What is wrong with the way autistic people communicate?

Post Reply New Topic

When I see the way some people communicate, I feel quite adept at it. There's a couple of guys at work who are lovely but are hard to talk to, as they don't always listen or will interrupt or go off on a ramble and you can't get a word in edgeways. I know I've never been like that. Sometimes I can go off on a bit of a ramble but I always make sure I pay attention to the other person and if they look like they want to say something I stop and listen, then respond appropriately. I've always been good like that, despite my attention and impulse issues. But I notice non-verbal cues naturally and I make eye contact, so that helps.
My social awkwardness can be more anxiety-based or "shying into my shell" type of thing. A bit like when I was a child around 11-12 years old, when I got on the bus with my mum, she would try and teach me some independent skills by getting me to press the bell when I knew our usual bus stop was coming up. I knew exactly when our bus stop was coming up, I knew the street, and I knew that pressing the bell was simple and easy, but for some reason I still refused to press the bell so my mum always ended up pressing it instead (otherwise we would never have got off).
That is an analogy of how I sometimes am socially. I know the cue but sometimes I snap my mouth shut and lose all confidence in saying what I know would be appropriate to say. And this is how I've always been.
Last weekend I went to a social gathering with my boyfriend, and I didn't know many people there but I naturally made eye contact and smiled at people and shook people's hands, and all these appropriate social cues came to me without me having to think, like my instinct telling me "I remember when I last saw him he was saying about a new career he was starting, ask him how it's going", but I refused inside my head to ask so instead I just said to him "nice to see you again", and stood about awkwardly for a few seconds then he walked away. I mean, I don't know, maybe he was thinking the same but something in his body language told me that he wanted to chat some more to me but my sudden lack of confidence probably made me look a bit standoffish and he probably thought "meh, she ain't that interested" and went to find someone more chatty.

Although it only sounds like a minor social ineptitude compared to most autistics, it still affects my ability to make friends.

Do you think you are actually autistic, Joe? I often wonder if you are or not.

Well, I often wonder about that too, but then I was such a lonely teenager even for an Aspie, and even went through a socially clueless phase, so that makes me think "wait, maybe the diagnosis is right then". I don't know.

My social awkwardness does seem different to the typical autism criteria of social awkwardness, but then there's the "everyone with autism is different", "I am a woman, autism affects women differently", and "there are autistic people who have NT friends".

I've mentioned it to doctors before but they just say that the anxiety I have means autism. It seems that autism is heavily associated with anxiety. I have anxiety, there's no denying that. So yeah I suppose I'm on the spectrum. Maybe I'm BAP (Broad/Borderline Autism Phenotype).

I've never heard of BAP before, I might have to look into that. I consider myself pretty socially aware compared to a lot of autistic people (although maybe not to the same extent as you based on your description).

But if your doctors say you are, maybe consider that you overestimate your social skills. My partner is autistic and is much more abrasive than me, and I always considered myself the "socially competent" one out of the two of us. But he pointed out to me that I'm not necessarily more aware, I just respond to my lack of awareness differently than him- he experiments and pushes people's buttons to figure out what to do in the future, whereas I take as few risks as possible and keep quiet in order to seem more polite. Yet we both have a similar track record when it comes to making and keeping friends in adulthood. You might have a similar pattern

This is a major point of annoyance and frustration for me. I often get things wrong because the NT person expressed himself ambiguousy, inexactly, or just incorrectly, but he still refuses to accept responsibility for the misunderstanding. I, on the other hand, always try to explain things very thoroughly and precisely, and people still get the message wrong. It seems to me that NT communication is more deserving of being pathologized.

BAP is probably the same as PPD-NOS. I don't know why I wasn't diagnosed with that in the beginning.

The only time my ASD reached its peak was during my early teens. I seemed clueless all of a sudden on how to keep up with my peers socially and emotionally and I just seemed out of touch. When I was 13 I still felt like I was 9 and I had to make conscious effort to conform to normal teenage standards, which was quite daunting. I don't know if all adolescents feel like this as they enter their teens (after all, you're still a child at 13), but maybe my difficulties showed more and I had to keep being prompted by my mum or peers to act more age-appropriate. And I lacked friendships around that age too. I was often on my own at school (which was not my choice, sadly), and I never saw friends outside of school. I was so out of touch with it all that I had no idea what any drugs were or whether people went to parties or whatever other s**t teenagers get up to. I can't really say I was a geek, because I wasn't intelligent or into reading or learning or anything, but I was a wimp.

I've never heard of BAP either, maybe I'm that, because I've passed for NT most of my life. e.g. I have very few restrictive repetitive behaviours.

Yes NTs can be VERY imprecise, can't they. I agree with you, the more I think about it, NT communication is far too allegorical and symbolic, using meanings of words that don't actually mean what the words mean. They rely too much on facial expression and tone IMO, and reading things into comments that aren't actually there.

I do that too, which often makes me question my diagnosis.

Autism Parenting Magazine, "What is the Broad Autism Phenotype?"

Especially note the section "Similar to aspergers or PDD-NOS?"

Note that I know very little on this. If the conversation gets deeper let's hope someone with deeper knowledge joins this conversation.

Or, as I remember putting it when I first became aware of this: For a lot of people the main purpose of communication is not to exchange information or ideas, but either to butter someone up or to tear someone down. To me this was a very annoying realization.

No, it's not.

PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified) is an out-of-date diagnostic category last used in the DSM IV. Most people formerly diagnosed with PDD-NOS would now be diagnosed with ASD.

BAP (broad autism phenotype) never was an official diagnostic category. It's a term used mainly by some autism researchers to refer to people who have some autistic traits, but not quite enough to be diagnosed with ASD.

I only realised that when Bee33 said it the other day, it was quite a revelation moment. It explains why most people take my comments as insults when I am just giving information

No wonder NTs and NDs can't communicate!