adapted them to better reflect me.







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And I used those traits to come up with categories for myself. And I made various charts and put them in my blog, which people seem to like. I'll link to that. And the chart showed my different characteristics. And this is not an idea that's specific to me.







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You could see a lot of people will be looking at autism in this way. It's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. It's more of like a radial spectrum, which I think is interesting. You know, it's kind of interesting in terms of dimensionality.







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We think of a spectrum as high to low, and technically that's what it is. But that's a linear 2D kind of dimensionality, where if you want to think of it more 3D, kind of as a radial sort of thing, you could do that too. So what I did is I came up with 10 categories.







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One of my things had 10 categories. One had 12 because it just worked better for the type of charts I used. But the categories I used were hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, hyper fixations, special interests, nonverbal communication. I don't like that word nonverbal, but I didn't know what else to use.







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Some people will call it social cues, but I find that confusing too. But that's basically your ability. It should probably be called non-speaking communication, your ability to communicate and to read cues without speaking. Conversation. I use conversation. So instead of Expressive communication. I just kind of lumped conversation together. Relationships, transitions, echolalia, repetitive motor, and pattern recognition.







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And then I rated myself. in each of these categories. And I think this is a useful exercise for everyone to do, and everyone's going to differ. But I think it's interesting to find that you will have some kind of, if you do this, you will have some kind of a relationship to each of these categories.







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Even if you get a one, you'll have a kind of relationship to them, or that's what I found. So for me, fixations, hyper fixations, I gave that a 10. I'm not sure that might have been a little excessive, but that is huge for me. My special interests dominate my life. They dominate my thought processes.







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They dominate the way I spend my time. They completely dominate my life. And I have tried to dial back I've tried to stop and I just can't function that way. This is how I relate to the world. And it kind of reminded me of there's episode in elementary where Sherlock says to Watson,







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and I can't find the episodes. If anyone knows that, please tell me. But where he says to Watson, but we are what we do. And she says, no, you are. I'm not. And it's interesting, one thing I liked about that show is everything he does in that show, and I mentioned this before,







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everything he does in that show, like all his friends, he interacts with them through his hyperfixation in solving crimes. And that's really the only way he could interact with people. And that's how I am. That's how my relationships are. My relationships with people are organized around an interest.







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And when that interest shifts, I can no longer really relate to that person. And I don't really have any face-to-face relationships at all, aside from my adult kids. But if that orientation shifts, I can't continue with the relationship usually. I just can't find the common ground in order to do it. But there is a







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in my opinion, a good side to all these things. I don't really consider them deficits. My therapist said that to me. I was talking about communication and a problem I was having. And she said, is this making you more aware of your deficits? And I said, I don't really see them as deficits. I see them as differences.







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I communicate differently. It's not wrong. It's not bad. Here I am on the podcast blabbing away because it's one-sided. It's not that I can't communicate. It's that communicate differently. So anyhow, hyper fixations, mine are books, media, mythology, ancient history, religion, the occult, like anything kind of under that umbrella, that mystical umbrella and writing and books.







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So those are, are my hyper fixations. And that is what I spend my time doing. And I can't change that. Even if I want to, I can't. And there have been times in my life I really, really did, but I still couldn't. Another category I identified was hypersensitivity. For me, when I was little,







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this had to do with feeling like wool burned and feeling like polyester cut. Like if you've read that poem by Emily Dickinson, A Panther in the Glove, that's what that's about. And it's A difficult thing because kids that experience these kind of hypersensitivities, they're subject to a lot of gaslighting because people will tell them, you're being dramatic,







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you're making this up, you're being a prima donna, you know, all these things. And no, they're not, they're really perceiving it that way. And that kind of gaslighting is very detrimental for children, because it teaches them to dismiss their own perceptions and their own, their own impressions of reality, their own feelings.







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And that's a very dangerous for a child, for and for teenager, it sets them up to all kinds of things, including exploitation. It's a dangerous thing. And it's something that people should be aware of. People are not overreacting. That's how people are actually that's a hypersensitivity. That's how they're perceiving things. So so Now I'm an adult.







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I could wear what I want. It's not an issue, but I still have problems with lights. I have a lot of problems with sound, a lot of problems. I live on a very, very busy street. We have a business across the street. And for a time, people were leaving their vehicles running, including trucks,







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all the time when they'd go into that business. And I went out and yelled at people. And it did not make me popular in my neighborhood, but I just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it. Traffic going back and forth, I got used to, but the idling, I couldn't stand it. People are better now. It works.







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Eventually it works. And also I have noise canceling headphones and I do what I can. I mean, I al