Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Monday, February 6, 2012

Physical Tics and Aspergers


Physical Tics have a number of reasons for being according to this Aspiemind of mine. In one way or another, they are a form of expression.
Whilst most tics arise from concern, stress or anxiety, I perform routine hand tics at home for none of the aforementioned reasons. I like to think of them as almost friendly and outward expressions of a restless mind. This variety of tics can be suppressed fairly easily, for the most part. Its conscious effort but doable. They are like constant companions, just under the surface and quite honestly, I rarely pay any attention to them. Sometimes they remind me of a desert or cup of coffee after dinner. Its just something I am compelled to do. They are simply a part of who I am.
Stress definitely increases the tics both in degree and amount of. When I am suddenly stressed out, the tics follow a regular pattern. Funny, sometimes they are outward indicators of stressors that I wasn't consciously aware of. When I get upset, the tics start in my hands and move to my arms and shoulders.
I really start to get concerned if the tics go all the way down to my feet. I typically do a very rhythmic pattern with both feet and it repeats in short spurts. Feet tics tell me a major issue is going on and I have to take action of some sort. Oft I feel that I should just run, run, run. Usually, with this type of gross, whole body involvement my speech center starts being erratic and I'll have verbal tics and great difficulties talking. To address whatever issue is causing this disruption I have learned that I can do a couple of things to calm back down.
One, I can take some of my anti-anxiety medication. Whilst this will physically calm the tics, it fails to address the underlying issue. Two, and what works the bestest is to contact a friend either via phone or in person to bring forth the issue so it can be adequately dealt with.
Geez, I hadn't thought of this before but those are quite limited options. Hmmm, but they do work. At least I have something that does. If I just ignore the heavy-duty tics and take the meds, the tics simply return when the meds wear off.
I guess I also use me blog to calm down and vent. Hmmm, yes, that does work in a pinch.
I do find it interesting to note the progression of how the tics affect my body based on the severity of the issue. I can easily see the pattern now. My tics tell me how things are going on the inside.