Neurotypical Teachings

As an autistic person navigating through life there have always been neurotypical people trying to teach me how to be, even though nobody knew I was autistic until recent years. I'm sure this attempted guidance is something that a lot of autistic or otherwise neurodiverse folks have experienced, so this week I thought I'd run through the main ones that I've been told by neurotypicals in their vague effort to help.

Eye Contact

This is probably the big one that neurotypicals try to advise on. We autistics struggle a lot with eye contact. As a whole, the reason is that looking at somebody's eyes and trying to work out the subtleties in their facial expressions and so on is very distracting. So if we're looking someone in the eye we're often struggling to take in what they're verbally saying because of everything else that we're trying to process at the same time. For me I think it's also a confidence thing (or at least that's what I've always been told by neurotypicals) and I can never quite work out where I should be looking, when or for how long. One of the notes made in my autism diagnostic report was that when I had my session with the Occupational Therapist there were periods where I hardly made any eye contact, and then other periods where I made lots of overly intense eye contact. This was my atypical (note: atypical, not wrong - realistically there is no right or wrong) attempt at gauging my level of eye contact. Something else that I noticed in myself a long, long time ago that was also mentioned in my report was that I never really make eye contact when it's my turn to speak. I quite often look down and/or to the side when I talk because I find it much easier to concentrate on the words I'm saying and the point I'm getting across if I don't have the other person's face to look at. This is very similar to my point a moment ago about concentrating on what the other person is saying, but obviously from the opposite side of things.

Head Up

Maybe this is more of a confidence thing rather than autism as such, but linking into the eye contact and learning how to "be" confident (more on that later) is the fact that when I was at school my teachers and other adults would often tell me to stand straight, keep my head up and stop looking at the floor. I tend to keep my head up almost instinctively nowadays just because I've had it drilled into me when I was younger and developed it as a habit that I barely have to think about any more. I'm not sure that there's any actual reason for me to have not kept my head up other than a lack of confidence which would have been a result of being an autie in a neurotypical social environment. With that said, I do wish that the adults whose care I was in would have looked deeper into why I didn't fit in and why I had a lack of confidence rather than just teaching me how to mask and thinking that the problem was fixed.

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Moving into adulthood I obviously entered the world of work where I actually struggled a lot more than I realised prior to looking seriously at the possibility of being autistic. Since starting my very first job in 2005 I've had a grand total of 15 different jobs. Some of them were at the same company and one of them was the same job twice, but still it's a lot more than I ever would have preferred. I often left jobs on bad terms as a result of neither me or my employers understanding that I'm autistic, or even that I'm different from my colleagues. For the first year and a half of working for my current employer I had a team leader who strongly advocated for the team being a tight social unit and taking part in social activities outside of work together. This isn't something that works for everyone and while I didn't get in trouble for it I was often encouraged to join in more socially with the team and to participate more in team meetings. I found that just our normal half-hour team meetings left me drained and needing a break. I did try occasionally to go out and socialise with them outside of working hours but as usual in social situations I tended to feel awkward and out of place. It's not that I didn't like the people in the team - in fact far from it. It's just that I don't feel comfortable being around people when I don't have to be. Luckily for me, when it comes to socialising out of work I had the excuse of living in York while the office and most of my colleagues were in Leeds so it was a long way to go if I wasn't working that day.

Talk To Them/Us

This was always THE big one for me personally when I was younger and struggling with being single while all my friends were meeting people and pairing up. I've always been told to "Talk to her" when I was trying to either meet somebody new or get to know somebody that I already had contact with. This advice came despite me having already said multiple times that I don't know how to. I've always likened it giving somebody a guitar who's never played one before and telling them to play Master Of Puppets. The instructions which amounted to no more than "Just do it" were too vague and unhelpful as they didn't give any clear indication of what actual actions to take. I remember one specific incident in the Stone Roses pub where I was out with some friends and they tried to get me to talk to this one specific girl who was at the bar. Their "encouragement" went as far as physically pushing me in her direction and telling me to go for it. That was the point that broke me that night. I panicked, walked off and hid somewhere quieter while I tried to pull myself back together from being a teary, nervous mess. Not helpful at all from the group I was with, nor was it constructive in any way. I've had similar struggles when trying to build platonic relationships with friends of friends, although not to the point where I've been physically forced to do something like that night in the Stone Roses. I've been in situations before where I've been trying to talk to people that I had mutual friends with, the conversation dried up with me not knowing what to say and they suddenly seemed annoyed and said "I'm trying to have a conversation with you." In reality it's not that I didn't want to talk to them and I was definitely still listening to them, it's just that I didn't know what to say that would constructively keep the conversation going.

Be Confident

The final bit of advice that I want to cover quickly is similar to "Talk to them" in that I simply don't know how to. This advice is "Just be confident." This was something that I was told mostly by one particular friend who I went to college with at the time. She was the kind of person who can happily and confidently talk to just about anyone, so in a way I can see why she didn't understand that I couldn't but at the same time she needed to understand that not everybody finds socialising as easy as she does. I did respond at one point by explaining that just telling me to be confident doesn't mean I can magically become confident. The answer I got to that was simply "Yes it does" and I couldn't be bothered arguing any more after that. This wasn't too long before she fell out with me and I never really understood why, although looking back she was probably fed up of trying to help me and me just not getting it (again, something I've experienced from other people as well). We're on amicable terms now and we've exchanged the occasional bit of online small talk over the last few years. We autistics do all develop masks that help us to navigate the neurotypical world, but everyone's masks are different and they all have some cracks where they're not quite as good as they would hope to be. The weakness in my mask just happens to be holding a conversation.

These are just a few examples of the things that neurotypical people try to teach autistics and other neurodivergents. I'm sure that in most cases their effort comes from a place of genuinely trying to help, but it often doesn't help due to a lack of public understanding about autism or other conditions. If you're autistic or similarly neurodivergent please let me know of any other examples that you've had either in the comments or on Twitter @DepictDave. I try to reply to all comments. Also don't forget to hit the follow button in the side bar and the subscribe button at the top. That helps you stay up to date with new posts each week and it massively helps me too.

[Image description: 5 phrases written in multiple colours related to the points made in this post, scattered randomly around the image. The phrases are "Take part!", "Be confident!", "Talk to her!", "Eye contact!" and "Look up!" The background is white with a red "No"/crossed out circle sign. This is the image used on my Instagram account to promote this blog post.]