Bottom Up Thinking, The Quest For Perfection And Where We Get Stuck

A lot of Autistic folks are bottom up processors, meaning we perceive details of something before forming a complete perception. I would also venture to say that a lot of us don’t ever feel like we’ve reached a “complete” perception and this leads to self-doubt and endless seeking for the boundaries of what is true vs not true, real vs not real. 

For top-down processors, knowing a bunch of details means expertise but that isn’t what it always means for Autistic folks. For example, I know lots of details about psychology and human social behavior yet I miss social cues all the time because it’s hard for me to reach a full perception or conclusion on what various cues mean or how everything fits together. 

A lot of us bottom up processors, self included, hope that one day we will learn what is “right” and “not right” or what is perfection vs imperfection, correct vs incorrect. Our brain craves this since it can be quite maddening to live in a world of countless details that you don’t always get to make conclusions about. It has left me feeling quite alone and separate from others, since I can perceive details but miss the obvious. It can cause anxiety, paranoia, assuming the worst just to keep ourselves safe. 

If you’ve been following so far, you can probably see where some of us get stuck. We get stuck in trying to find the rules, the parameters, what is the complete perception that will finally solve this confusion. Many of us become perfectionists, we adhere to strict rules because anything less would lead us right back into confusion. We need a reality to hang our hats on, even if that reality is rigid and unchanging because we simply had to draw a line somewhere.

I got trained in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) very early in my career and I naturally am congruent with ACT. The reason why this is significant is that existentialism and ACT (e.g. living according to our values) has helped me and those I work with tremendously when addressing bottom up thinking struggles. A lot of us have been so busy adhering to strict self-imposed rules and masking, we never have actually sat down and asked ourselves about our values and if our life is actually the way we want it to be. And if it isn’t, how we can move toward the life we would want for ourselves.