Inside My Autistic World

By Travis Breeding

Come inside the mind and world of Travis. Travis lives with autism among many other things. Experience the world from the autistic perspective through his eyes. Learn about what it is like to go through puberty with autism. Learn how Travis escapes into his imagination to create a make-believe world to help him cope with autism, and learn about quality of life issues autistic people experience.

This book will dive into the question of why we might see more aggression at puberty for someone with autism. Already feeling confused in a world they don't understand, autistic people experience physical changes in their body that lead to emotional changes they might not know how to handle. In this book Travis explains how those physical changes developed different emotions in him that he has difficulty processing. Learn how he is processing those emotions and understanding the changing body and mind as it went through puberty.

Then learn how Travis escapes into his imagination to create a make-believe imaginary world that helps him feel more safe and comfortable living with autism. When Travis doesn't understand things he creates a make-believe world to help him cope. That make-believe world is one of the key factors in him still being alive today. He will start by explaining the basics of that make-believe world, how it functions, and how special interests come into play. Then he will move into more advanced issues with escaping into imagination to help him get through social scenarios each day. Next, he will explain how it is sometimes difficult to confuse escaping into imagination with psychosis that he experiences from mental illness.

This book concludes with a chapter on what Travis thinks good quality of life would mean for him and autistic people. He is always interested in improving the quality of life people with autism experience. Travis gives his thoughts and ideas on what it might mean to lead a happy life for himself and others on the autism spectrum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breeding Publishing
• Release date: Jan 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463711309

Travis Breeding

Travis is an author from Huntington Indiana how enjoys entertaining and educating through words. He enjoys telling a story and taking it from his mind to paper. He has authored several books on autism, mental illness, schizophrenia, and disability issues. He continues to write about those issues but also explores some fiction writing as well. Travis has a loving family and enjoys spending time with friends and family. He loves to play bingo and meet new people. One day Travis hopes to start a family of his own and give them so much love. Travis would like to thank his readers for supporting him on his journey of becoming an author. He could not have done it without you. If you would like to get in touch with Travis please email him at tbreedauthoratgmaildotcom,

Book preview

Inside My Autistic World

Travis Breeding

Published by Travis Breeding at Smashwords

Copyright 2019 Travis Breeding

All Rights Reserved

Contents

Chapter One: Autism Aggression at Puberty

Chapter Two: Escape into My Imagination Book I

Chapter Three: Escape into My Imagination Book II

Chapter Four: The Great Autism Redemption Book I

About the Author

Chapter One Aggression at Puberty

Things were going along nicely. I had finally seemed to figure life out and made some sense of the school day. Then several things happened that would rock my world.

The first thing that happened was when I went from sixth grade into my seventh, grade year. I went to school back in the day where sixth graders were still at our elementary school and seventh-graders went to the middle school.

The transition from sixth grade to seventh grade was difficult for me. Not only was I changing school buildings and spending my days in an entirely different environment, but I was also changing teachers. I wasn’t just changing one teacher at a time either, because when I entered middle school and got into the seventh grade, we started having multiple teachers. I was no expected to learn the teaching styles of seven or eight different teachers, and that task felt very overwhelming to me.

It is hard for an autistic person to adapt to change. I had become accustomed to having one teacher throughout the school day and only having to switch teachers once per year as I advanced grades.

Now, I was going to have seven or eight different teachers throughout the day and be expected to switch classes every forty to forty-five minutes. That is a lot to ask of any child.

As I got more into my seventh grade, year, I noticed something else starting to change. The children started to change. Their behavior started being different than what it had been the previous seven years in elementary school. They started socializing different and it seemed like there was now a whole new set of social rules that I wasn’t aware of.

I didn’t do so bad in elementary school because there were fewer social skills to learn there than there would be in middle school.

In elementary school if you could run around on the playground and play tag you were doing quite well at fitting in and making friends.

In middle school, I learned there’s a lot more to making friends than playing tag or running around on the playground playing games. Middle school is much more complex, and the social environment and social concepts change as the kids get older.

This change is where I first really started to notice I was different. I would say seventh grade is when I first started to be able to tell that I had Asperger Syndrome even though I had no idea I had it at the time because I was undiagnosed until the age of 22.

Everything about socializing had changed. Kids didn’t run around on the playground at recess anymore. Occasionally some of the boys might have played basketball but mostly the kids just walked around and talked to one another or sat or stood in groups talking.

I couldn’t understand why no one wanted to play games anymore at recess. What was everyone so intently talking about? I didn’t know what was going on. I had no clue what to say and I felt anxious that everyone was sitting around talking and not playing games. Why did they no longer want to play games with me at recess?

There is a social change that takes place in children as they hit puberty and become teenagers. This change starts in the preteen years and can completely rock an autistic child’s world. A child who thinks he has finally figured out the social world of elementary school only to be quickly thrown into a different social world in middle school where he is lost with no clue of how to interact with his peers.

Feeling lost can create a lot of anxiety about going to school. If you don’t know how to socialize or get along with your peers that can make going to school a dread each day.

