Holidays and the Disruption of Routine
The holidays can be a time of great joy and happiness as families gather together, reuniting from long distances for their annual gathering. They can also be quite upsetting for many. These two conditions can exist simultaneously: being happy about the holiday season and being upset that the holidays mean a disruption of routine. The neurotypical family member might counsel the neurodivergent family member to “just get over it.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Having the benefit of owning my autistic brain for over half a century, I’d like to share what the concept of routine means and why it’s a vitally important support for the neurodivergent.
In the stereotypical depiction of the autistic person, there is the concept of “routine.” Everyone has a “routine.” Smokers have theirs. Coffee drinkers have theirs. Bartenders have theirs. Baseball players have some amazing rituals (routines) when at bat. Rather than remain at the stereotype, I’d like to dive a bit deeper into this concept.
Anyone who’s been to college since 1950 is likely to be aware of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychologists believe it to be Gospel and use it as a template for interpreting behaviors. Maslow’s education was heavily influenced by the experimental-behaviorist school of psychology that finds it’s roots in B.F. Skinner and Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
Behaviorists believe that psychology should focus on measurable and observable physical behaviors and how these behaviors can be manipulated by changes in the external environment. There is no room in behaviorist theory for thoughts or emotions, a contrast to other theories of psychology. The main tool of behaviorists is called Operant Conditioning. Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a particular behavior and a consequence.
Behaviorist theory in the modern world is operationalized in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA).
What does ABA have to do with routines?
Parents may see their autistic child’s routines as abnormal. They seek help from behaviorists to “correct” this behavior. What they don’t understand is that the autistic brain isn’t a “defective” or “disordered” normal brain. It’s working exactly as designed by its creator. Thus, ABA can treat the autistic child in a massively abusive manor. The majority of adult autistic self-advocates equate ABA with “gay conversion therapy” – seeking to condition the autistic brain to perform in a way in which it was not designed. “Gay conversion therapy” is illegal in several US states whilst ABA is not. (ed. note: a significant number of autistic parents of autistic children with severe needs rely upon ABA. See this substack for a contrasting opinion.)
As an aside, here’s an interesting article on the controversy caused by an ABA-pushing university program and their advertising campaign in the NY subways. One of the adverts said: “We have your son. We will make sure he will not be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning.” It was signed “Autism.”
What does this have to do with holidays and routines? Hold on, I’m getting there. I need to set the stage with a bit more historical context.
The behaviorists, Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, are all from a time when the eugenics movement was gaining steam. The eugenicist’s goal was, and still is, the perfection of man via science. Read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to get a glimpse of what the eugenicist saw as the future, treating Huxley’s satire as a blueprint. Read also Edwin Black‘s rebuttal to the eugenics movement in War Against the Weak.
Adult autistic self-advocates like myself continue our war against the eugenicists. We cite the high rate of PTSD in adult survivors of ABA. But, parents continue to give their children over to the eugenicists to be “cured” or “fixed” (because the system is the true sickness, and in their view, ABA offers them the best chance of keeping their loved ones safe in this sick system in which we live).
But, not all is doom and gloom. There’s another way. There’s another informative theory – Glasser’s Choice Theory. It’s the theoretical construct that informed my dissertation, studying the high attrition rate of autistic college students.
he needs are equally important, and all must be reasonably satisfied if individuals are to fulfill their biological destiny.
These basic needs are:
the need to Survive
the need to Belong
the need to gain Power
the need to be Free
the need to have Fun
The ways in which we fulfill psychological needs can be summarized as follows:
We fulfill the need to survive in our search for food, shelter, and safety.
We fulfill the need to belong by loving, sharing, and cooperating with others.
We fulfill the need for power by achieving, accomplishing, and being recognized and respected.
We fulfill the need for freedom by making choices in our lives.
We fulfill the need for fun by laughing and playing.
