Published on 12, July, 2020
Have you ever had to interact with a certain type of autistic person who believes that their autism gives them a right to your silence? As an autistic person myself I find it incredibly irritating.
like many autistic people i’m used to getting comments about ‘you’re shouting’ when I’m not shouting but I’m talking more loudly than people expect. For me Stimming can be something as simple as humming a musical under my breath. Something that is likely to indicate that I’m stressed out. In fact I’m more stressed out I am the more likely I am to be making some kind of ‘noise.’ Humming, tapping, singing etc. and of course what stresses me out more is being told I’m making ‘noise’ and I need to stop or else.
absolutely one of the most offensive things you can possibly do is to tell me I am ‘laughing too loud.’ because to enjoy humour and comedy you have to have a lack of self consciousness and it’s absolutely impossible to have a lack of self consciousness if you are worrying about ‘laughing too loud.’
so to those people who think autism gives them a right to demand quietness, to turn the whole world into a library (and I say it as someone who likes libraries) I have to say to you respectfully no it doesn’t. Here’s a set of earplugs, deal with it.
but in truth what offends me the most is them speaking on my behalf. equating autism with this supersensitivity to sound. A lot of us do not get this. A lot of us struggle with social issues; it is after all one of the defining aspects of autism, and it’s really unhelpful when Neurotypicals get the wrong end of the stick and think that autism is just somehow some sort of super sensitive hearing / touch thing. Because from my point of view the thing Neurotypicals really need to understand is how autism affects social interaction.
that is one of the two major things all autistic people share, issues with social interaction. it’s the aspect Neurotypicals tend to really struggle to get their heads around. It’s really un helpful when people paint this inaccurate picture of the autistic presentation. You know the stereotype. If you’re autistic you’ve got to be really quiet and painfully polite and a real indoors introvert that would rather deal with animals than people. Someone who can’t stand noise and hates a party and is really adverse to confrontation. A completely rubbish stereotype that is completely the opposite of people like me.
The person in the room laughing the loudest at the most inappropriate joke. The person who is always trying to stave off boredom and likes a good party and dancing to loud music. The guy looking to turn the conversation to something interesting and weird because every day life is so banal. It would be nice for me personally if we could have a bit of representation among the autistic community that represents me. It’s bad enough that the media gets it wrong, it’s intolerable when other autistic people present the quiet stereotypes as being authentic.
Peter said:It’s bad enough that the media gets it wrong, it’s intolerable when other autistic people present the quiet stereotypes as being authentic.
The quiet stereotypes (as opposed to archetype) are authentic, obviously, and I think you must be playing Devil's Advocate in saying this.
As we all know, it can be over or under sensitivities, although from my experience in life and on this forum, I'd say that the over sensitive type is more common (my own personal assumption, unbacked up by any authorititive text).
Here's what this site says:
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/sensory-differences/sensory-differences/all-audiences
Surprisingly, the NHS doesn't see these sensitivities as a 'main' sign of autism
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/signs/adults/
Peter said:that is one of the two major things all autistic people share
Here is a link to Psychiatry UK says re the 4 qualities that are used for diagnosis:
https://psychiatry-uk.com/autistic-spectrum-condition/
So:
Social interaction and social communication
Repetitive and restricted range of behaviour
Intense interests
Over- or under-sensitivities to sensory stimuli
Research has led to these features being brought together into the two domains of :
People with autism lie on the intersection of these two dimensions, meaning that they have to show sufficient features in both groups of symptoms in order to fulfil the diagnostic criteria for ASD.
It is worth noting that everyone is somewhere on the continuum, some having more autistic traits than others, but it is the degree and pattern of impairment that leads to the identification of a ‘disorder’, as it is defined according to the diagnostic manuals.
We really just should respect one another and accommodate one another as best we can.
However, as others here have noted, we would probably just avoid loud people like yourself.
It’s important to distinguish between an authentic experience and the authentic experience of the so-called definitive experience. I thought that was clear.
also I’m not convinced that oversensitivity has much to do with quietness. as many have pointed out you can tolerate your own noise much better than others. i’m talking about quiet as a personality trait. I’m talking about introversion and passiveness. an aversion not just to a specific type of sensory input but excitement in general.
but purely as an aside sensory issues has only recently been added to the repetitive / restricted behaviours criteria. And it’s perfectly possible to satisfy that criteria without any sensory issues.
there are some autistic people to act as if autism validates their personality traits and is deeply and synonymously connected with their personality traits of introversion and an aversion to excitement. people knowingly or more often unknowingly do genuinely present these personality traits as being part of their autism. And frankly I wish they’d stop
No wonder people don't understand autism when the NHS can't even get it right. On their page for signs of autism in children it includes:
However that is listed under young children and there is no mention of sensory issues under the older children list
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/signs/children/
Sensory issues don't go away when we get older, they still affect us just as much but we become better at hiding (masking) our distress
The DSM-5 changed to specifically include sensory differences in the diagnostic criteria in 2013 I believe, so certainly not a new change.
I recently came across this interesting document, which reframes autism as primarily a sensory processing difference.
https://www.ndti.org.uk/assets/files/Its-not-rocket-science-V6.pdf
"Autism is viewed as a sensory processing difference. Information from all of the senses can become overwhelming and can take more time to process. This can cause meltdown or shutdown. Neurotypical brains often divert information from the senses, so they don’t have to process as much information."
This does seem to be the direction that understanding of autism is going. Our senses are integral to everything we experience in the world.
"Autism is not well understood. As a result, collectively, autistic people are not well understood. As Beardon (2017:18) states, ‘the very fact that there is more than one set of diagnostic criteria establishes the fact that we don’t yet have any consensus in terms of how we collectively understand autism’."
The documents also highlights that "some autistic people’s needs will conflict with each other", which is essentially what we are discussing here.