Autism and Aspergers Spectrum Disorders. Mental Heath Videos with Kati Morton

Hey everyone!

This week's video, I'm going to talk
about Autism and Asperger's disorder

and how does it relate to mental illness?
So stay tuned!

[intro music]

So like I said, this week's video topic,
it comes from so many questions

and concerns from all of you.

How does our Autism or Asperger's disorder

affect our mental illness,
and how does it link?

Now before we even get started,
I want to just make everybody aware

of how common this is, and
how many people have this disorder.

In Forbes magazine recently they
published that 1 in 50 children suffer

with some form of Autism.
Because like many of you know,

they call it the "spectrum",
where we have Asperger's, and Autism,

and kind of everything that
falls in between those two.

Something I guess, I don't wanna get too
caught up in diagnostic criteria of this,

but the difference between
Autism and Asperger's is that

autistic children, when they're younger,
we will notice as parents

that they tend not to be as verbal,
and they won't learn or try speaking,

and as they get older they'll have trouble
reading people's expressions.

Like if someone really struggles and
has a problem with Autism

and I furrow my brow, and I'm like,
"What does this mean to you?"

They might have trouble telling me
what that means and what emotion

is attached to that expression.

And they have a lot of trouble reading
people's body language and things like that.

But someone with Asperger's is
very verbal, they will talk,

they will be fine, they will communicate
and things like that, but they will still

struggle to hold eye contact
and to read people's emotional cues

and body language and
things like that.

It really can make it very difficult
for us, for those people who suffer,

to develop relationships and
to feel loved and cared for.

Now the way that this links to
mental health, as far as eating disorders,

self-harm, depression, anxiety,
all the topics that I touch on

in all of my videos, kind of
link back in my mind

to how we self-soothe as a child
with Autism or Asperger's.

And the things that children will do
is rocking in place,

a lot of the time they'll hold their knees
into their chest and they'll rock,

they will even bang their head
against the wall, bang their arms,

as a way to self-soothe.

Because one of the struggles that
they'll have is changes with schedule,

and changes in the routine
that they're used to.

They don't deal well with it,
it feels very uncomfortable,

they get very frustrated,
and that internal frustration

and agression that they can feel,
because it's uncomfortable...

I mean we've all been in uncomfortable situations, right?

And imagine feeling that probably x50
when things are changed

and you're not expecting it
and you're not prepared

and they get very anxious,
and so these are ways that they soothe.

The rocking, like all of us, like in a
rocking chair as a baby.

That's very common.
So they will rock.

And the banging of the head is almost
a release of that aggression

and that anger,
that feeling that they have.

Some will scratch themselves,
bite other children, bite themselves.

Any kind of way to release that.

And I know we can all relate to that.
And you can kind of see where I'm going

with this tie to the self-harm
and the anxiety component.

It is because of that struggle
to self-soothe that many of us

who struggle with Autism or Aspergers
may also self-harm or have high anxiety.

And it can be because of that difficulty
regulating our inside...

I don't know the best way to describe it.
But it's kind of that feeling of overwhelm,

when things don't quite go
the way we planned.

Those are other ways to release.

And you can see that the banging the head
and scratching and the hitting

is in itself a way of self-harm.
And so because we've been doing that

as a way to self-soothe,
why would it change later?

Do you know what I mean?

So, that's the link for that--
for self-harm and for anxiety.

I feel that's why we find
there's such a close connection.

A lot of us who self-harm
and who have high anxiety

also have been diagnosed
with Autism or Asperger's.

Now, as far as eating disorders go:
binge-eating, purging, anorexia,

all varied eating disorders.
If any of you have ever worked with

an autistic or Asperger's child,
they are extremely picky eaters.

It has nothing to do with health, it has
nothing to do with the types of food.

It's all textural, it's all smell,
it's very... for the most part...

I mean I used to do floor time
therapy, when I was in school,

one of my first jobs
was with children with Autism.

And one of my clients
would only eat bacon

if his mom cooked it in
a certain frying pan.

I think it was like orange on the bottom.
I think it was the orange frying pan.

And it had to be cooked to a crisp. Like,
so extremely crispy that half the time,

mom would put it in a Ziploc and
it would be crumbles, but he didn't care.

It was the texture,
it had to be really crispy.

So it wasn't that he was worried about
eating meat, or it was a greasy meat.

He didn't even care. It wasn't anything
to do with that. It was the texture.

So for a lot of people who
struggle with this,

when they want a certain type of food
and they like a certain type of food,

they may binge on it as they get older.
It may be the only food they eat.

So they just eat a lot of that one food.

Or, they're extremely picky
and nothing feels safe

and we don't know
how it's going to feel

and we get really overwhelmed and
we may get that building feeling,

so we may not eat anything,
it may lead to restricting,

which then can lead to bingeing.

And you can see how we can kind of
cycle in an eating-disorder-like phase,

and how it ties to Autism or Asperger's.

Now I know that this is
a really tricky topic,

and there's a lot of things that
I could go into off of this,

but I want to try to keep it simple

and show you how the two are so
closely tied and why we may as adults

find out and get a diagnosis
of Autism or Asperger's and think,

"How did they not
notice this before?"

But like I said, it's on a spectrum.
And I have met so many people--

like I said, 1 in 50 children they
estimate to have some form of it--

we're high functioning.

This has nothing to do...
this isn't like a learning disability.

We aren't handicapped in any way.

This just kind of shows us why
we've had that internal anxiety

and that overwhelmed feeling and we
didn't really have a way to self-soothe,

and we've used our eating disorder, our
depression, our anxiety, our self-harm

as a way to bring that
level down and to kind of cope.

And so just like I talked about
in my workbook, if you haven't

checked out my workbook,
hop on my website and download it.

We will slowly learn ways to self-soothe
using different techniques

like journaling, art therapy, collages.

I will get more into,
in my future videos

ways to stretch and use our
bodies as a way to soothe.

There are a lot of tools that
we can use to self-soothe

that don't involve those unhealthy tools
we've been using for a long time.

But I hope that this helps shed some light
on the links between these two disorders,

and how we, as people who struggle
with both, can still help ourselves,

fight back against those urges,
and work towards

a healthy mind and a healthy body!

So make sure you subscribe to my channel
because I put out videos every Monday,

and I also do Q&A's during the week,
so you don't wanna miss those.

And leave your comments below,
let me know what your experience is,

and if there's a topic within this that
you would like me to touch on more,

because I always listen and I
always read all your comments.

Even if I don't get through them all,
and don't answer them all,

I always read them and I always
make notes and take them to heart.

I love you all.
Have a great week!

[Laughs]

I don't want to healthy-mind-healthy-body
myself into an oblivion.

Ugh, god that itches.

I think it was good.

I mean, you never listen to the content.
Were you even listening?

You were tweeting. I saw you.
Oh, okay.

I would like you to make
me a sandwich though.

[Laughs]

I crack myself up.
Nobody else but myself.

But yeah, I just wanted to make sure
that it's normalized and they realize

it happens to a lot of people and it's
still... I don't know, that it makes sense.

Why it's connected. You know?