Communication
Sep. 2nd, 2021 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo, are there any real, non-parody guides or even training for how to communicate effectively with autistic people?
I've read up lots on the topic and I am completely convinced by the double empathy model of autism. I also think it's morally correct that it should be up to non-autistic* people to adapt our communication appropriately, rather than making the autistic minority do all the work. That means I need to figure out what I should be doing.
I could just search for information but I am wary of searches being swamped by guides for adults in positions of authority on how to force autistic kids to act more "normal". Which is the exact opposite of what I want, I want to communicate with autistic adults in an ethical, non coercive way.
I don't want to be just sitting here demanding to be educated. So here's what I've gleaned from my own reading, and what I'm already doing, and where I'm getting stuck. Of course I do understand that all autistic people are individuals and have their own preferences, I'm not looking for the magic cheat code that will solve all communication. And I'm lucky enough to have some autistic people in my life who very tolerantly put up with my communication style as it currently is, but I'd still like to do better.
Eye contact: I think I'm ok with "not staring at people's eyeballs". Or at least, if someone requests no eye contact I have sufficient practice at changing my usual habits to go along with that. If someone hasn't mentioned that they're autistic and usually masks by forcing themselves to endure eye contact, or faking it, I might well not realize though. And avoiding eye contact isn't a good default because lots of non-autistic people do genuinely find that rude.
Monologues / infodumps: It really doesn't come naturally to me to just absorb a big chunk of information without interrupting or asking questions or even making polite encouraging noises to signal attention and interest. This doesn't mean that I find it boring when people speak at length about their special interests, not at all, but as a neurotypical person when I'm interested in something my instinct is to be noisy about expressing that interest and I have read that this can make it harder for autistic people to talk. One possible solution would be for me to do something with my hands while the person's talking, such as playing a low-attention clicky game on my phone. In general I find it easier to listen when I'm physically active anyway. Again, I can't do this as a default because many non-autistic people find it rude if you fidget and don't directly respond to what they're saying, so it would have to be by agreement.
Verbal bias: I don't in principle believe that talking with words is a better means of communication than any other. If someone preferred to type at me even when we were in the same room, I would have no problem with it, but nobody has ever actually asked me to do that. I don't sign and AFAIK none of my autistic friends prefer sign over spoken language.
Sensory environment: Often I don't have control over whether there are bad noises, bad lighting, distracting smells, uncomfortable furniture etc that might make communication harder. I think trying to sort this out proactively is a bit hopeless because there's no way I'd be able to guess what constitutes a good or bad sensory environment for a particular person. I could try to make it more clear that I'm happy to make any changes that are in my power, I'm not going to roll my eyes if someone asks me to change something that's bothering them but not affecting me.
There's a thing about auditory processing I've sometimes found: personally, I find it easy to pick out salient information from background noise, and I've noticed that many autistic friends can't really do this, so they often like to have the TV or music turned up higher than I find physically comfortable, such that it's loud enough to hear over non-informative (and possibly uncomfortable?) background noises. So this might be an example where I as a more privileged person am in a position to adapt, I could have conversations in uncomfortable-to-me rooms where everybody has to raise their voice to be heard over the music and other conversations, as opposed to making autistic people endure rooms that to me are pleasantly quiet but they struggle to make out the words or are made uncomfortable by background noise that I just tune out. However this goes against the received wisdom which suggests that autistic people are likely to be more negatively affected by "noise" than non-autistic people. My suspicion is that the definition of "noise" is too general and I need to be more specific, but IDK.
Stimming: I think I'm mostly not disturbed by things like flapping or rocking but perhaps I do react negatively in some way that's perceptible even if I think I'm fine with it. Basically I can't just say it's safe to stim around me unless I can actually demonstrate it and I'm not sure how to do that.
The part where I'm most stuck is on the content of what's being talked about. I keep reading lots of autistic people who complain that the rest of society is terrible at this, but in ways that I can't work out how to remediate. For example, the idea that "autistic people always say what they mean". This is impossible on its face because there isn't a one-to-one mapping between words and meanings! If it were really true that autistic people prefer to avoid metaphors and idioms, I could do that to some extent but almost all of language is somewhat metaphorical, and also I don't actually think that description is true. I've never met an autistic person who takes language literally in the manner of a scriptwriter's stereotype of how a robot or computer with no world knowledge might communicate.
