Autistic Person Socializing
Socializing as an autistic person is like acting in a play without being given the script Even though you never received the script You're expected to know all the lines If you get it incorrect People get annoyed Absolutely correct but it needs to be expanded. All of us are acting in a play and we have no script to follow. We make it up as we go along. More correctly, we react to the line we've received from the other actors. It is the ability to perform in the give and take that makes one normal. Autistic people are unable to pick up the clues, don't know what a "normal" response would be. They are not in tune with the emotions of others, often can't discern the meaning of a facial expression, of a simple statement, and then they give what is seen as an incorrect response. "You're expected to know all the lines." A normal person has a plethora of possible responses to "Do You Love Me?" or "Is something bothering you." Autistic people don't have a ready range of responses to such questions. In each separate case they search for "What, in this case, is the appropriate response to this question?" People get annoyed when an autistic person's response is inappropriate -- and I suddenly remembered the TV show where the lead actress (Sophia Hennin) plays an autistic policewoman who sees nothing wrong with, in front of others, taking off her top, exposing herself wearing only a brassiere, while she dons a new top. Did I do something wrong? It is not that autistic people have not been handed the script -- none of us has been handed a script -- it's just that they routinely get the signals sent by the other actors wrong. They are superb actors in the game of life -- autistic people have a preternatural ability to concentrate -- but they are lousy actors in the social play we all act in. Long ago we learned that little lies are necessary in social conversations. Children have not yet learned this lesson, and autistic people have trouble learning this lesson. Autistic people (and children) blurt out what we deliberately blur. "That lady is fat." "You lied to grandma when you said we all loved her." Just for a second, imagine being a normal person in a room full of autistic people conversing. Wouldn't you have trouble picking up the social cues? (I found this after I wrote the above). "Everybody's a mad scientist and life is their lab. We are all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos." David Cronenberg