Are people with AS more squeamish?

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This is a question I've pondered, as a man with Aspergers...do we have a tendency to be squeamish, or more squeamish on the average.
I've speculated that the answer may well be yes due to not only my own experience, but my own research into those of us with AS tending to have more stomach issues and upsets and being put off by certain smells and textures more so than others.

From my own experience, I am less squeamish than I used to be. I've watched many gory movies without getting too grossed out (had to look away a couple of times, like during the movie series "Saw", for instance), cut my finger or foot or something and it bled but I didn't get too freaked out, watched people pick their noses, watched people eat food that I didn't like at the same table as me but that didn't really affect me. Things that HAVE bothered me in the past though are people spitting (especially while smoking), strange foods in people's fridges (gives me a nauseated feeling even if I'm not going to eat them), and being in a retirement home once noticing the condition of some of the very elderly people there...those are a few of the things that come to mind, there may well be more though!!


Career/job-wise: I'd considered being a doctor once, but the blood exposure sort of got to me - I probably could have overcome that though, as a GP - but there certain specialist medical jobs I definitely couldn't do, like eye doctor or proctologist. The squeamishness is also one more reason why I could never have been a waiter/server (IMO the absolute worst job for an Aspie, as per earlier posts!!) as I am repulsed by what people leave on their plates and having to stack & clear them...it would bother me to the point where I would be less effective, and just set off a vicious circle of bad performance.

Also I get kind of recoiled when one of my fingernails or toenails is cracked, like it is now (left baby finger), for the past two days - I keep putting small band-aids on it hoping it will heal up, as it sickens me to break it off and leave the finger/flesh part exposed.

One time I watched an episode of "Hoarders" where it showed some woman in Alabama who kept really gross expired stuff in her fridge and even spilling out on her kitchen counters, and floor, because she couldn't bear to let it go, which IMO is a much more eccentric disorder than Aspergers (which I doubt she had BTW).

So, overall, I'm pretty squeamish, but not to the point where it incapacitates me or is noticeable on a given day.

I have always had a weak stomach. When my daughter was a baby I had real issues with diaper changes. My wife thought I was faking to get out of changing her diaper, but I would literally gag and throw up on occasion. I learned the close pin trick which pisses my wife off even more.

How did you post this from the future? Your post says this at the top:
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Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2013 3:15 am Post subject: Are people with AS more squeamish?
This is a question I've pondered, as a man with Aspergers...do we have a tendency to be squeamish, or more squeamish on the average.
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I've always believed in time travel and thought that if anyone could do it, AS people could!

But to your question, I believe we are. I know Im very squeamish. Smells especially make me gag!

Doug

Now I'M in the future too!

Yeah, my ex wife thought I was faking to get out of diaper changes as well. I told her "you can change a diaper or you can allow me to try, and then you will be changing a diaper AND cleaning up vomit. Its your choice"

Doug

There are some things that I'm squeamish about but others that I'm even less squeamish about than my very NT sister. For example, I'm a really picky eater and won't tolerate things like dried fruits, peanut butter, canned fish, slimy lunch meats ect and certain smells bother me a lot. On the other hand, insects don't freak me out at all unless they're near my bed or crawling on me inside my house. That's only because I'm afraid that the house isn't clean enough if that happens and that a bug will bite me while I'm sleeping or something. If my sister sees a spider anywhere, inside or out, she'll start screaming. I actually held the snakes and tarantulas and other "scary" animals on a day when they were brought to my school and I was asked if I'd do it when no one volunteered. It didn't bother me. I knew there was a trained animal handler next to me. Also, I'm not squeamish about seeing blood and I can look when they're taking my blood for a blood test without getting sick whereas my sister cannot.

No, I don't think it's common in Aspies. I think it's common in teenage girls.

I've never been squeamish at all, maybe sometimes but not generally. I try to man up over most things. But I've seen young girls in their teens and 20s act very squeamish. I remember when my cousin brought her 13-year-old friend round to mine with her once, and this kid got on my nerves. She was afraid of spiders (which is not unusual, most people are afraid of spiders, including me), but we had a plastic toy spider and she knew it was fake but still ran away screaming when you showed it to her. Also she kept going, ''eww!'' at everything, and didn't want to go anywhere near dirt or mud.

Also I remember having a friend when I was 10 who thought all reptiles and insects were gross. I remember once me and my brother went frog-hunting without her because she hated rivers and especially hated frogs. I loved them.

Also I've known girls who hated seeing or talking about blood, but it's never bothered me.

No it's not common in Aspies. I am a hoarder by the way.

The only thing that makes me want to heave to my stomach is tags in clothes. Don't know why. Maybe it's more of an ''Aspie thing'' to be sqeamishly afraid of odd things what most others are OK with?

^^^
I think it's more sensory issues than squeamishness to be unable to stand the feeling of tags or to be overly sensitive to textures of food or smells.

I'm not squeamish about most things. I find spiders and insects interesting rather than gross or scary. Blood isn't a problem and injections don't worry me. Reptiles don't bother me. In fact, I'd quite like a pet snake. Or maybe a tarantula (tarantulas are small, furry, have big eyes, they're really just mice with eight legs and fangs). Sometimes I get overenthusiastic about things that other people find scary or gross (but parasites are just so interesting! They have fascinating life cycles!).

But maggots... I hate them. Fascinating as I find parasites, botfly maggots are truly disgusting. One of my worst nightmares involved maggots burrowing into my eyes and under my skin and into my brain. It was the eyes that really worried me though. If someone holds something sharp near my eyes, I freak out. I could never be an eye surgeon.

It's not about the sensory part of it. It's just the look of them that has always made me want to gag. If I'm eating and there's one in my sight, I lose my appetite but try to carry on eating as if it isn't there, or put it out of my sight if I can.