"Autistic communication is functional, not social signalling". Well, for a start if that were true I wouldn't have learned it from parody articles about neurotypical communication defects! But also IME known-to-me autistic people are far more likely than people I believe not to be autistic to be upset if I correct them on a matter of fact or propose a different way of achieving a goal. Far more likely to assume I'm angry with them or disapproving of their choices when I just express my own preference. And it's only with known-autistic people that I've experienced major communication breakdowns because they said 'I'm really happy that you're doing this thing' when actually they meant they hated the thing and wanted me to stop. It is true that a non-autistic person might not confront me directly and ask me to change my behaviour; if they came from a guess/offer culture they might ask in a roundabout way, something like: oh, I read this article which suggested some people might find it annoying when people do the thing... Or if they were non-autistic but from an ask culture, they might pad out their request with reassurances: it's nothing personal, it's just me, I know you don't mean to cause a problem, but would you mind terribly doing something else instead... But although neither the ask nor the guess approach is direct, purely functional communication, they're at least not the opposite of what the person actually wants.
I can certainly try not to make inferences that go beyond the actual words expressed, based on my likely incorrect interpretation of facial expression or tone of voice. Even if I'm making a conscious effort to listen to someone's words and not read anything in, I'm sure I'm picking up non-verbal cues without meaning to. Or equally I may fail to spell out something which I thought would be an obvious interpretation but actually comes across as expecting mind-reading.
I feel there are two options here, both of which reflect badly on me. One is that I've massively misunderstood what autistic people actually find desirable in terms of communication, which is likely because the whole double empathy problem is precisely that non-autistic people constantly misunderstand autistic people. The second is that most autistic people I know have already gone so far to adapt their communication to me that they're already massively uncomfortable. For example, perhaps they are making a huge effort to tell polite lies and chat about trivial things and employ figurative language because that's what non-autistic people expect. So if I assume a person is communicating in the mode they feel most comfortable with, but in fact they're code-switching to communicate in the socially accepted way, I'm going to get things even further wrong.
Also, because I'm part of the non-autistic majority, I am in some ways Schroedinger's neuro-supremacist. Like, I might say it's totally fine to be direct with me and say what you mean, but there's a threat that I'm going to judge or bully or even abuse people if they do drop the mask and communicate without going to a big effort to make me feel more comfortable. It might be that when I make a factual correction, I'm following the pattern of past bullies who would weaponize an error against an autistic person. So even though autistic people say they want people to just tell them if they're wrong about something, they mean they want trustworthy fellow autistic people to be direct with them, but it's not going to work if I try that.
I'm not sure if it's even legitimate to ask this, but if you were able to change something about the way I communicate to be better for autistic people, what would you (want me to) change? Do you know of any resources aimed at teaching non-autistic people to do better, that use a neurodiversity type model and centre autistic people?
*Note on terminology: I have some autistic friends who insist that the opposite of 'autistic' is 'allistic', and some autistic friends who find 'allistic' offensive and strongly prefer 'neurotypical', and both those views are completely valid but I'm going with 'non-autistic' as the least-bad compromise for how to describe myself.
I've read up lots on the topic and I am completely convinced by the double empathy model of autism. I also think it's morally correct that it should be up to non-autistic* people to adapt our communication appropriately, rather than making the autistic minority do all the work. That means I need to figure out what I should be doing.
I could just search for information but I am wary of searches being swamped by guides for adults in positions of authority on how to force autistic kids to act more "normal". Which is the exact opposite of what I want, I want to communicate with autistic adults in an ethical, non coercive way.
I don't want to be just sitting here demanding to be educated. So here's what I've gleaned from my own reading, and what I'm already doing, and where I'm getting stuck. Of course I do understand that all autistic people are individuals and have their own preferences, I'm not looking for the magic cheat code that will solve all communication. And I'm lucky enough to have some autistic people in my life who very tolerantly put up with my communication style as it currently is, but I'd still like to do better.
Eye contact: I think I'm ok with "not staring at people's eyeballs". Or at least, if someone requests no eye contact I have sufficient practice at changing my usual habits to go along with that. If someone hasn't mentioned that they're autistic and usually masks by forcing themselves to endure eye contact, or faking it, I might well not realize though. And avoiding eye contact isn't a good default because lots of non-autistic people do genuinely find that rude.
