Please help, if you can, and if you have the time.

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I was diagnosed with ASD September 2010. It has helped a bit, knowing there was a reason for the way I behaved, but some things I still cannot understand. I am hoping someone will be able to help me?
I can't understand why I get so upset / angry at randomly being touched and it bothers me greatly. Counsellors have told me it's just the way my brain is 'wired up'. Is that really the only explanation?
The same applies for my other 'quirks'. I know what it is, but I still can't figure out why it is.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly you want help with. If it's understanding, I'm not sure what to tell you. Sometimes, things lack any real explanation. You just gotta be able to accept the bad things that can't be changed and work on the good things than can get better.

Basically I just want to know why certain things bother me. Like, I know I hate being touched but I don't know why. Nothing bad ever happened if people hugged me when I didn't want it, I just couldn't bear it, and I can't understand it. I know some people are scared of dogs because they got bitten when they were kids, and I get that, but I don't get why other things have this affect on me.

Aspies/auties are basically similar to non-human animals in that their first instinct is to react as if modern civilization had not yet been developed and we were still hunter-gatherers roaming around fighting over limited prey and other resources and thus if some with ASDs are touched suddenly they react as if a predator, a human enemy or animal predator of some kind, has attacked them by surprise. The more "civilized", logical part of the brain quickly overrules that sometimes and so you just get an unpleasant sensation. But sometimes if you're like me you jump and yell "get off me!" when the person was only trying to pat you affectionately. (When I'm really anxious.)

Sensory issues. Autistic people FEEL more, SEE more, HEAR more and differently than NTs. Many of us hate to be touched. I can feel a touch for 20 or more minutes once it happens. It also makes me feel "dirty" when others touch me... (may be a bit of OCD in that one) There are a number of reasons but primarily it all boils down to sensory issues. You can find a TON of information on sensory issues on the interwebz.....

Perhaps because you cannot help but focus on the sensation so deeply. Some brains have a challenging time drowning out excess and irrelevant stimulation or moving the attention away from any irrelevant information and it overwhelms us, suddenly a simple brushing touch or an unintentional meeting of the eyes can seem like an intensely important experience to the brain. Neurotypical/non-autistic attention seems to move swiftly and cleanly, sensing what is relevant in any situation, not becoming stuck on any particular sensation or subject of interest.

While this is an interesting theory, I'm not so sure it's correct. I was thinking something more like this:

Thank you all very much for your help

Yes I don't have any degrees or anything. I should have stated it's my pet theory. I also agree with what kfisherx said. I've read it's cause the sensation persists for longer in the consciousness. I'm interested at looking at things from an evolutionary perspective also and my best guess as to why non-dangerous sensations are filtered out sooner in NTs is that it's an adaptation to modern society. Not that autistics are more "primitive" or anything, because autistic genes are needed to propel innovation instead of just maintain a society. I feel like I'm talking myself into a hole here and making myself look idiotic cause obviously I'm not well-informed, it's just my uneducated theory.

I think it's similar to how we tend to have eye-contact problems. It's just a direct symptom of how we are wired that we react differently to social stimulus.

I think both of these explanations make sense...I think they sort of go together because of how the "civilized" brain--along with other neurological structures--plays a role in how people experience and respond to sensory input. Here are my thoughts about this, offered up for scrutiny:

The "'civilized', logical part of the brain" is (by the way: please correct me if I've got any of this wrong somehow) the cerebral cortex--with the "thinking [conscious] brain" being the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions--which include the regulation of attention, the organization and prioritization of information, and the control of conscious responses. Different areas of the cortex are responsible for certain kinds of learning, for processing visual information, for motor coordination etc.

A couple of the older (less "civilized") parts of the brain--that process information before it reaches the cortex--are:

The thalamus, which is largely responsible for relaying incoming sensory information from the peripheral nervous system (nerves in your skin and joints that register touch, pressure, etc.) to other parts of the brain for processing--so it can be analyzed and responded to.

The amygdala (along with other parts of the limbic system) is largely responsible for the activating emotional response--the amygdala specifically is largely (maybe entirely?) responsible for the fear (fight/flight/freeze) response and for storing very basic memories about important experiences (such as experiences of threat to well-being or survival). It functions kind of like a triage desk at the hospital--screening incoming information for relevance and potential threat to survival.

People with ASDs tend to have problems with prefrontal-cortical ("civilized, thinking brain") functions that are all about information processing--such as regulating attention, organization, and prioritizing. ASD-brains also tend to have problems with the functioning of the amygdala (overactivity, I believe) and other structures in the limbic system.

Additionally, I read a research study recently about how in the brain of a person with an ASD, there are a bunch of different regions don't connect to each other as well/strongly as in NT brains. This might explain (in combination with differences in the functioning of specific brain regions) why people with ASDs often react very strongly to essentially "unimportant" sensory information for no conscious reason.....

If problems with the functioning of the lower brain structures results in information being processed ineffectively or even just processed "differently" (e.g. encoded in memory as threatening when it isn't, or perhaps not encoded in certain kinds of memory at all) then a person with an ASD can't learn how to consciously respond to sensory information using the "civilized" cortex (like a hug or a light touch) in the way an NT person would..... the information being relayed has already been processed by the lower brain structures in such a way that it ends up being, in essence, completely different information than would be relayed up to the cortex in an NT brain.

If, additionally, functional connectivity between brain regions is impaired, then the information might not reach the cortex at all (I think this might be a small part of how some people with ASDs don't notice things like pain).

Animalcrackers - Thank you very much for your reply, this has helped me a lot, especially the parts about the brain functions.

Me too! At Christmas time at work, this really odd guy I did not know came in and gave us all "Merry Christmas hugs" before he left. Before I knew what was going on, he grabbed me and rubbed his stubbly face against my cheek. It HURT SOOOOO bad, and continued to hurt for at least a half hour afterward. I could not focus on anything else, and the coworkers who realized this thought I was odd. They disliked the hug because he was weird and creepy, but they definitely were not about to meltdown because of his stubbly face.