Sameness and it’s relationship to Sensory-sensitivity in Autism

There's some interesting thoughts here! All humans seek a kind of enjoyment of life, or meaningfulness. But we have different ideas of what is enjoyable. And it's human to create habits or disciplines, force a break and replace them with a different habit or discipline. Depending on disabilities will dictate the degree we can do this. 

What seems to happen, unfortunately is that our autistic talents and potential are often overlooked, there's a barrier with communication and so we might not get the education we need to reach our potential or the help into a direction we're suited for and it seems many of us end up in lives we wouldn't necessarily choose. This is no small matter from a series of consequence.

Coping mechanisms have always existed for humankind. OCD is something Freud and Jung noticed with patients regardless of ability or neurology as a trauma response. And living a life one wouldn't choose can be the ground for all kinds of trauma responses.  Isolation being a trigger to almost all addiction. 

I don't think we were meant for on-going high stress environments. History has some grim stories here. My father likes to say "what doesn't kill you makes you wish it would" (with a little laugh). 

As for negativity and change, I'm not sure they're any more related than how one talks about the weather. From what we know, the non-autistic brain senses being like everyone else. Literally, all the time. Sameness is somewhat automatic - built in to the wiring as it were. And that social sameness can trigger a need for: something new! Something exciting! Something different. 

We all need to feel grounded, but because it appears autistics are more wired to be in-tune with environmental surroundings (which in our modern situations are incredibly maddening) while the non-autistic brain has these strengthened neural pathways pruned for social surroundings. (I always count my ADHD friends as a wild card who can manage to speak both Au and NT). So this might dictate what makes us feel connected: The language of vocabulary and created meaning for the NT, and the ability to make connexions and analyse what is for the Au - these are some theories out there, but from a NT standpoint, not playing along with the expected social script and analysing something which lacks congruity can sound or come across as 'negative'. But if you're doing this with another autistic, well, take me off on a tangent! Yes please! This is neither negative nor positive, but just is. 

Wow, that response is something to be marvelled at, thank you..

I often feel as if I am plenty-capable of sensing a thing, sometimes I may even sense too much, but I feel as if the great issue I have is manifesting that sense and making heads-or-tails of it. Often times my ability to understand my senses, comes down to how it fits in to the existing understanding that I have, if I haven’t mapped it I can get stuck. 

For me understanding comes down to exposure, my awareness is the result of being perceived by others as odd and unrewarding, so I my most implicit ‘schooling’ has been in negative thought. So I have found that automatic self-deprecation tends to get me the furthest distance.

I remember a few years ago, I didn’t go with a parent into my uncle’s-house to drop something off, I stayed in the car. 
My parent ended up staying for an hour so my uncle was offended, as he assumed I didn’t like his house, but I thought she was only going to drop something off.  
My mother started going to the house every week, I assumed I was better off outside because of the same reason and additional reason, then my uncle got more offended. So I told my parent to tell him I was just weird, and it sated his offence and safeguarded my routine, but then I just started use self-deprecation as a general behaviour.

Often find that is is very difficult to process complex emotions in myself and others, I often just find a thing that seems to bridge the gap, regardless of what I find on the other side. In CBT that is called perfectionist-behaviour, that being the abandonment of excellence, for a refined system that offers no improvement. But I always had trouble fully-connecting to perfectionist-belief, because I do not believe in perfectionism, I feel incapable (on a functional-level) of excelling through spontaneity. 
I have only just been diagnosed with ASD, and I already feel that it is more possible to explore different modes of language and communication, through investigation and exposure.

Wow, that response is something to be marvelled at, thank you..

I often feel as if I am plenty-capable of sensing a thing, sometimes I may even sense too much, but I feel as if the great issue I have is manifesting that sense and making heads-or-tails of it. Often times my ability to understand my senses, comes down to how it fits in to the existing understanding that I have, if I haven’t mapped it I can get stuck. 

For me understanding comes down to exposure, my awareness is the result of being perceived by others as odd and unrewarding, so I my most implicit ‘schooling’ has been in negative thought. So I have found that automatic self-deprecation tends to get me the furthest distance.

I remember a few years ago, I didn’t go with a parent into my uncle’s-house to drop something off, I stayed in the car. 
My parent ended up staying for an hour so my uncle was offended, as he assumed I didn’t like his house, but I thought she was only going to drop something off.  
My mother started going to the house every week, I assumed I was better off outside because of the same reason and additional reason, then my uncle got more offended. So I told my parent to tell him I was just weird, and it sated his offence and safeguarded my routine, but then I just started use self-deprecation as a general behaviour.

Often find that is is very difficult to process complex emotions in myself and others, I often just find a thing that seems to bridge the gap, regardless of what I find on the other side. In CBT that is called perfectionist-behaviour, that being the abandonment of excellence, for a refined system that offers no improvement. But I always had trouble fully-connecting to perfectionist-belief, because I do not believe in perfectionism, I feel incapable (on a functional-level) of excelling through spontaneity. 
I have only just been diagnosed with ASD, and I already feel that it is more possible to explore different modes of language and communication, through investigation and exposure.