Monologues / infodumps: It really doesn't come naturally to me to just absorb a big chunk of information without interrupting or asking questions or even making polite encouraging noises to signal attention and interest. This doesn't mean that I find it boring when people speak at length about their special interests, not at all, but as a neurotypical person when I'm interested in something my instinct is to be noisy about expressing that interest and I have read that this can make it harder for autistic people to talk. One possible solution would be for me to do something with my hands while the person's talking, such as playing a low-attention clicky game on my phone. In general I find it easier to listen when I'm physically active anyway. Again, I can't do this as a default because many non-autistic people find it rude if you fidget and don't directly respond to what they're saying, so it would have to be by agreement.
Verbal bias: I don't in principle believe that talking with words is a better means of communication than any other. If someone preferred to type at me even when we were in the same room, I would have no problem with it, but nobody has ever actually asked me to do that. I don't sign and AFAIK none of my autistic friends prefer sign over spoken language.
Sensory environment: Often I don't have control over whether there are bad noises, bad lighting, distracting smells, uncomfortable furniture etc that might make communication harder. I think trying to sort this out proactively is a bit hopeless because there's no way I'd be able to guess what constitutes a good or bad sensory environment for a particular person. I could try to make it more clear that I'm happy to make any changes that are in my power, I'm not going to roll my eyes if someone asks me to change something that's bothering them but not affecting me.
There's a thing about auditory processing I've sometimes found: personally, I find it easy to pick out salient information from background noise, and I've noticed that many autistic friends can't really do this, so they often like to have the TV or music turned up higher than I find physically comfortable, such that it's loud enough to hear over non-informative (and possibly uncomfortable?) background noises. So this might be an example where I as a more privileged person am in a position to adapt, I could have conversations in uncomfortable-to-me rooms where everybody has to raise their voice to be heard over the music and other conversations, as opposed to making autistic people endure rooms that to me are pleasantly quiet but they struggle to make out the words or are made uncomfortable by background noise that I just tune out. However this goes against the received wisdom which suggests that autistic people are likely to be more negatively affected by "noise" than non-autistic people. My suspicion is that the definition of "noise" is too general and I need to be more specific, but IDK.
Stimming: I think I'm mostly not disturbed by things like flapping or rocking but perhaps I do react negatively in some way that's perceptible even if I think I'm fine with it. Basically I can't just say it's safe to stim around me unless I can actually demonstrate it and I'm not sure how to do that.
The part where I'm most stuck is on the content of what's being talked about. I keep reading lots of autistic people who complain that the rest of society is terrible at this, but in ways that I can't work out how to remediate. For example, the idea that "autistic people always say what they mean". This is impossible on its face because there isn't a one-to-one mapping between words and meanings! If it were really true that autistic people prefer to avoid metaphors and idioms, I could do that to some extent but almost all of language is somewhat metaphorical, and also I don't actually think that description is true. I've never met an autistic person who takes language literally in the manner of a scriptwriter's stereotype of how a robot or computer with no world knowledge might communicate.
"Autistic communication is functional, not social signalling". Well, for a start if that were true I wouldn't have learned it from parody articles about neurotypical communication defects! But also IME known-to-me autistic people are far more likely than people I believe not to be autistic to be upset if I correct them on a matter of fact or propose a different way of achieving a goal. Far more likely to assume I'm angry with them or disapproving of their choices when I just express my own preference. And it's only with known-autistic people that I've experienced major communication breakdowns because they said 'I'm really happy that you're doing this thing' when actually they meant they hated the thing and wanted me to stop. It is true that a non-autistic person might not confront me directly and ask me to change my behaviour; if they came from a guess/offer culture they might ask in a roundabout way, something like: oh, I read this article which suggested some people might find it annoying when people do the thing... Or if they were non-autistic but from an ask culture, they might pad out their request with reassurances: it's nothing personal, it's just me, I know you don't mean to cause a problem, but would you mind terribly doing something else instead... But although neither the ask nor the guess approach is direct, purely functional communication, they're at least not the opposite of what the person actually wants.
I can certainly try not to make inferences that go beyond the actual words expressed, based on my likely incorrect interpretation of facial expression or tone of voice. Even if I'm making a conscious effort to listen to someone's words and not read anything in, I'm sure I'm picking up non-verbal cues without meaning to. Or equally I may fail to spell out something which I thought would be an obvious interpretation but actually comes across as expecting mind-reading.
