Relatively normal

As part of my new job in which I’m responsible for managing an educational programme for young adults with autism, I’m spending quite a bit of time studying learner’s profiles, which describe how the autism or Asperger’s syndrome manifests itself in the young person and how he or she can be best supported. A lot of these young adults suffer from anxiety and some display obsessive-compulsive behaviours.

While some of their perceptions and behaviours may seem bizarre and unreasonable to us ‘normal’ people, I couldn’t help but think that we’re not that different at all: the mechanisms at work are just the same; it’s the triggers that are different and the fact that we think our triggers are justified – but are they?

To us, the changes from plan that send an autistic person into a state of anxiety seem ridiculous but don’t we respond in exactly the same way when things don’t go according to our plan? The difference is that we think our anxiety is justified because our perspective is wider in that we tolerate small changes but only freak out when ‘big’ things go wrong. An autistic person can be intolerant of even minor changes to the plan. However, it’s the same deluded thinking that takes place: the illusion that we can control the flow of life.

The anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behaviour of an autistic person are an expression of the fear of losing control and an attempt at gaining some control. Most of us share that fear and we also desperately try to get a handle on the madness that is life by trying to control things and creating some sort of security around us. We try to achieve this by clinging to possessions, money, people, approval etc. and freaking out if we lose them or someone interferes with them. Again not dissimilar at all to the behaviour of an autistic person if someone interferes with them going through their security-inducing routines.

But the reality is that we have no control. Life plays by its own rules and things hardly ever go according to plan. Most of us are not comfortable with this truth and suffer from the same anxieties an autistic person may display, we’re just better able to mask them and make their expression more socially acceptable.

So I just can't help but think that to someone who has fully realised the impermanence of life and the fact that things arise interdependently (i.e. mostly outside of our influence or control) us 'normal' people must seem like Rain Main.