The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism

DO YOU MOVE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS ABOUT IN THAT AWKWARD WAY?
    In my gym class, the teacher tells me to do things like ‘Stretch your arms!’ and ‘Bend at the knees!’ But I don’t always know what my arms and legs are up to, not exactly. For me, I have no clear sensation of where my arms and legs are attached, or how to make them do what I’m telling them to do. It’s as if my limbs are a mermaid’s rubbery tail.
    I think the reason why some kids with autism try to get hold of an object by ‘borrowing’ someone else’s hand is that they can’t tell how far they need to extend their own arms to reach the object. They’re not too sure how to actually grab the object either, because we have problems perceiving and gauging distances. By constant practice, however, we should be able to overcome this difficulty.
    That said, I still can’t even tell when I’ve stepped on someone’s foot or jostled someone out of my way. So something connected with my sense of touch might be mis-wired too.

Q29 W HY DO YOU DO THINGS THE REST OF US DON’T? DO YOUR SENSES WORK DIFFERENTLY IN SOME WAY?
    ‘Why won’t you wear shoes?’ ‘Why will you only wear half-length sleeves?’ ‘Why do you always shave off or pluck out your body-hair? Doesn’t it hurt?’ Every time us people with autism do something that other people wouldn’t, it must make you wonder why. Do people with autism possess different senses? Or do these actions just give us some sort of kick?
    To my mind, both answers are barking up the wrong tree. The reason could be that we’ve got into such a state that if we
don’t
do these actions, we’ll go to pieces completely. If you talk about someone’s ‘senses working differently’ it means that the person’s nervous system is somehow malfunctioning. But I believe that in our case, there’s nothing wrong with us at a nerve level. Instead, it’s actually our emotions that trigger the abnormal reactions. It’s only natural for anyone stuck in a bad place to try to get out of it, and it’s my own despair that causes me to misread the messages my senses are sending me. If all of my attention gets focused on one area of my body, it’s as if all of my body’s energy is concentrated there too, which is when my senses all report that something in that area is going badly wrong.
    If a person without autism is going through a hard time, he or she can talk it over with someone, or make a ruckus about it. But in our case, that’s not an option – we can never make ourselves understood. Even when we’re in the middle of a panic attack, people either don’t get what’s happening to us, or else they just tell us to stop crying. My guess is that the despair we’re feeling has nowhere to go and fills up our entire bodies, making our senses more and more confused.

Q30 W HY ARE YOU TOO SENSITIVE OR INSENSITIVE TO PAIN?
    Among people with autism, there are some who make a huge fuss when they have their hair or nails trimmed, even though it shouldn’t hurt at all. At the same time, there are people who stay very calm and collected, even when they’ve got an injury that’s obviously painful.
    I don’t think this is all to do with nerves and nerve-endings. It’s more a matter of ‘inner pain’ expressing itself via the body. When memories suddenly come to people, we experience a flashback – but in the case of people with autism, memories are not stored in a clear order. For those of us who are disturbed by having their hair and nails trimmed, somehow their negative memories are probably connected to the action.
    A normal person might say, ‘Oh, he’s never liked having his hair cut or his nails trimmed, ever since he was small, and we’ve no idea why.’ But the thing is, the memory of a person with autism isn’t like a number-scale from which you pick out the recollection you’re after: it’s more like a jigsaw puzzle, where if even just one piece is mis-inserted, the entire puzzle becomes impossible to complete. What’s more, a single piece that doesn’t belong there can mess up all the surrounding memories as well. So it’s not necessarily physical pain that’s making us cry at all – quite possibly, it’s memory.
    As for people who don’t show any signs of pain, my guess is that they’re unable to keep those signs on display. I think it’s very difficult for you to properly get your heads around just how hard it is for us to express what we’re feeling. For us, dealing with the pain