I feel there are two options here, both of which reflect badly on me. One is that I've massively misunderstood what autistic people actually find desirable in terms of communication, which is likely because the whole double empathy problem is precisely that non-autistic people constantly misunderstand autistic people. The second is that most autistic people I know have already gone so far to adapt their communication to me that they're already massively uncomfortable. For example, perhaps they are making a huge effort to tell polite lies and chat about trivial things and employ figurative language because that's what non-autistic people expect. So if I assume a person is communicating in the mode they feel most comfortable with, but in fact they're code-switching to communicate in the socially accepted way, I'm going to get things even further wrong.
Also, because I'm part of the non-autistic majority, I am in some ways Schroedinger's neuro-supremacist. Like, I might say it's totally fine to be direct with me and say what you mean, but there's a threat that I'm going to judge or bully or even abuse people if they do drop the mask and communicate without going to a big effort to make me feel more comfortable. It might be that when I make a factual correction, I'm following the pattern of past bullies who would weaponize an error against an autistic person. So even though autistic people say they want people to just tell them if they're wrong about something, they mean they want trustworthy fellow autistic people to be direct with them, but it's not going to work if I try that.
I'm not sure if it's even legitimate to ask this, but if you were able to change something about the way I communicate to be better for autistic people, what would you (want me to) change? Do you know of any resources aimed at teaching non-autistic people to do better, that use a neurodiversity type model and centre autistic people?
*Note on terminology: I have some autistic friends who insist that the opposite of 'autistic' is 'allistic', and some autistic friends who find 'allistic' offensive and strongly prefer 'neurotypical', and both those views are completely valid but I'm going with 'non-autistic' as the least-bad compromise for how to describe myself.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 04:59 pm (UTC)You can ask: 'is it easier for you to explain if I just listen?'. You can also have boundaries as to how much monologue/infodump you're up for at any given time. I'm coming at this from the perspective of it being possible to communicate well with autistic people without being up for being infodumped at and expected to remain silent for large chunks of time.
I could have conversations in uncomfortable-to-me rooms where everybody has to raise their voice to be heard over the music and other conversations,
I don't think this is a useful response to the problem you first described ie. some autistic people needing louder TV than you find comfortable, as the problem here is likely to be the signal to noise ratio, and the signal to noise ratio in rooms where everyone has to raise their voices to be heard is terrible.
[Broadly signal = the noise you want to hear, "noise" = all the other sound you can hear]
With the louder TV one, either there is backgound noise arising from sources other than the TV that is interfering with watching it or the TV programme itself has been poorly made with background music that's too loud vs people's voices or the other sounds important to the action. It's [safely in a pandemic] worth the people preferring louder telly checking they don't have a hearing problem [as autistic people might also be deaf or become deafened as they age]. If it's not that/in the interim, you can help with external-to-the-TV background noise by improving the acoustics of the room - add carpet/rugs, thick curtains, soft furnishings and so on [there are higher tech ways of doing this including things like adding soundproofing insulation to the ceiling that wouldn't be a first option and wouldn't usually be done in people's homes]. If it's a poorly made TV programme, try turning the subtitles on / complaining to the people who made it.
But also IME known-to-me autistic people are far more likely than people I believe not to be autistic to be upset if I correct them on a matter of fact or propose a different way of achieving a goal. Far more likely to assume I'm angry with them or disapproving of their choices when I just express my own preference.
Rigidity of thinking is also an autistic thing - see eg. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/making-sense-autistic-spectrum-disorders/201608/cognitive-rigidity-the-8-ball-hell so for some autisic people it can be very difficult to accept somebody else's input on something where they've already made up their mind. Communication strategy wise, there are various things to try: is it important enough to bother trying to correct? can you influence their thinking at an early stage before they reach a fixed view? can you guide them slowly/gently through the issues so they can see for themselves that their first view was wrong?
And it's only with known-autistic people that I've experienced major communication breakdowns because they said 'I'm really happy that you're doing this thing' when actually they meant they hated the thing and wanted me to stop.