Some autistic people want to be very social and some don’t. Each approach is perfectly fine as it is preference to who the person is.

I was an autistic kid who wanted to be very social and do all the social activities that the other kids seemed to enjoy. I wanted to go to the school dances and attend the basketball games. I just wanted to be included in what the other kids were doing.

I learned that it takes a lot of good social skills to get included in many of those activities. Sure, anyone can just go to the school dance or show up at a basketball game but if you are going to be a part of the group and hang out with your peers you need to get the hidden curriculum and understand how to socially engage and connect with your peers.

What was leading to all these social changes? It wasn’t just that we had left elementary school and went to middle school. There was something else going on with the children that was causing them to make the social changes.

About the time kids reach the seventh grade, puberty starts to set in for us. This is when we start to develop more advanced feelings for members of the opposite sex and begin to pursue relationships with them. This starts very early on in life now. Some studies suggest puberty is continuing to develop in children earlier and earlier than ever before. No one is sure the exact cause to this, but there are many theories. One theory is the obesity epidemic in America. The human body associates an overweight body as a body that is physically ready for change and entering puberty.

Autistic people will often be late bloomers when it comes to puberty, although there is at least one study I’ve heard of that associates, autism to an earlier onset of puberty than typical kids. I don’t see the value giving too much credit to just this one study and still feel confident in saying that many autistic kids will experience puberty later than their peers.

While our bodies may be reacting to puberty in the same way as are typical peers, our minds do not experience puberty the same way as our peers. At least, our social understanding of what’s going on with our bodies are not identical to that of our typical peers.

Depending on the level of autism there can be several things that happen. The range of emotions that an autistic child might feel during puberty range anything from a child not being aware at all that their body is changing and going through puberty to an autistic child being very in-tune with their changing body and wondering why it is changing.

It is great to support autistic people who want to understand why their body is changing with learning about puberty and sexuality.

Sexuality education starts from a young age. In my opinion, sexuality education starts at the onset of puberty if not before.

With an ever-changing body and a changing social environment, it becomes easy for an autistic child to become frustrated. They feel even more isolated than they ever have before and some may realize that their body is changing and feel awkward about that.

The onset of puberty and the new social environment is likely to trigger some behavior changes in the autistic child. This is a lot of change for their body and mind to adjust to and might feel overwhelming to them.

Any child can experience agitation during puberty, but autistic children may be more prone to aggression during and after puberty than the typical child and there are a few good reasons for this.

One reason is that you have an autistic child who now has an interest in someone of the opposite sex or even possibly someone of the same gender.

Regardless, we have a sexual interest now and the person is interested in going deeper than just friendship even though they may not realize it.

When I say they may not realize it, I mean that they may not be able to understand how to define it. They could be very aware that they like someone on a deeper level now but not in-tune with what the social rules are that would tell them that this means they want someone to be their girlfriend instead of just being their friend.

As an autistic person, I often think of dating as just wanting to be better friends with certain people than with others and that is exactly what dating is when it works out the way it supposed to.

However, in adult relationships we would possibly see a label of more than friends put on a couple who was super close to one another and forming an intense friendship.

The autistic person might not understand this label and may be wondering what it means. They might assume they are just wanting to be good friends with someone and pursue them as a friend because that is how they know how to pursue people but, their feelings want that person to be more than a friend.

The human mind can play tricks on anyone. This happened to me and I suspect the human mind can play tricks on most autistic people.

When you have a changing body and you don’t understand the social rules that come along with that changing body it creates confusion and panic for anyone.

It seemed to me there was a change in social rules along with the onset of puberty. On top of that I was getting a late start from the rest of my typical peers because I didn’t really form an interest in women until I was seventeen or eighteen years old.

This is where we need to talk about emotional puberty. In my opinion there are two parts to puberty. Physical puberty where your body goes through all the physical changes it is supposed to go through in order to go from being a boy into being a man. Then there is emotional puberty and that is where your social and emotional understanding of your body and what you are supposed to do with your body comes into play.

Emotional puberty would be when we start to realize that our bodies have changed, and we are now ready to pursue the opposite sex for a sexual relationship. This is where we would recognize that our emotions towards the opposite sex or same sex if you like the same sex have changed and we no longer think of some of them the same way we used to.

Some members of that opposite sex now stand out and we think of them differently than we used to.

The emotional puberty part would tell us how to interact with that person differently and what to say to them. Emotional puberty is about understanding the type of social relationship you are going to have with someone and communicating with them in that way.

This is what got me into trouble. I had experienced physical puberty close to the same age as my peers did but the emotional puberty took me a lot longer to experience and when I did experience it, I didn’t experience it like my peers.

I didn’t notice women as sexual until I was about seventeen. When I did, I wanted to interact with them but didn’t know how. Instead, I kind of just looked at them and thought to myself I think she’s very pretty or I like the way she looks today.

I was so scared that a woman would find out that I liked her and would hate me for liking her. Even before I had ever tried to talk to a woman about dating, I had developed a negative self-esteem about myself.