Aye.

My father complains of those up and coming who are supposed to be allowing him to retire and completely lacking in intuitive ability, hired because they can say the right thing but making his job a million times more difficult. He's the main engineer for a massive tech company in the US dealing with uranium, not even consulted by HR. So just hearing about the oversight is a bit frightening. 

The artisanal ways-of-old thought, feeds quite nicely into what Temple Grandin says about the specialists pre-standardisation, she goes on to say how ‘lesser’ engineer roles are being abandoned by those enjoy the role despite low pay.  

Old greybeards (such as the-man-in-the-van, the lift-man, the handy man) are leaving the artisanal-engineer jobs, and have no naturally likeminded doers to replace them, people who used to learn by exposure are being replaced by theorists lack dexterity.

I think that the patterns that Autists are learning these days, are directly comparable to the environment they are met with, they are met with a NT standardisation.  
A non-compatible societal model cripples their confidence, as they are not fools they are made out to be, subconsciously they are aware of the lack of exposures available to ‘them’.

I only learned about it from a Philosopher and Psychoanalyst who wrote a few books in the late 60s and what one finds is this divide in human thinking which it turns out, Jung also talks about, these seemingly polarised fundamental ways of perceiving the world. I'm still not convinced the Autistic 'Type' isn't a sub-type of his Archetypes, as he noticed a key element that he didn't feel he needed to tag as 'Autistic'. Because less than 100 years ago, social values in western societies aligned a little more with natural autistic inclinations. It was rude to interrupt. My grandmother expected time alone to focus on dinner and no one questioned her. She had a routine and expected others to be dependable and that was normal. She was incredibly talented at math and highly sensitive to smells and that was appreciated. Aside from the biology, it seems Neurology is only proving what actual clinicians already knew before 1970: a lack of defence mechanisms, a different use of language. The fact that most in the neurotypical population can go with the flow and dull their senses as the world becomes even more artificial is what should be studied. It's unreal. 

I agree with this as you say, so much of the literature is a history of the divergence, of the autistic way from the mainstream.  
Though it is important to know where ASD has come from, to fully understand it, but the more you delve the more you have to pay attention. 

It’s important to know that autism first went through psychology before it hit neurology. And that’s not to say that it is all useless it’s just mostly disapproved and somewhat incompatible with the current state of ASD. 
I was ready about the ‘refrigerator mothering’ theory. And indeed how early autism research had an alchemy-esque quality to it; a pinch of neurosis and a sprinkle of psychosis and a dash of talk therapy. 
Which again comes back to the loose end of sensory-perception and it’s links to repetitive-restrictive-behaviours..:)

DeSpereaux said:

feel as if the great issue I have is manifesting that sense and making heads-or-tails of it.

this is completely normal for - I believe - almost all of us, unless we're born to ND parents who appreciate and value our ability to sense and have already undergone the diligent work to recognise how we work. If they have and we 'sense' a thing, they may be sensing it too and help us identify it. 

If we MUST deal with another's de-valuing our ability to sense what they cannot, it is tiresome after 30+ years and one begins to find ways to subdue the response in the quickest manner. I would call this "Handling" another. However it gets done works for me. But the use of irony or self-deprecation as a learned response has literally nothing to do with "clinical CBT perfectionism" which doesn't apply to our neurology IMO. 

Let's analyse this site: https://www.psychologytools.com/resource/cognitive-behavioral-model-of-clinical-perfectionism-shafran-cooper-fairburn-2002/

I would differentiate NT vs Au in this way:

Setting excessively high standards for oneself VS Hyper-vigilance due to an often chaotic brain, too much all at once and dealing with overwhelm. 

Continuous striving to reach goals is different than circumnavigating potential danger or a need for follow though/playing out pre-designed / thought-through expectations for the sake of continuity. See Monotropism. 

Basing self-worth on meeting these standards VS already dealing with too much chaos and having a Very Low Threshold for more. 

Significant distress or impairment arising from the above - Yes. Only our Motives are entirely different and Reward Centres triggered by something different. Our very livelihood is marred by the assumption that we are inherently immoral or simply disliked - it affects practical and fundamental NEEDs.  Individuals who thrive do so because they value a lack of disruption, integration of intent and action - or continuity, creating and upholding disciplines which make life more fluid. 

The problem with "Perfectionism" is it's based on internal self-criticism, from the neurotypical (or neurotic) Oedipal Complex of guilt and debt, which I'd suggest most of us can easily shake off once we're aware of this system that we've always sensed without the ability to properly identify. It's not part of our nature because we weren't 'encoded" (to use a software term) with this type of exchange, most likely due to language differences. But since we're hyper-sensory, we might have this capacity to sense-perceive systems of social exchange. Depending on disability, most of us enjoy critique and analysing but don't actually appreciate being misjudged (it happens for us far too much), we're not looking for anything perfect, already aware nothing is. Just a way of getting on with things without dealing with things NT don't have to. 

Happy to go in a bit more depth with this. But one of the biggest problems with theories now as opposed to 1960 is they're infused with bias and assumption which is skewed toward Typical and not autistic thinking.