A Peek Backstage: What is Behind Autistic People’s “Lack of Social Skills”?

According to the DSM-5 (the “bible of psychiatrists”), the features of ‘autism spectrum disorder’ include:

• criterion A: persistent deficits in reciprocal social communication and social interaction
• criterion B: restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities

I want to focus on criterion A for a minute.

As an autistic person, yes, I do have deficits in reciprocal social interaction. Very much so. But there is nuance behind my social performance.

First of all, it’s good to clarify that autistic people do not only have deficits. We also have our own culture, which is distinct from neurotypical culture. While autism is a social disability, studies about the “double empathy problem” show that we can also be able to communicate pretty well among ourselves. Many of the things that neurotypical people perceive as deficits are, in fact, mere differences.

For example, a neurotypical may expect us to ask “How are you?” and judge us as rude if we don’t ask, whereas an autistic person might simply not agree with asking “How are you?” as a mere ritual, knowing that it’s not even seen as a real question in that context, but just as a formula of neurotypical politeness. For an autistic person, it’s rude to say something you don’t mean. So, according to autistic standards, neurotypicals have a severe deficit of authenticity. See how quickly judgements can be made?

That said, autism does come with challenges of varying degrees with social interaction. I speak from my own experience — it is hard for me to create and maintain social relationships, my body language is inexpressive, and I really struggle to keep conversations going. An outside observer could quickly frame my behaviour as a result of me “having bad social skills.”

However, this perspective is a neurotypical perspective. A neurotypical relies on certain brain functions when they learn social skills. An autistic person has extra things to take into account that strongly influence our “social performance,” and that have nothing to do with our “skills” in the first place. Let’s go backstage and break down a few of them.

Processing Speed. For some of us, the world goes too fast. Imagine people talking to you at 2X speed all the time. You could perhaps still follow, but it would be damn hard. My brain processes language slower than a neurotypical brain. This is indeed an impairment and not just a difference. By the time I have something to say, they are already saying something else. If they spoke slower, my “social skills” could get a better chance to manifest.

Auditory Processing Issues. “shshwyalyysn. Hahah!” is what I hear half the time an English person makes a joke. What do I do? Do I ask to repeat? Do I awkwardly laugh in the hope that I’m not laughing at the wrong thing? Did they say, “my boss is a salamander” or “my post as a silly minder” — what? Neither makes sense. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that?” “my ghost has a salmon dander.” OK.

Competing stimuli. As autistic people, we are notorious for having sensory sensitivities. But it goes beyond that. We have limited processing capacity. What we are using to process sensory or other stimuli, may be detracted from our social repertoire. For example, before I knew I was autistic, I used to go to a martial arts class, and I would be completely baffled as to why I would really struggle to both understand and speak at all during class, specifically. Not before or after, but during class. Later, I understood: the overwhelming tactile stimuli of martial arts would deplete all my mental resources, leading my brain to abstain from language in order to make it to the end of the class. The wrong lighting, background noise, competing sources of attention, etc., can have the same effect.

Social context. This is massively important since, for many autistic people, our “social skills” can vary widely according to the context. What kind of situation is in front of me? Is it with people I already know, in a familiar place? What are the stakes of it? Is it a weird networking event? Is it a birthday party, and everyone is drunk? How informal? How structured? How much will I be judged if I say something that is seen as “weird”? Are we talking about topics that I am familiar with? Is it an ambiguous or a more clear-cut situation? Are we in public or in private? One-to-one or in group? etc. Which options are “good” for us will vary for every autistic person. Indeed, you might not recognize me if you met me in different contexts.

Energy levels. To socialize when you are energized, good, and happy is one thing. To do it when you are tired and overwhelmed is a nightmare. My brain simply won’t respond if I’m tired. I won’t even be able to understand what you are saying. My “social skills” will be completely different on days when I have plenty of energy to use up for talking and social things.

Dyspraxia and Differences in Brain-Body Connection. For many of us, learning body language won’t make it any easier to put it into practice. For example, note the nuance: I personally have no problem reading human facial expressions. I may not be an expert in microexpression, but I have no deficit in that. However, if you asked me to make some expressions consciously, I couldn’t, because of dyspraxia. I simply do not have the control of those muscles like a neurotypical. A neurotypical may interpret my flat face as a lack of awareness of the importance of expression, whereas it’s simply an issue of connection between my brain and body. There’s a difference.

Executive Dysfunction. Having executive dysfunction means that you can only manage a few things at a time. When I have too many relationships, inevitably, I neglect them, not because I don’t understand the basics of social reciprocity, but because…how can I say? They slip. My mind is busy trying to manage everything else. Executive function is also involved in impulse control — at times, we may interrupt someone else and regret it an instant later, just because the “gates” between impulse and action didn’t work well in that moment.

Monotropism. Related to the last point, autistic people tend to have a monotropic mind. Our mind tends to focus on certain things, and those things take up a lot of our mind space. As much as it can be frustrating to hear us going on and on about one thing, it is just how our brain works sometimes. I understand that you don’t want to talk about the fact that ants perform surgery on each other (which is so cool), or that some deaf people gained hearing by having genetically modified viruses implanted in their ears (which is amazing). I really understand that, and I will make my best effort not to. But health is all my brain has been thinking about, and I will struggle to find other stuff to say sometimes. This is frustrating to me too, but it is how my brain works.

Social Judgement and Double Standards. After a lifetime of rejection, we are perfectly aware as we walk into a room that our authentic self is likely not welcome at all. As we are not given the tiniest space to deviate from the norm without receiving social punishment in the form of judgement, ostracization, and exclusion, we barely even get a chance to develop our social skills. Autistic people are familiar with the double standard placed on us. A social mistake that is forgiven to a neurotypical is not forgiven to us because we have already been classified as “lesser than” in people’s minds. This has a devastating effect on the development of our social and psychological selves for too many of us, and it simply needs to end.

These are just some of the aspects that influence our social behaviour, but it’s easy to see how certain descriptions of autism just flatten all the nuances of why our “social deficits” are there in the first place and what they mean in context. As autistic people, we do struggle with various aspects of social awareness and behaviour a lot of times, but this is nuanced, and it depends on a variety of causal factors, the combination of which will be different for every autistic person. I hope this can be understood more and more by the general public and medical professionals alike in the years to come, and patronizing or simplistic narratives on autistic behaviour can be dropped in favour of a true understanding of our condition.

– I am always happy to learn from other people’s experience. Leave a comment if you like!