As an example, my research into autistic college student retention found that autistics were more likely to remain enrolled when power needs were satisfied (e.g. achieving, accomplishing, and being recognized and respected). This manifests itself in a rather specific way. The autistic person may arrive at college entirely more knowledgeable and up to date in their field of interest than their professors. Professors are not used to being questioned by young skulls full of mush. Professors may disrespect the student in the interactions in class by not recognizing the student’s knowledge of their chosen subject. Why stay when the Prof’s a jerk and doesn’t know as much as you?
Choice theory suggests the existence of a “Quality World“. Glasser’s idea of a “Quality World” restates the Jungian idea of archetypes. Glasser’s “Quality World” and what Jung would call healthy archetypes are indistinguishable.
Our “Quality World” images are the models of an individual’s “perfect” world. Knowingly or not, all humans constantly compare their perception of the world with how they would like it to be, their current Quality World picture. Consciously or not, they determine if their current behavior is the best available choice to take them in the direction they want to go. These behaviors are what we call routines. Yes, everybody has them.
Choice Theory is a better framework for understanding routine or human behavior. Within a choice matrix, people consciously and sub-consciously self-evaluate so that the behaviors they choose have the best chance of helping them achieve what they want in ways that are responsible. Within the autistic person’s brain (quantum field generator), these sub-conscious choices happen so fast. The unnecessary behaviors are reduced to almost nil. Autistic “repetitious behaviors” and “routines” are easily apparent as a result of this reduction.
The holidays bring large noisy, smelly, emotional groups of people into the same room at the same time. Uninformed parents and peers sometimes use autistics as entertainment – this is bullying behavior. You see this in the kid that is lining up toys. The bully comes in and changes the order or location of the toys. This removes the connection to the child’s quality world picture. Their quantum field generator sets at work to sort out the proper path to the restoration of order. A cascading probability calculation occurs as the brain attempts to plot the probability of success of each possible path to the restoration of the quality world (the restoration of order) – resulting in an overload. These overloads are often called “melt downs.” Think of when your computer is engaged in a heavy calculation, and you notice that it’s fan has increased it’s speed audibly so as to dissipate heat from the system. Our brains are no different.
The holidays are the perfect trigger for melt downs
The autistic person doesn’t “melt-down” as a result of their own choice. It’s not a chosen behavior on their part. It’s a result of the choice of others to disturb their quality world and the energy it takes to restore a proper order to their world.
It’s a cruel exchange. It’s this cruelty that is at the heart of classical behavioural conditioning, which is why it often leads to PTSD. An ABA facilitator who uses classical conditioning to achieve a specific behavior that isn’t in line with the autistic person’s Quality World causes lasting damage. The “patient” will perform the behavior eventually in order to make the intervention stop.
The important take-away: our routines are directly related to our quality world picture. Our routines help us safely navigate a world that is not designed for us. Our routines don’t need a day off? Our routines are our vacation from the world.
If you’re organizing your holidays it’s important to note that the traditional holiday celebrations are full of potential triggers for neurodivergent people. And, no, we can’t just “get over it.”
It’s also important to understand that neurodivergent brains are not disordered “normal” brains. Just as the iPhone isn’t a disordered or defective Android phone, the neurodivergent person isn’t a disordered or defective “normal” person. I can be the best autistic person that I can be. I can be the best me that I can be. I can never be the best version of anyone else. I can improve my golf game. I can never play like Tiger Woods. Only Tiger can be Tiger. I’m the only one that can be me … and I prefer my routines.
Thus, my routines make perfect sense to me. They might not make sense to someone else. My teleological brain works differently than the “normal” brain. It doesn’t work in a linear fashion. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line – it’s a merger of the points in space and time whilst sorting out the probabilities that there may exist a better set of points from which to begin.
My brain is all that I have. Doctors spent decades trying to drug and talk my brain into “normal.” There are lasting affects as a result of this trauma, not the least of which is PTSD.
So please, be respectful of each other’s routines around the holidays – regardless of their operating system.
Rather than wish you a happy holidays, I’ll simply wish that you are as happy and supported as humanly possible.