Rigidity and Systems
An emerging theory of autism research is, roughly: autistic brains take in more information from their environment than allistic brains. This is called the "Intense World Theory" (Markam and Markam, 2010). They find there are differences at the cellular level that lead the autistic brain to be hyper-sensitive to a variety of inputs. Another study found that the people they studied produced on average 42% more information at rest, compared to non-ASD people (Velázquez & Galán, 2013).
This is interesting. "Takes in more information" may sound positive at first, but it has downsides. I'd like to explore some of those and how how this may help explain some rigidity I hold around daily routines and sticking to systems, and then how that may help explain "not feeling feelings".
Why have systems?
Existing is taxing. As the theory would suggest, we are always taking in more information. Processing that information has a real cost in mental energy. And so an approach to reduce that mental cost is to build systems that allow us to make decisions and move throughout the world without having to process all of that information at once. Sticking to the system means I don't have to "turn on the firehouse" to process my environment and figure out what I should do.
Many of my "systems" are methods that allow me to have that selective processing of information in my environment. Allistic brains seem to do this naturally and intuitively (though that could be just a result of literally having less information to process through). But autistic people have to do it very intentionally - we build systems! That is the method.
When a system doesn't cover a situation, I have to sip from firehose of information. I think that could be an explanation for the "deer in the headlights" response I sometimes have to novel situations. I literally just need a sec to process through all that information.
Sticking to systems, and environments where the systems work, reduces the mental load it takes to just exist.
Daily routines
A particularly good example of where this shows up is in my daily morning routine. Once I "start" the routine, I want to do the same things in the same order. Start shower -> wash body in this order -> floss teeth -> brush teeth -> do hair (etc etc, this is simplified). If something is out of place (eg., my toothbrush is somewhere else) or goodness if I need to do something out of order - it's taxing. It breaks from the system, since the system didn't cover this case. Now I have to "sip from the firehose" of processing all the information from my environment to figure out what to do.
It's small. It's not that big of a deal, really. But it can become a minor frustration when I expected it go one way (a near-zero taxing activity) to now something that takes work. When I'm on a trip away from home is it just as taxing to break systems (maybe more), but it is less frustrating - since it was at least expected.
I think that idea of "it taking work" is part of the disconnect I experience with allistic people. "How can that little thing take work?" they ask - and it's a great question. And one that makes no sense IF you don't have a brain that produces so much information. Having a system is the closest to "turning off" that information blast - and I have to break from one, then I have no choice but to turn to the firehose.
A source of tension in relationships
Being in a relationship, and especially living with someone, has ALL SORTS of these little things. Integrating another person to your life requires changing habits, being okay with things being not where you expect them, and just an overall degree of flexibility. This is in tension with how mentally taxing that can be. Many of my systems/routines are carefully calibrated to take as little mental energy as possible to do.
So, it's a "pick your battles" kind of thing. When is the right time to build new systems (or accept the deviation cost) VS saying "hey I just need to do it this way", and save that for another day. I think not realizing this has led me to be a bit more combative or snippy than was called for when I've been asked to do something a different way. Seeing it as taxing is a helpful reframing. I may be in a place where I don't have the energy for it or things are tense for other reasons, but that can be communicated more directly.
If this theory holds, then a possible solution is to build systems that are just more flexible to begin with. It could be very helpful to realize (or have it pointed out) that my system for something is a bit too rigid. If I had a system that accounted for more of the variability, then perhaps it would lead to less needing to rely on jumping into "full information processing mode".
Systems and feelings
Another really interesting place this pops up is in feelings! Something I've said before is "I don't really feel feelings as strongly as other people". A statement I know other autistic people have related to. Since, I've realized I do actually feel them - I'm just not paying attention to them.
The "too much information" theory has an interesting implication here. If deviating from a system is taxing, what's one of the more unpredictable things? FEELINGS. It's tough to build a system around something that's really unpredictable! So it's easier (less taxing) to just ignore them, rather than throwing that onto the pile of information to process as well.
So here's the idea that's been lighting up my brain this week: What if feelings were directly incorporated into and accounted for in my systems?
It's almost so obvious as to be dumb to say: but I'm human, and humans have feelings. They're going to happen, there's no getting around that. And I would say any system that doesn't include some manner of incorporating and processing feelings is a (dramatically?) incomplete system. Yet - here we are, with feelings being scantly represented.
So what would that look like? I don't know - that's for next time! If you've got any ideas, share them with me 🙏