I’m very touchy and can effortlessly understand other’s feelings, so much so it’s nearly spooky. However, I like people to be very real, directly, and get to the point. I often hope we lived in the earth where people just talked to other people and got to the point. There appears to be so much "dancing around" the point and it has always driven me mad. I’ve learned some of the societal rituals, and I always feel slowed down by having to carry out them.
Lonely people see security in numbers. If not we are shipwrecked and have been floating at the ocean in a ship for five days without food we don’t see security in other people. They stimulate the amygdala in our brains, producing adrenalin overload and a battle or flight response. So we might feel irritable, want to escape, or, because we’ve trained ourselves to do neither, we just become embarrassed, stiff, jerky, even suffer the pain of a temporary inability to talk. Several of us, because of the adrenalin rush, switch into execution form, and we can seem both witty and charming for a quick period of time. This tricks people into thinking we are socially skillful. It’s a smoke screen. Performances are tiring and we can’t stick with it for long-certainly not a whole work day, or any other lengthy gathering. Finally, we become exhausted and exhausted and have to withdraw mentally or physically.
Sensory overload is a daily battle and is now part of the criteria for autism spectrum disorders. For some with AS, a ceiling fan that spins beneath a light is like being in a disco with strobes after one too many cocktails. Even driving down the road with the sunlight slanting through trees hurts our brains and can make us sick. Busy patterns on wallpaper, carpet, etc. make us dizzy. Flickering fluorescents at the checkout will have us curling into a fetal position on the counter. The offices that we must shop or work in, and the restaurants and bars we eat/socialize in, are filled with so many sources of sensory overload, from cheap lighting to bad pop music, we may as well try to have a nice chat in front of the percussion section during a John Philip Sousa concert. So even if we don’t have a meltdown, we are certainly not going to be relaxed or cheerful in such environments.
We don’t have good facial recognition and have patchy memories. Some people who are autistic savants can recreate anything after seeing it once. We can often remember a string of sounds, sensations and images like a video recorder, but can have a hard time remembering what people’s faces look like. We might pass you in the hall, on the street, thinking you look vaguely familiar, while you’re saying "what’s his/her problem?" By the time we realize who you are, you’ve turned a corner and it’s too late to say hello. We can also remember an argument verbatim, or all the presidents in a row, but we might not remember where we were yesterday.
We don’t care for small talk and are all about our special interests. If we are not interested in who won American Idol, such discussions sound like the wah wah wah of Charlie Brown’s teacher, or the clucking of chickens. We might think you are a bit dull because you don’t share our passions, or (especially when we are younger) we may not notice and go on and on about the genius of our favorite film composers, oblivious to the eye rolling and nudging going on in the room. We have a more than healthy streak of self-absorption, so we might be our own best special interest. We do have to learn to keep that in check.
Our understanding of the societal rituals of this world is basic. If you had a few years of high school French, you can probably buy a pastry in Paris, figure out what date it is and find your way to the post office, but you can’t converse in depth, understand cultural allusions and references, innuendo, or idiom. That is about the extent of our own understanding of non-verbal signals, facial expressions, and the art of conversing; especially when we’re children, but to some degree, forever.
We march to our own drummer and have a funny way of marching. We don’t just take the road less traveled, we forge a new one. But because we have Dyspraxia and Proprioceptive dysfunction, we might not do it so gracefully. Dyspraxia means deficits in motor planning. Proprioception is known where your limbs are, relative to one another. While we may not need a cork on the end of our fork to keep from poking ourselves in the eye, we may fall up the down escalator or get hit in the face with the dodge ball a lot. We may be Isadora Duncan dancing alone, but in a line dance we’ll go the wrong way. You get the picture.
We don’t have a strong sense of gender roles. Young women with AS don’t have the whole eyelash batting, hair-tossing artillery of gender-specific body language that others seem to feel comfortable with. We think it’s a load of baloney. We may get better at it with age, but will often slip into and prefer complete androgyny. We may get involved in our interests and forget to brush our hair (we certainly won’t spend an hour straightening it!), wear mis-matching clothes, or have an aversion to deodorant, so we can seem slovenly, cold or butch.
We’re geeks. We might rather be thrown into a world where we have to battle orcs or even the Borg than deal with the suit-and-tie banality of this one. We may watch Ted conferences and Family Guy episodes with equal fervor, or think David Bowie is the ultimate everything. We’re generally convinced that the uber-NTs on shows like Fear Factor are not from the same species as us.
Last but not least, disquiet is our prevalent feeling. We could seem anxious and controlling all the time. The manage thing is just us attempting to keep order in the disorder, attempting to feel safe on this crazy world. Lots of on the spectrum take anti-anxiety meds, but there is no medicine to make you a neurotypical. The brain is a flexible organ and that we do learn, but we are going to always be Aspies. Say it loud and say it proud.
There is a different between knowing and really caring. It’s similar to Daniel Goleman’ s distinction between societal awareness and societal competence. I have autistic tendencies though I have never been diagnosed with it. I am extremely socially conscious, almost to the point where I get overwhelmed, but I have terrible societal competence. It’s a work in advancement I have shown much progress since I first began consciously looking for better relationships.
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