Add in: (a) trying to live in a world designed for neurotypical people, where they've often experienced rejection (b) often a big chunk of autism related anxiety (see eg. https://www.additudemag.com/autism-anxiety-adults/). Communication strategies I might try: (a) doing lots of meta communication - what do they need to feel able to communicate that they don't like something/want it to stop? (b) asking more than once, in different times/places if someone is OK with something + being clear they can change their minds.
In terms of general stuff for communicating with autistic people, google took me to http://www.awp.nhs.uk/media/968309/Supporting-autistic-people-Word-version.pdf which looks mostly useful to me.
Stuff I've concluded having had many clients either with a diagnosis of autism themselves or strongly suspecting they have it after looking at their children and realising the traits they share:
- don't be certain about timings/dates unless they're within your control
- communicate carefully around uncertainty - what is certain/what is likely/when are you likely to be able to be more concrete
- if you're talking by phone anticipate having to manage turn taking for the call.
- expect to have to re-visit conversations over time
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-04 07:04 pm (UTC)I really like your suggestions about TV volume; those are all things I'd try for people with physical hearing problems, but I was sort of thinking auditory processing is different. I think a big part of the problem is that I just mentally filter out background noise but if someone can't do that, removing the source of noise is a better solution.
All the stuff you suggest for disagreeing or correcting without making it personal are exactly the kind of things I would generally do, including not bothering to correct if it doesn't really matter. I just see a lot of autistic people complaining about how annoying it is when non-autistic people do things like that, and make everything about people's feelings rather than just getting to the point. So I think it's something else, applying my usual strategies to soften a disagreement might feel like wasted effort or irrelevant or confusing, but just bluntly stating, no, you're wrong, is still potentially hostile and upsetting.
I think you're absolutely right that communication might be difficult because of anxiety or the expectation of rejection. So I guess that rather than coming up with a communication style that is more aligned with autistic ways of communicating, I might need to put effort into setting up a safe context.
I really like the suggestion of clearly stating what I have control over and how certain a particular future is, that seems like it is a generally useful communication skill. Thank you again!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-11 03:01 am (UTC)Unlike physical hearing problems, other senses can interfere with my ability to understand. If all my attention is on a flashing TV screen, a strong smell (could be bad, could just be Too Much like if the floor was recently cleaned and everything smells like chemicals and lemons), a rock in my shoe or a bra that's pinching, a room that's too hot and humid, something that I'm very emotionally upset about like a family medical emergency, being in pain and needing to sit down, being out of breath and needing to get air and needing to sit down in order to stop needing to give oxygen to the expensive muscles, in those circumstances I don't have enough attention to spare for making words not sound like a Charlie Brown adult.
Subtitles help, if it's subtitleable. Having questions asked that are probably going to be taken as immutable choices is extremely stressful, especially if everyone is waiting for my answer. Sometimes I will say that I understand, or everything's fine, or yes, even when I don't understand, because it's probably okay and requiring everything to be re-explained will hold up everyone and that detracts from my social grace account and I need to save that for important things like needing physical accommodations.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 05:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 12:51 pm (UTC)Every business presentation course I've done (certainly two, possibly three) has emphasized repetition, commonly "tell them three times - tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them".
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 01:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 02:55 pm (UTC)She wrote a lot of very solid stuff in that period. Her perspective is informed by being autistic and doing a lot of work in disability rights, amongst other things.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 03:38 pm (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-04 07:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 06:46 pm (UTC)Infodumps: Autistic people don't tend to handle turn-taking cues the same way as neurotypical people. This doesn't actually mean you're obligated to listen to a five-minute monologue though! Conversation is teamwork. Autistic people shouldn't always be the ones who have to shift their interaction style, but neither should you. It's fine to interject to show interest sometimes! Where it becomes an issue is when neurotypical people can't handle someone who doesn't follow the turn-taking cues they're used to, or attempts to completely shut down the autistic person's communication style.
Also - sometimes to accommodate people with difference we have to accept that things mainstream society thinks are "rude" isn't the most important consideration? If you listen better when moving you are allowed to ask for that, even with a neurotypical person, because it helps you!
Verbal bias: usually people who can't verbal and have alternate communication methods are pretty good at using them. Usually by handing me a note. Be willing to follow their lead and don't get offended if they don't communicate exactly the way you expect them too and you're probably fine. Also remember that people's ability to communicate can vary, so just because they were nonverbal an hour ago doesn't mean they are now, and vice versa.
