An Autistic Point Of View - The Campaign To End Loneliness

Earlier today I saw a video on Twitter from the Campaign To End Loneliness. This video is entitled Lets Talk More, it stars stand-up comedian and regular Mock The Week panelist Andy Parsons, and is aimed at getting people to talk to each other more with the goal of building little connections that help to combat loneliness. If you're interested in watching the video please click here. Let me first say that the idea behind the campaign is great, and I'm sure that with a reported 9 million people in the UK experiencing loneliness it's certainly something that can be considered a problem. However, my first thought upon seeing the video was that while most people would more than likely be happy to have little small-talk conversations with each other and would feel very comfortable with it, people like me definitely wouldn't. This is something that's common in the autistic community.

Seeing the video on Twitter earlier today was the first I'd heard of the Campaign To End Loneliness, and having researched the campaign a little bit online it does seem aimed more at helping older people, who make up 4 million of the aforementioned 9 million lonely people. This focus on the elderly does make more sense to me than what I initially took from the video because the elderly come from a pre-internet and pre-social media generation where people did talk to each other a lot more than they do now, but there is still the question of the remaining 5 million people that they're aiming to help. I personally don't like to interact with people where I can avoid it. The reason I prefer this is because I (as well as many other autistic people) feel more alone when I'm with people than when I'm actually on my own. Even when the conversation is going well I still often feel that I'm not connecting with the people, I start to wonder what the point in the conversation/situation is, and I soon decide that I don't want to be there.

It could be for a few different reasons that this happens but I think the main reason is that I have a lack of control over the other person/people. Not that I want to control people in the sense of what they do, but because other people aren't me I can't control where the conversation goes. I often find that the person I'm talking to doesn't like wrestling or symphonic metal, and I don't like whatever the other person likes - if I'm talking to a bloke then they usually drag me into a conversation about cars or Call Of Duty or other typically laddish things that are really, REALLY not me.

The problem that I find with campaigns like this is that they seem to follow a very rigid way of thinking, which is based on the majority and usually not flexible for the rest of us. When I first watched the Andy Parsons video it came across as very much a case of "You need to talk to people, it'll be good for you." While I'm confident that's true for most - if not all - neurotypicals, we autistics don't seem to have as much to benefit from it. Firstly there are those of us like me who would just plain rather not interact with people where we can help it. I personally am happy with the company of my wife, my kids and my cat, and that's it. I'm happy for my wife to have her friends and family round and things like that because it's in a familiar environment, but in terms of whether I specifically want to see anybody myself the answer is no.

There's also the unavoidable issue of interaction between autistics and neurotypicals which is something of a double-edged sword for us. Autistic masking is a survival strategy that many of us have learned to do so that we blend into the neurotypical world and can get on with our daily lives. Masking does however come with a cost. It can cause mental health issues due to repressing our true selves, and it can also use up lots of our energy and lead to meltdowns, shutdowns, dissociation etc. The other side of the double-edged sword is that if we don't mask and we try to make these little connections with everybody else as the campaign is suggesting, we risk a negative reaction from neurotypicals, being labeled as weird (or worse!) and being ridiculed or even threatened for being who we are. So oftentimes, as an autistic person it's not worth making these connections with the rest of society even if we wanted to.

The final point I wanted to make is what happens when neurotypicals try to start an unwanted conversation with autistics. Obviously we live our lives just like everyone else and we need to go out and about for various reasons where we're exposed for better or worse to the neurotypical world. If somebody tries to make small talk with me I generally don't know what to do. I handle it by answering their question/statement but not giving much else in return. I do that so that I've tried to not be rude by ignoring them, but also so that they've got nothing else to continue the conversation with in the hopes that it stops. But then that leaves me wondering if I've just been a massive bellend to them by not giving them what they wanted. I do suffer occasionally from social anxiety and I've had incidents where I've been to gigs and people have dragged me into conversations, and the effect it's had on me is that I've felt sick from it, I've felt cold yet sweaty, my mouth's gone dry and so on. Conversely, if I'm at work and people try to talk to me I manage ok with it although I'd still rather keep myself to myself. I think that's because when I'm at work I'm not there to talk to people or make friends. We're all there to do a job so I don't mind just making an excuse to cut the conversation short and get back to work as it feels like a helpful get out clause.

So the Campaign To End Loneliness is no doubt well intentioned, and I'm sure it'll help a lot of people who want and/or need it. But it needs to be executed carefully to keep in mind the needs of those of us who don't want direct human interaction, especially with strangers. The campaign could probably do with the inclusion of education on who to speak to, when and how. For example, there are a lot of autistics who put up barriers in public such as wearing headphones, dark sunglasses and other things, but all too often these barriers and signals not to approach are either not understood or are completely ignored. Ignoring barriers like this seems particularly common among men towards women who have their barriers up. All I'm saying is do what you can if you're trying to make more connections off the back of the campaign, but regardless of who you or the other person are just be mindful and think about whether they're likely to want to interact. They might have barriers up that may seem abnormal or unreasonable to you, but you don't know what their reasons are. And if you do find yourself naturally in a conversation with someone, be kind and thoughtful as there's a strong chance that their brain works differently to yours.