Adverse Behaviors In Autism

Every time I teach my autism seminar, I have at least one parent approach me with questions regarding adverse behaviors in their child, wondering how to deal with them while frustration mounts. The answer is always the same: “Be understanding, and be very patient.” By “adverse” behaviors, I am not saying that the autistic child or adult is being purposefully bad. “Adverse” simply means that the behavior is not congruent with the neurotypical (normal) ways of doing things. Stimming, outbursts, lack of eye contact, “headbanging” routines, defiance, anxiety, hypersensitivity, and panic attacks are all examples of adverse behavior. I like to explain that adverse behaviors happen only when the autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. In other words, they’re just part of the daily life of a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Most autistic people will have only one or two adverse behaviors. I believe my two are hypersensitivity and “headbanging”. These behaviors are only made worse when people such as my dad, when I was a child, and now my wife try to correct them. It’s just not going to happen! Headbanging is not to be confused with stimming, and I will explain the difference later. Stimming is the repetitive flapping of hands, hitting oneself, rocking, making annoying sounds, and so on. Stimming was a very common behavior in me when I was a child. I would bang my head against the headboard of my crib and constantly want to go full-speed in a rocking chair or rocking horse. I would also sing, horribly, at the top of my lungs while rocking. Stimming was how I found comfort in the world since everything and everyone around me seemed so intimidating. During my late teens and early 20s, there was defiance. I had no motivation to follow any path, to make any friends, to get anywhere in life. This is what I call my period of “shutdown”. I knew I was different. I felt that nobody cared because nobody understood. So I just wanted out. Thank goodness for one or two adult friends, I never did self-destruct. But it was definitely a sad and lonely time.

One thing that seemed so unusual to many people was the fact that I felt right at home when in front of a crowd. Maybe it was because I had been playing the piano in recitals ever since I was four years old? Whatever the reason, I displayed practically no anxiety at all. I loved assignments in college where I had to prepare a presentation to give in front of the class. I felt right at home playing the role of “teacher”. On the contrary, though, I do experience some level of nervousness when giving instructions on performing a particular skill, such as CPR. I feel most comfortable when I am disseminating knowledge. Because anxiety is very common in people on the spectrum, it is usually dealt with by taking psychoactive medicines such as Prozac and Zoloft. Even though people on the spectrum need only half the typical dosage, I must, as a doctor of natural healing, blow the horn of advocacy for safer ways of dealing with anxiety such as herbal alternatives (such as St. John’s Wort), meditation, yoga, energy medicine, and chiropractic care (particularly upper cervical specific).

Hypersensitivity is also extremely common among people on the spectrum. Hypersensitivity doesn’t just mean being more affected by the things people say and do, oftentimes taking too many things personally or the wrong way. It also has to do with sensory input and how it is processed, such as the lighting and sounds in a room, the feel of certain textures, fragrances, etc. If there are too many hypersensitivities at one time, sensory overload occurs. For me, this would cause me to go into “shutdown” mode. When I was a trainee on the ambulance squad, I was definitely hypersensitive to all the activities going on around me during an emergency situation. Therefore, I would always shut down and freeze up as if I didn’t know what to do. I certainly did know what to do. I just couldn’t multitask until I forced myself to learn how. That’s what overload can do to an autistic person, usually causing them to either have a panic attack or an outburst. My hypersensitivities are much more pronounced and devastating when I am unrested or unbathed for a whole day. Lack of sleep can make me fidgety toward things that normally wouldn’t bother me, such as listening to music or the TV, or even having my wife hover around me. Also, I could never ever leave the house for the day unless I’ve had a shower first. Otherwise, I feel as though I have swamp scum covering me from head to toe, and even letting my wife touch my hair freaks me out. Normally, though, I handle sensory overload by turning things off, such as the radio, TV, lights, or by ignoring the (unintentional) aggressor. Unfortunately, though, when I was working in the busy hospital setting during my days as a Respiratory Therapist, this meant that I would shut off my pager without even realizing it if I was concentrating too much on another task, such as taking a patient’s vital signs.

As for the “headbanging” routines, I define these as any task that is repeated over and over again without any purpose or without any results. While stimming equals repetitive actions, “headbanging” means actual tasks. Since making social and business-related contact with people is perhaps my weakest area in life, I figured that I would certainly get somewhere as an entrepreneur if I write a great brochure and send it out by direct mail to prospective clients. In the eight-plus years I’ve been making brochures, mailing lists, spending hundreds of dollars on postage, rearranging my website, and making poor attempts at cold calling, I never received a single client through these efforts. This unproductive dead-end of doing the same thing over and over again with absolutely no results was THE final straw that caused Bianca and I to start drifting apart. It was my sincere wish to pursue marriage counseling that finally brought me to the discovery that I was autistic, thereby forming a strong loving bond between Bianca and me.

So, in the end, how are parents and caretakers supposed to deal with adverse behaviors? How does Bianca deal with mine? She just does. There is no “right” or “wrong” to correct. Adverse behaviors are just part of being autistic. Such mannerisms add color to the world, as they are part of the autistic person’s nature. It would certainly benefit the autistic person to receive counseling from a psychologist or a social worker. I myself see a social worker simply to have somebody to talk to who can help me see things from a neurotypical perspective in a nonjudgmental way while accepting myself, autism and all, as I am. As I stated earlier, adverse behaviors happen only when an autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. It is necessary for the parent and caretaker to take away this notion of changing the person with autism. The autistic person needs to be accepted as they are. They may never be exactly the person you want them to be. But they will certainly be comfortable being themselves.