Updating this now as a college junior. Understanding more about the autistic rule system has let me significantly decrease the impact of autism in my life. I hope others will benefit from my thoughts.

I copy this from a speech I made for Speech and Debate. The wording will be a little sourced and made more for speech than for reading. 

“[Tinman] walked very carefully, with his eyes on the road, and when he saw a tiny ant toiling by he would step over it, so as not to harm it. The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything. ‘You people with hearts,’ [Tinman] said, ‘have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.“

~The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Tinman is much like people with autism. Autism, as defined by the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, 2013, is classified by “Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts… [with] deficits in social-emotional reciprocity… ”

These deficits have been well documented, but one important aspect has largely been neglected: the autistic mind’s inherent systemic nature. As the Cambridge Autism Research Centre points out, 2009, “The autistic brain is highly tuned to systemize: it is the ultimate pattern detector and truth detector.” 

Now, let’s understand more about the autistic mind. The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2011, noted in experiments that “…[young] participants with [autism]… seemed less aware of the possibility that the rules which prohibit social conventional transgressions might change according to… specific contextual conditions…”. In other words, the autistic mind does not inherently accept arbitrary social conventions; instead it is governed by a subconscious need for consistency and logic. Autistics operate with a massive list of mental rules that detail which actions are allowed with what nuance; a Rule System consisting of 3 kinds of rules within it: definitions, truths, and rulings

First, Definitions provide the interpretative meat of the System, detail the patterns that emotions have, and describe what differentiates one emotion from another. What does it mean to guilt people, to be selfish? What is happiness, anger? Definitions are the most philosophical section of the System, requiring precision and nuance to work flawlessly. Definitions are not allowed to have exceptions.

Second, Truths are crafted from definitions. Truths outline the very foundation that the rulings must abide by. Examples of general truths include “people like receiving gifts” and “it is always permissible to guilt people into action so long as the intended result is not selfish.” Truths can be complicated, and are definitionally or probabilistically true.

Third, rulings are the end result of definitions and general truth combined in a logical way. They typically follow the form of “In x situation, y action is/isn’t allowed. If I have to decide to give a gift to somebody, for example, I would cross-reference the truths to make a ruling on its permissibility. Unfortunately, rulings ensure that autistics cannot rely on emotion, on “heart,” as a guide to understanding social situations; the autistic cannot accept “because it feels true” as sufficient justification against logical inconsistencies.

Keep note that though I talk about the System in great detail now, the System was not written until an autism-caused suicidal breaking point when I was 12. At first, the system was not formalized nor very long, being only about 11 pages typed out. Despite this, the System had always been real. People don’t need to write what happiness is for it to exist. It always was.

This does mean that the way I am describing this System is a personal thing. Other autistics may talk about this System in a different way or may not be consciously aware of it. 

Because of how specific the System is, I used to actively go through the whole system every time I even got up from my chair and wanted to move near someone. It was… mentally exhausting. Nowadays, it’s intuitive and I’ve managed to force most of behaviors into the rulings demanded. But this process took five years, even with the constant help of a chair of the special education department and forensics. 

There are a lot of implications for people with autism involving the system, but the most visible is a tendency to refuse to make assumptions. As Attwood explains, autistic people are unusually specific with answers and are usually unable to answer questions like, “how was your day” due to how many assumptions have to be made. The autistic person will often take instructions literally, unable or unwilling to assume the intent of the person issuing the order, as assumptions incorporate exceptions all up in everywhere.

However, not everything about this unassuming nature is bad. A uniquely autistic trait appears: the autistic naturally refuses to stereotype other people or groups on even a subconscious level and tends to treat friends, family, and strangers with equal regard and trustworthiness. Autistics are essentially oblivious to social conditioning.

There is a much bigger implication, the most unfortunate one. Mind, and autistic breakdowns.

Breaking or failing to create a System rule is enough to trigger the “yelling” of a subconscious entity that desires, needs consistency. This punishment applies for all 3 categories of rules; if an autistic doesn’t know the name of an emotion, can’t figure out a truth to a scenario, or even considers breaking a rule, the yelling intensifies from the autistic subconscious. We’ll call this autistic subconscious entity “Mind.” When Mind yells, it is not literal. It is not some auditory hallucination or some second identity. Rather, the yelling is more of a compulsion, a constant stream of overwhelming thoughts that can bring about breakdowns until the inconsistency is patched. Autistic breakdowns are… bad.

All this might just seem like a more extreme version of stuff everyone deals with at some point like guilt (stress) or held moral principles. It is. Everything about autism, everything about disorders, is an extreme version of something that most people experience with significantly less frequency and intensity. This increased intensity is what makes disorders so dangerous, frustrating, and terrible. Autistic breakdowns exemplify this by being so frequent and horrific.

The first part of an autistic breakdown happens primarily as the result of three things: the System is disobeyed on purpose, the System has no ruling for a situation, or a sensory overload occurs in an autistic with extreme sensitivities. Emotions can amplify the visceral response from any of these.

Mind, as sort of an enforcer of the System, then begins to yell. It gets angry. At this stage, the breakdown can be stopped, sort of. Though Mind is loud, it is not loud enough to be intolerable, and constant exhausting mental effort can make Mind feel muted, though draining motivation to do anything. Assuming no further problems, things will return to normal after approximately an hour.

If instead the problem is instigated, Mind begins to yell so loudly that it is intolerable. As a defense mechanism, all thought processes shut down and all ability to think beyond basic tasks and motives dies. During this stage, it is normal to see mostly mindless shambling or sitting. Coping mechanisms like extremely basic games or repetitive motion are used; repetitive motions especially are unusually soothing for people with autism, usually hand flapping or shaking objects. For me, this meant shaking a Tinman toy that I’ve carried with me for several years.

Should the problem worsen still, the true autistic breakdown begins. Breakdowns last for about 1.5 hours from their initial onset. Physically, breathing becomes difficult. Hyperventilation occurs as oxygen tries to continue moving. All body parts lose energy to hold upright resulting in a limp body pose. Moving an arm slightly is about all the energy that exists.

Mentality reverts to a 2nd grader’s for the duration and games as simple as tic-tac-toe become near-impossible to win, even if someone is purposefully trying to lose. The “bad thoughts” continue to flow, but this time there is no defense. An overarching fear, of absolutely everything. Inside, a constant pulse demanding escape, useless adrenaline. Constant tears of fear and sadness. No distractions can be used when both physically and mentally incapable. There is no escape. Speaking style reverts back to its “natural autistic" state. Run-on sentences verbose thinking, avoiding gaze monotone.

When the breakdown ends, it doesn’t. For the next few hours after it ends the body becomes lifeless; I want to just lay down. I can’t focus on work. I am left weak. For the next 36 hours, scatterbrained. I fall behind in all obligations. And during these hours, the System does not give a damn. It demands that I use all available evidence to figure out what caused the breakdown and then solve it so that it will never happen again.

Though the breakdowns no longer impact me quite as severely now, I leave this quote from my previous post version back in high school.

“Because of how frequent these breakdowns are, I have failed 5 classes. Because of my obsession with trying to solve them so they never happen again, I have become absolutely afraid of another ever happening again.

Every two weeks, I become afraid. It might happen again then. They were only mild before Sophomore Year, and Junior Year they escalated to the terrible point they’re at now.

That’s an Autistic Breakdown.”