The Crux of Autism: Communication

The most significant change to the understanding of myself has come from understanding the communication differences between allistic (non-autistic) people and autistic people. Allistic people say things knowing that their conversation partner is reading subtext into their words. They will "white" lie to spare a person's feelings, dance around what they want out of the conversation, and expect the other person to know exactly what they are inferring and react accordingly. A majority of autistic people say exactly what they mean, do not use subtext, and are direct about what they are saying.

I will relate this difference to dogs and cats. Their body language means completely different things according to their species. For example, if a dog saw a cat wagging its tail, they would understand that as, "I like you and I would like to interact with you," when in reality, cats wagging their tail means, "I am uncomfortable with your presence if you touch me there will be consequences." That sums up the allistic versus autistic communication barrier.

In reviewing my life, this difference in communication style, allistics being dogs and autistic being cats, was not apparent to me. So, much like the ugly duckling didn't know it was a beautiful swan, I thought I was an allistic dog, but I'm an autistic cat.

This miscommunication for 38 years of my life led to a lot of internalized problems:

* My own emotions became less important than everyone else's because I didn't know how to express them the way that allistic people do, and I was often criticized for how I expressed them. "You're too loud." "Stop flailing your hands like an idiot." "Stop laughing; it's inappropriate." "That makes no sense." "You're weird." "What?" "That's crazy." "Calm down." I did learn to notice a particular face that people made when I was "acting" wrong. I would go quiet, stop expressing myself, and instead try to use empathy to emulate the other person's feelings. It became a cycle of socializing that meant hiding my own emotions because everyone reacted horribly to them and making everyone else more important than me. I have yet to get to a point where I am comfortable with my emotions and feel they are just as important as everyone else's. My comfort was never a concern to anyone in any social setting. You can see why I came to hate being around people. They always made me feel like I wasn't significant enough to be heard.

* My statement of facts I have learned labelled me as a "know-it-all" and made me afraid to speak up. One of my special interests is knowledge, and because the world has made no sense to me since the moment I breathed air, I make sure to research the things I do not understand. When people would say incorrect things in a conversation, I would tell them the facts I had studied to bond with them and help them feel less lost about the world. It turns out that reads as arrogant, and to people with different disabilities (like dyslexia which my sisters have), it makes them feel ashamed that they didn't know these things. My family constantly talked over or around me and ignored what I had to say because I was the youngest, which meant I didn't know what I was talking about. I internalized this, and it made me feel as if everyone around me thought that the facts I had learned were lies I was telling so that I could get all the attention on myself. In reality, I hated the attention being on me and was trying to figure out a way to be included in the groups. I always feel like I have to back up anything I see with immense amounts of proof or no one will ever take what I say seriously.

* My body language to an allistic person reads like I am lying. This bleeds in with the above problem. If allistic people look at my body language to identify if I am being truthful, they will see all the anxiety displayed in bizarre, uncomfortable movements. I try hard never to lie because I already have a hard time communicating with people. What I say, I say with carefully selected words that hopefully convey my meaning as clearly as possible. That also means that when people talk to me, I take their words as the whole meaning of what they are saying. If they use inflection or body language to convey something different, I'll most likely miss the mark. People call this naivety. I call it straightforwardness. This constant people thinking I'm lying and being taken advantage of has internalized into me not believing anyone I meet. I have come to a point in my life where I think that everyone is lying to me. This means compliments feel like people making fun of me. No matter how hard people try to tell me positive things about myself, I have been sarcastically abused for such a long time that I cannot take a compliment for what it is. It always feels that people are lulling me in with niceties so that later on, they can do what a large majority of the people in my life have always done, find out the things I love the most and then use them against me, betray me, leave me broken and alone. I'm incapable of trusting anyone, even my closest family and friends. I'm always waiting for the moment they'll use my vulnerability against me.

This internalized misunderstanding has led me to have rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD). If I feel rejected in any way, real or not, my body is overwhelmed by uncontrollable emotions. This results in my body manifesting the emotional pain as actual physical pain. Being misunderstood, therefore, doesn't just frustrate me; it will trigger an autistic meltdown. If I can't get my point across or leave a situation where someone is saying things opposite to what I mean, I will start to cry, the beginning of an autistic meltdown which, if not stopped, becomes entirely out of my control. This spirals into a massive feedback loop of negativity as I am then perceived as overly sensitive, which triggers low self-esteem and the thoughts that my emotions are less important than everyone else's. If I try to explain, the looks people give me make it seem to me as if the person feels I am lying. It's a feedback loop of the worst my mind can make up, and it's physically manifested. The shame accompanying an episode of RSD is so terrible I can be incapable of socializing for days or weeks.

If there is one takeaway for you, lovely readers, it's this: RSD isn't a person being overly sensitive. It's a manifestation of repeated trauma over their lifetime. Be kind. They may be reliving every moment someone rejected them, which hurts. It physically hurts deeply.

For many autistic persons, communicating in this world is much like one person speaking Old English and the other Modern English. They are both speaking English, but neither one understands the other.

If you have ever wondered why some autistic people try to avoid social situations, it's because some of us are incapable of speaking Modern English, so trying to interpret it drains more energy than most of us have. I'd rather stay home, among my things. They speak the same language as me.