Describing ASD Autiism Aspergers from our point of view

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I use a camera analogy:

NT's shoot photos and store them as JPEGs. The photos are filtered as they come into the camera. They are available for immediate posting to social media of all types.

I shoot photos in the raw. No filter, high processing time. Not ready for sharing. Because of the long processing time and massive file size, more thought is put into which photos are worth processing and sharing.

Um, what would it be an expression for, exactly?
Moreover, on a forum full of literalists, many of whom tend toward the self-injurious, I would assume that it would be taken literally.

However, to answer your question:
Yes, certain aural stimuli causes a dissonance for me that's intolerable, an itch in my heart I can't scratch, which is coupled to a rage response which I've managed to sublimate over the years most of the time this happens, though the emotional fallout ruins my mood every time, and the only thing which makes the itch/dissonance go away is endorphins.
The easiest, least obtrusive, & quickest method I've found to get endorphins is to cause myself significant pain, so I bite myself.
I try to keep it confined to my index fingers, but if the stimuli continues I have to move to my arms for more & fresh pain sites.
If it goes on long enough, I end up with bruises all over my arms.
Normally I'll run away or try to get the source of the stimuli to stop if it becomes problematic enough, but being stuck somewhere & not being able to do anything about it can be somewhat horrific for me.
That happened to me the other day at home, went on, on & off, for 10 or 15 mins until I realize they couldn't hear my screaming so I stuck my hear outside & yelled.
Still took my landlady going over & asking for it to stop once she realized what was happening.
I still have fading bruises on my arms from that incident.

Would you believe that some people still don't believe me that I'm autistic, simply because most of the time I can appear relatively normal if I try?
I'd like those folks to see my bite-mark bruised arms on a day like that day & tell me I'm just making excuses.

Yes, I bite myself when exposed to certain sounds.
No, I don't enjoy it.
Yes, it's necessary.

Ain't autism grand?

I have no idea. But people have the weirdest expressions.

yup there are lots of literalists but even still I have read many expressions here in WP.


this scratch in the heart sounds awful!
yeah, that was exactly what I was wondering "how does friend doubt he is not normal if he has obvious differences like biting himself?" that is why I imagined it was not literal in the first place.

Yeah, it's, um, well, there's nothing like wanting to rip your heart out of your own chest to scratch it, that's for sure.
Fortunately, those sounds are mostly only produced by certain very specific actions, and while not completely uncommon, they're not ubiquitous or anything.
Technically, the sound issue constitutes a disorder all its own called misophonia, but I've always seen it as part of me autism since tapping while I'm trying to concentrate on something produces a simliar result to the sounds, even though I don't mind it as much if I'm not concentrating.
I've also had an instantaneous reaction that's similar from being hit by surprise somewhere sensitive, and once it triggered a meltdown, the only one so far I've been able prevent from geting any further than looking like I was about it kill someone.

The frequencies of sound that trigger it are produced by people almost exclusively, usually via a particular method, but there are other ways.
The crazy thing is, neither I nor anyone else can actually hear those frequencies.
They're right above the human hearing range, and they literally make me insane.



Here's the thing, back then I was discreet about it and I generally just ran away if exposed to the sounds I have trouble with and eould bite myself when I was safely away so almost no one saw me bite myself.
Also, my friend knew I was weird, different, and I think she maybe thought I was just acting strange by biting myself in reasponse to sounds.
She just had a lot of trouble accepting quite how different and the why behind that.
The thing she couldn't accept for quite some time was that my perception of the world is significantly different from hers because my brain is significantly different, despite the evidence.
This was 1999, no one knew anything about aspies/HFAs, and the fact is that back then I had no real proof of my assertions, I just knew that my brain was different because I knew my senses were different, more intense, that this difference was at the core of my condition, and that only a brain abnormality could logically cause that to be the case.

Yeah, 15 years later & there' s just now scientific validation for what I've known about autism, and told anyone who would listen, for a decade and a half, for whatever good it did me.

It's possibly fantasizing, especially if that's one of her "interests". I make up entire worlds inside my head. It could also be her brain shutting down from too much sensory input, so the stuff is kind of like a fuzzy TV. She could be sorting through information in order to process it and as a result can't pay attention. My husband does this. He will pretty much take an additional minute or two more than a "regular" person to process what I've said. It could also her trying to remember what she's supposed to do (since she's 6, maybe she's "supposed' to turn in her work) and because she's trying to remember what to do and how to act, she can't take in any more information. Finally, she could be trying to decipher what the other children mean (even at that age) and thus she's too busy inside her head analyzing to hear and/or understand words people are saying.