Life on the Autism Spectrum

Yes, it’s, I suppose that comes down to being too aware of the surroundings. Whatever’s happening it will catch my attention. There’s no may about it. It will. So sometimes when things get too much I kind of go off into, into a quiet corner where I’m in control of everything. When I’m in control of everything then I feel fine, it makes me feel less anxious, you know, I could go away, go away and play some video games, I know the ins and out of the rules and regulations of all that. I sit down and I can immerse myself in such activities for hours upon hours, with little or no regard to what’s going on in the rest of the world. I mean the world could just pass me by, not literally, I mean all the world doesn’t pass me by, but you know, what I mean. But you know, it’s, that is kind of a, that’s well that’s a safety net I suppose. If I kind of reside in there, then there will be nothing that can harm me, nothing that can, you know, make me anxious or worried or angry.

You know, if something goes wrong in the real world, then the best thing you can do is damage limitation and that’s quite difficult, because I’m not very well known for reacting superbly under pressure. And damage limitation would be acting under pressure and everything I do, needs to have some kind of thought behind it. And, when it comes to just pure, you know, split second intuition, then, that’s stumps me. That does stump me.

Is it always a worry you think about or is it maybe thinking about computer gaming?

I think it’s a mix between the two. You know, if my, because I might have accidentally, I might have thought that I’ve accidentally forgot to lock up the house. Then that’ll tick over in my mind. But then if like you said there was computer game or there was an event coming up or something else to that effect, then that would go through my mind as well. I mean even, even a song, just played on continuous loop goes through my head regardless of where I am. I suppose with that, it’s something that I know that would be some kind of safety point to it.

I mean you go into all these unfamiliar environments. You don’t know what’s going to happen. There might be some kind of punch up or, people getting insanely drunk and collapsing and all these different things which can kind of raise the pressure of the situation. And, you know, I suppose having that pre-emptive process going through your head, it takes your mind off that point in time. It takes you to something to which you can look forward or something which you may have forgotten or you might end up chuckling at something. I suppose the worry one would be separate from that one, because it would, everybody would worry. I mean if they thought they’ve forgot to lock their house. Some people kind of think about it for a moment, forget about it, put it to the back of their minds, other people kind of obsess over it. Other people kind of obsess over it. Some people obsess too much and I kind of fall into one of the latter two categories.

So it’s really once I left school and when I was at university, and the OCD, it was OCD an obsession kind of thing, but it’s kind of more washing hands and because I get very extreme if there’s something on the news, and I immediately apply it to me, and I won’t, all these phobias started to develop so I stopped travelling, you know, after the London terrorist attacks. I stopped travelling because I thought, well if there’s a bomb on a train, sorry on a bus, it could happen on a train. So I just got really scared and just… And because I’m just phobic anyway, and when I was at school like with things like food technology, I took that very literally as well. So, just be, you know, obsessed with food hygiene to a kind of extreme extent, and just get it out of control. I think that just got more extreme. 

And also when I started school I was really scared of the fire alarm, because I thought it meant the school was going to burn down. So I was screaming and screaming and refused to go to school for a while. So, and as I say I got really obsessed about the age of ten with washing my hands all the time, but yes, and when I started secondary school that actually disappeared strangely enough. And I don’t know why it was, maybe because when I first had a friend I felt more secure. I don’t know why.

I dropped a pencil down the sink at [school].

[teacher] says I can’t find it, it’s an old buildings. I can’t..

if I dropped it there [5 sec pause] she did say if I dropped it and then I can’t find the old buildings.