My Social Skills For Autistic People Manifesto

Navigating the social sphere can be difficult for autistic people because we simply communicate differently from neurotypical people.

I wrote this post yesterday in response to a conversation in the Facebook group Autistic Adults With ADHD, which is my favorite such group on that site. I also posted it on Reddit, and thought I would share it here as well.

When I was in 8th grade we were given an in-class assignment that I went so hard on responding to that I was literally writing up a few concluding sentences as the teacher said to pass the paper in. I added mine to the pile of papers being passed up my row…and suddenly realized everyone else had written one sentence. Literally one sentence. Somehow I missed the memo and wrote three pages.

I used to do this same kind of thing in social situations, too. Someone would bring up a topic I knew a lot about — simply from reading wikipedia for fun, usually. Or, it was a special interest of mine, in which case my response was even worse than this. But I would then give a brain dump of my knowledge on the topic, waiting for some kind of reciprocation. Over time I’ve learned that, for the most part, NT people hate when I do this. I have gained a reputation as being a know-it-all and “needing to always be right” in several settings.

What cured me of doing this? It was when I went back for college as an adult. It happened in conjunction with being cured of my desire to be liked by everyone, and being cured of my tendency to be overly generous in giving people the benefit of the doubt.

There was a clique of my classmates that formed, and I kept trying to ingratiate myself to them to be accepted into the clique. The harder I tried, the more they snarked at me and excluded me.

• Lesson 1: You are not required to like everyone. You are allowed to see the way they behave and talk to other people and decide you don’t like them. This doesn’t make you a bad person.This is particularly true if the person is a gossiping bully who is mean to you, even if that meanness is subtle and understated.

This was in 2014. I was 34. This was the first time in my life I gave myself permission to dislike, even hate, someone. I just suddenly asked myself why I was trying so hard to be accepted by people who I knew to be complete a~~holes just from the way they talked about other classmates behind their backs. I also concluded they were most likely, based on the way they openly treated me, making fun of me behind my back. I didn’t realize disliking them was okay until 90% of the way through the semester, but I stopped being overly nice to them or trying to impress them.

Interestingly, this seemed to increase their respect of me. But of course, I no longer needed to care.

Conversely, you are not required to like anyone, either. But to get along in a neurotypical world, you do unfortunately need to fake that you like them for purposes of getting along, particularly in settings such as the workplace or college. In the US at least, being extroverted is the norm, and if you don’t put on that you enjoy their company and collaborating with them, you get labeled as a jerk and so forth.

This takes heavy masking, however, so doing it with everyone all the time requires a lot of emotional energy. So you kind of have to pick your battles with this one. Personally, I’ve been a waitress and a medical receptionist (my only two careers), so work has always required heavy, heavy masking. Even with me purposely putting that on, I’ve been yelled at many times for being rude or disrespectful because my version of chipper only sounds like most people when they’re mildly interested or slightly engaged. Unfortunately, however, some people want their waitress or medical receptionist to be overly bubbly and I have never once achieved that.

• Lesson 2: NTs simply don’t care about your knowledge on the topic. They just want to have a fun conversation.I changed tactics, socially, after the above experience. I think I may have come to some of these conclusions based on some stuff I learned in Sociology class that same semester, I’m not sure. But I do know this change in my methods coincided with that situation.

My new method:

1. Do not use the word “actually” if the person is wrong. At all. Ever. Saying it will get you labeled as a know-it-all, as someone who always needs to be right, or just someone who likes to correct people. NTs don’t like any of these people.
2. Boil your comment down to one sentence, ideally containing only one clause. NTs want to have something to bounce off of for the purposes of conversation, and they don’t care about all the nuance of the topic, especially this early in the exchange.
3. Let the other person have their say/their turn. They will probably respond with a comment that is worded in a way that makes it clear that whatever they’re saying is an opinion, even if your comment was about the facts of a matter.
4. In response, do not discount their opinion in a direct, hard-nosed manner, even if they’re clearly and blatantly wrong. Just don’t. Find a way to say it that references your own opinion or experiences, instead.
5. If they change the subject, even obliquely, that’s the end of that topic. Period.

A commenter on Reddit* explained it this way:

People are generally not curious; they just need to chitchat every so often, like using the bathroom.

How would you feel if you had to pee and instead of a simple urinal there was a complex device that required lots of effort to operate?

Its hard [for me] to naturally get this because I don’t really need to chitchat very much.

Another thing that has helped smooth relations is thinking about why this person is asking whatever they are asking. If their facial expression or body language are noticeable then they probably want to be reassured or comforted

• Lesson 3: Some people are just not going to like you. This is not because something is wrong with you. There is probably simply a fundamental disconnect between your perspective or your personality that simply doesn’t mesh with theirs. And this is okay. In fact, as learned in lesson 1, this may actually be ideal.

Again, coincidentally, this is something I came across right around that same time as the events above: I ran across the famous 5 Geek Social Fallacies post and realized I was infected with all 5. I had been running a fandom Skype text-based chat and had been trying, for literal years, to make everyone get along and be friends, and I realized at this point my error.

Soon after this, the bullies in the chat started picking on the person who was the odd man out, the guy who had always behaved oddly. His responses in this particular conversation were more reactive than usual, probably because he’d been putting up with their bullying for the entire time the chat had existed. I’m not going to chronicle everything that happened during that conversation, but I just came very solidly to the conclusion that it was never going to work out. I ended up deleting the entire chat after about an hour of this.

• Lesson 4: There will always be the person who I refer to as That Guy. Every online group chat or Facebook group, every classroom or workplace, every church or social club or circle of acquaintances has That Guy. It is okay to dislike That Guy, it is okay not to be even surface friends with That Guy, and it is even okay to exclude That Guy.

And sometimes, being autistic in a world of neurotypicals, you find that you are That Guy. And in this case, it is okay to seclude yourself, disconnect from everyone else, or only be as polite as necessary to get through the day.Being That Guy is not wrong. It is not a reason you have to try harder. It just means that, in this particular setting, you do not fit in.

In this case and in this setting, I am open to further questions regarding this, or receiving your own brain dumpings or your own manifesto on the topic.

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* Thanks to Reddit user KillAllLeftists3 (who unfortunately apparently wants me dead, but, ah well) for this analogy.

† Thanks to Reddit user RakshaTheCat for inspiring this last bit about disliking people.