Chapter Forty-Five: Difficulty Snapping In and Out of Tasks

Now, here is a topic for any of you readers who have had the, um… “pleasure” of living with one of us Aspies, which I’m going to go ahead and define as a good thing overall. It’s good, right, so no saying otherwise!

But as good as I’m saying we are, I know that one of the areas we can be a tiny bit difficult in (okay, okay, one of many) is that we do tend to be a little, um, not the best when interrupted in the middle of focusing hard on our task at hand. It’s a bit of an Aspie thing.

In fact, as mentioned earlier, in an online study on Aspie behaviors where over two hundred thousand people were questioned, one of the questions with the highest number of “yes” responses from Aspies was, “Does it feel vitally important to be left undisturbed when focusing on your special interests?”^[47] with the questions, “Do you become frustrated if an activity that is important to you gets interrupted?” and, “Do you tend to get so absorbed by your special interests that you forget or ignore everything else?” also ranking very highly.

So it really is a predominant Aspie trait. Hyperfocus, which I value highly, can make us wonderful achievers in our areas of interest, but unfortunately, it also comes with a downside in that it can make us easily agitated to the point of meltdown. It’s why many Aspies lose jobs and act up at work. Social and sensory overstimulation, combined with frequent interruptions, builds our stress levels to the point where we can’t handle it anymore. We’re not wired for all this chopping and changing that typical people like to do.

I know for me, when I’m working hard, even the slightest interruptions are incredibly grating. They require me to let go of what I’m doing and (slowly) alter my mind to pay attention to the social world again. In the process of “mental shifting” before I’ve fully disengaged, there is always an interim point where I’m agitated but haven’t yet fully moved back into social awareness. I may not register the person interrupting me as a person for a few seconds, and I can be susceptible to barking at them for the interruption.

It’s a situation that I am careful not to put myself in nowadays, because I don’t want to treat the people I love that way. However, growing up, I’m afraid this is something most of my family witnessed!

For someone who doesn’t understand, it’s easy to mistake an Aspie’s apparent annoyance at being interrupted as merely bad temper. However, we’re not getting agitated for no reason. Our brain wiring means that these interruptions really do cause us tremendous stress at the time, so it’s not a case of us just not wanting to switch back and forth between our work and the person talking to us. We’re genuinely not able to do this as rapidly or as easily as neurotypical people.

So, what is there to do about it? Heaven knows. I have absolutely no idea! I guess it’s just always going to take a little patience from both sides.