The Little Things

Duh?? But I thought...

So here I am once again saying that I am no doctor first. I have no medical expertise to back up what I'll say here. This is just my opinion based on everyday things I go through myself.

So, what does Autism feel like?

Autistics love to take a long time doing things that others think is nothing but a waste of time. So we might, for example, find a piece of red lint stuck to a white comforter. We might find joy in watching it roll through our fingers for an hour. At that point, we might be pulled out of our bliss by some concerned relative: "You need help?!" This is
a completely rational question. But who could ever understand why we are so happy staring at lint, or that we are even DOING that?? These kinds of thought processes are normal to us, but certainly not rational. That's right, I said they are not rational. This is not a bad thing in and of itself; but the thing is that most of the functions that must be carried out in order to get through any day are rational and necessary...AND we must do them because someone else requires it, at the pace at which they require it. How does this work when we are fascinated by staring at lint for an hour, or more?


An autistic persons thoughts need to "build" first. Think of dominoes or a kids blocks. Our thought process about mundane, everyday things such as washing dishes has to build up, peace by piece in our heads. I personally have found that with repetition, this DOES come quicker and more automatically; we don't think so much about it. But unfortunately, this isn't always the case. The strangeness comes when we become frustrated to the core, insisting that we don't need your help.

The typical world out there just does not leave room for our kind of processing when it comes to things that need to be done instinctively and quickly. Our brains often work in reverse to the way a typical mind would process mundane actions. To most of us, these are the time-wasters we want to hurry and get out of the way. So, for an autistic, we can end up in tears because the "typical" often has to be taken over and done for us; we appear clumsy and as though we are in serious need of instructions. This is because we were given four or five instructions, but we are still trying to process the second thing you said. Many times, we've understood it all, but these things ate processed much more slowly. This includes getting around to TELLING you that we might need you to repeat some things. That thought is in the cue, if you will, but we haven't gotten that far down the line yet. As a result, we have a keen awareness of what we are struggling to get done, but an apparent inability to finish it. Sometimes we can't even start it.

Autistic women in particular have a hard time with executive function. In other words, we can have brilliant ideas that are very detailed but no idea how to carry them out. To the autistic who doesn't drive, this can be VERY difficult to endure. Example: We can be over the moon about baking a wedding cake. We can see what it looks like in our minds, the piping, the color frosting, the filling inside...everything. But then there's the reality that we are unable to drive to the store, to physically pick up all the groceries. We can make the list, we know what we want, but we are dependent on someone else to go get it. How could something so simple be so damn HARD?? This is maddening to us. So we spend a lot of time being so close, yet so far away from actually finishing things. This frustration can absolutely cripple us. However, it's harder still when we explain what is distressing us out loud and it is usually a mundane, normal, everyday thing. Why would we get so upset over THAT?? (People around us wonder).

Sadly, autistic often are tempted to cut corners or make something "finish" quicker, when a task typically needs to take a lot of time and be done peice by piece...slowly. This is because we have to "burn" so much energy just doing the smaller things that lead to bigger things. We LOVE the anticipation of completing something we a enjoy. This makes us feel "high"-- it's like a drug! But at the same time, we live in dread of being unable to actually complete it, because of the gaps and holes in our ability to execute and carry out what we want to do. We often need help with what are considered to be typical tasks, and on the surface it might seem like no big deal...but OH, how this can hang us up! Energy that COULD be used creatively is sacrificed to the mundane things that we can't complete because other adults in our lives don't have the time to stop what they are doing and come running. Makes us sound like conceited jerks, doesn't it?