I love insects, except for spiders, by the way.

Injections don't worry me. They just frighten me because I remember when I was about 9 or 10 I was told not to have an injection for Meningitis what all the kids in the schools had to have, because it could make my Asperger's worse (that's what my mum was told by social worker). I don't know where they got it from or if it was true or not, but it still frightened me ever since to have injections, because it seems that I have been scared into believing that injections can damage my brain.

Much less squeamish than most, actually. Things that people find "gross" don't really faze me. I do have a reaction of mild nausea to seeing someone else throw up, but not to the point that I can't suppress it and make sure they're okay. Blood doesn't bother me; actually, I remember fairly recently someone coming on here who enjoyed the sensory aspect and the scientific study of blood.

Smells can overwhelm me, though the smell of rotting things or feces is just as unpleasant to me as strong detergent or cold food.

Mice, spiders, insects, snakes... interesting, not gross. Though, I don't pick up spiders and insects because they look so fragile and I think I might break them, especially spiders with their long legs. The old cup-and-paper trick works fine, or if they are already climbing around on me, just walking outside and brushing them off. I'm not a total bleeding heart with insects, though. I don't mind my cats hunting them and will often cheer them on in catching and eating a particularly tricky bit of prey. And I stay well away from stinging and biting insects. (Yeah, spiders count as biting, but in my experience they are often quite well-behaved if you don't mess with them. Mosquitoes, now--no pity for them.)

Had no trouble with the sensory aspects of biology research. Smell of blood doesn't bother me. Smell of bacterial cultures, though, I keep my face out of, or just do under a fume hood. Have participated in euthanizing mice via decapitation for a research project; felt sorry that it was necessary, but beyond the emotional aspect didn't bother me. Got one of the grad students to show me around the inside of a mouse once we had time. Very fascinating. Have also done human anatomy lab; didn't like the smell of formaldehyde but fascinated with the structures. Didn't put me off eating dinner once I came out of the lab.

Had a phobia of injections as a child; probably due to being restrained for them when I was a toddler. Only gradually overcame it; by age 12, still running panicked by the sight of a needle, but by 18, able to sit still for TB skin test despite fear. Nowadays get flu shot every year to inoculate against influenza and phobia... two birds with one stone, so to say.

I suppose I'm in the middle, if not leaning a bit more to the "squeamish" side.

I cannot STAND the sound of flapping, especially in insects such as bees and large bugs. I also am grossed out by the buzzing noise that most insects make. It creates large, significant shivers (more like miniature convulsions) when I hear the buzzing or flapping. This is why I'm afraid of bees. I scream and run (not smart on my part).

I can't watch myself get blood drawn. Well, sometimes I can, but that's when I'm feeling like someone else, like when something really bad happens and I have to go back to the mental hospital (which is usually not my fault). Funny, sometimes I can do these things, and sometimes I can't, and I just took a quiz from another thread that said a score over 30 is DID and I got a 64. Weird, huh?

The maggots we got in our garage several times didn't bother me, because they didn't have faces that I could see, they didn't make noise, and they didn't do anything other than inch around. No prob, Bob.

Blood doesn't faze me too much, other than when it's a gory wound, like gangrene or something that eats away the skin. I could look at GSWs just fine. Stab wounds? Not too bad. MVAs? Those I have a problem with, because it usually involves the tearing of the flesh.

I'm sorry, I've been using a bit of lingo. GSW=gunshot wound MVA=Motor vehicle accident.

So like I said, sometimes I am, sometimes I'm just not. Depends on who I feel like.

Feeling grossed out when people are sick is quite normal. When I was at my grandmother's last week, she didn't feel well and wanted the bowl, and I was there with 6 NT adults there, and 4 of them ran out of the room (including me) and put their fingers in their ears worriedly because they hated the sound of vomiting, One stood at the door of the room, looking all grossed out, and the other one had to hold the bowl in front of her. Then afterwards everyone was moaning about the grandmother as if she was throwing up on purpose, which she wasn't at all. I was the only one who tried to comfort her when she was all right again, even though I have Emetophobia.

Not too weird. The quiz tests dissociative symptoms, not just DID specifically, and you describe "feeling like someone else"... which is a form of dissociation. Dissociation is normal and happens to NTs, but if you've been through trauma and used it to survive (which it seems you have), you can start to dissociate so often that it interferes with your life, which is the point where they start to call it a dissociative disorder. DID is only one of many dissociative disorders and involves separating your identity from events happening to you, often to the point of distinct identities developing. It's rarer than most other dissociative disorders. More usually, people just report losing touch with themselves, feeling unreal, floating away, etc., and not being able to reconnect when they try to.

That's really interesting. So, if you see a tag on someone else's clothes it bothers you but if you feel a tag against your skin but don't see it then it doesn't ? I've never heard anyone else describe something like that.



That social worker probably heard that vaccines cause autism and somehow extrapolated from that that it could make your Asperger's (mild autism) worse. It's completely not true. Vaccines do not cause autism at all. The only empirical evidence for this theory turned out to be falsified! There's no way getting a vaccine will make your ASD worse.

I don't normally feel tags against my skin, and if I do, I cut them out.

I know someone who is NT who is afraid of buttons. Just seeing them makes her want to heave, and she avoids wearing clothing with buttons on, except for those buttons you get on jeans. She would only wear clothing with buttons on if she really had to, but wouldn't feel too happy about it.

I do have some sensory issues but I'm not squeamish at all. I can deal with trash, spoiled food, bugs, poop, other bodily fluids, injuries, etc. no problem. I'm a stay-at-home mom with two boys so I deal with a lot of these things almost daily.