Ice Blue Deer
Member
I've always wondered what is meant by autistic people seeing patterns when I read about autism. They never explain, I can't seem to find any information about that either.
When I got diagnosed with ASD not so long ago, I told the interviewers that I see triangles in things.
'Okay, so you see patterns...'
I was like, wait, the way she says it fits autism, but what if it's just a plain OCD trait?
Because I also have needless counting, need to breathe out on my left arm as well when I breathe out on my right arm, seeing lines and shapes in things, attraction to symmetry, putting my fingers in one perfectly straight line in my hand palms when I'm stressed and music repeating in my head all the time.
Then they asked me what I was looking at all the time and I told them that I was looking at the whiteboard behind them, because the corner of the whiteboard that was made of metal, had this round shape that caught my attention. I was following the flow of that line, something I often do to concentrate or am stressed. I follow the flow and shape of things, lines, triangles, squares etc.
She said something about 'focus on details' on that. That sounds like autism. But what if it's OCD?
They told me that my OCD-traits like counting and stuff is not enough compulsive or bothering for me to get diagnosed with OCD (because I'm not really bothered by it). So according to them OCD disappears and becomes part of the autism.
So confused about this.
Has anyone ever heard of this before? What do they actually mean by patterns and does my pattern seeing really fit ASD?
When I got diagnosed with ASD not so long ago, I told the interviewers that I see triangles in things.
'Okay, so you see patterns...'
I was like, wait, the way she says it fits autism, but what if it's just a plain OCD trait?
Because I also have needless counting, need to breathe out on my left arm as well when I breathe out on my right arm, seeing lines and shapes in things, attraction to symmetry, putting my fingers in one perfectly straight line in my hand palms when I'm stressed and music repeating in my head all the time.
Then they asked me what I was looking at all the time and I told them that I was looking at the whiteboard behind them, because the corner of the whiteboard that was made of metal, had this round shape that caught my attention. I was following the flow of that line, something I often do to concentrate or am stressed. I follow the flow and shape of things, lines, triangles, squares etc.
She said something about 'focus on details' on that. That sounds like autism. But what if it's OCD?
They told me that my OCD-traits like counting and stuff is not enough compulsive or bothering for me to get diagnosed with OCD (because I'm not really bothered by it). So according to them OCD disappears and becomes part of the autism.
So confused about this.
Has anyone ever heard of this before? What do they actually mean by patterns and does my pattern seeing really fit ASD?