If you're going to spend a lot of time with people who have communications challenges (especially kids) it's probably worth learning basic "preschool" sign language? Things like "bathroom" and "help" and "all done" and "stop". A lot of kids learn these in preschool now and most kids in the US in non-mainstream special education learn them. That way you can at least handle the basics if someone is non-verbal and in crisis. A few dozen signs makes a huge difference in working with those kids, and you can probably find a very short course in person or on youtube for that much (all the resources I know are ASL not BSL.)
Sensory environmvent - this is going to vary a lot for people. In general, limiting unecessary sensory stimulus is going to help a lot of people, not just autistic people. Minimize artificial scents, turn off the background TV audio, keep climate control working, etc. If you can the #1 thing is an option for people to move to a different sensory environment if they need to - often that means having a "quiet room" people can go to from a loud space, but if the main space is kept very quiet and still and dark for some reason, it might mean having a "loud room" with bright lights and tactile toys. Provide options. (In virtual spaces, it means things like allowing an audio-only attendance at a meeting, or not allowing visually distracting effects.)
Your loud TV example is so far off my experience of auditory processing that I'm not even sure I understand what you're describing! The solution for a person with sensory issues needing the TV loud to cover background noise is *definitely not* to also make the background noise louder! Take the loud conversation to a different room, or if you can't do that, tell the person watching TV that you need the space for a conversation and you're sorry that you have to interrupt their TV watching.
If you have multiple people with different noise needs who have to use the same space, and going somewhere else isn't an option, then you have to figure out a compromise to share the space. This is always tough whether the people involved are neurodiverse or not. As long as nobody involved treats someone else having different needs as a deliberate personal attack on them, you just listen to each other's needs and work it out. An autistic person might respond differently to being told they have to compromise on use of space or audio, but as long as they aren't the only one who ever has to compromise, they can still be asked.
Stimming: the best way I know demonstrate that you don't mind stimming is to stop suppressing your own desire to stim. You say you can often listen better if you have a fidget, so carry a fidget and if you're in a situation where it might help, ask the person you're talking to if they mind if you fidget. Even if they say it bothers them (and an autistic person might also be bothered) you've demonstrated that you don't have a problem with it and it's okay to ask (and also to say no). (This is maybe part of my personal campaign to normalize fidgeting while listening, but I still think it's valid.)
The stuff about communication being functional:
The important thing to remember here is a) autistic people can be assholes as much as neurotypical people can.
b) Autistic people can be bad at communicating, even in autistic modes! just like neurotypical people can be bad at communicating in neurotypical modes.
c) Autistic people can have bad emotional reactions to things even if you do everything right (just like neurotypical people can.)
I get upset if you tell me I'm wrong about something, but I promise you I will be even more upset if I find out I've been wrong about it for a year and everybody has been silently resenting me for it but not saying anything! It's not the end of the world if someone's upset.
Generally, autistic spectrum people tend to assume that the verbal component of communication is the -- actionable? -- component. So if someone says a thing in words, they assume they can carry on as if the thing the person said was correct. If I ask, "Are you okay with this?" and you say "Yes it's fine," then I will carry on as if it's fine. That doesn't mean I don't understand the concept that you might say it's fine even if it's not fine, and it doesn't mean I will never do that myself! But it means I don't trust my ability to deduce whether "it's fine" means it's fine, or it's not fine but I want you to act like it's fine, or it's not fine and I want you to stop. So I have to work under the assumption that if you want me to stop acting like it's fine, you will tell me that. Because then at least when I get in trouble for it later, I can fall back on "but you said it was fine".
The issue isn't that people use nonverbal cues or sometimes talk figuratively; the issue is that people will punish you if they read the nonverbal cues wrong, or you read the nonverbal cues wrong, or you guessed wrong about what the figurative thing meant, or you didn't guess wrong about what the figurative thing meant and they don't like that you did, or-- At least if people say what they mean in words, you have something to hold on to.
So I would say, for example, if you ask an autistic person if they're happy about a thing, and you have reason to suspect they are not, it is fine to say, "You said you are happy, but you don't look like you are happy. Would you like it if I stopped? I really don't mind stopping." That's good communication! A lot of neurotypical people are more likely to read the nonverbal cues, decide the person didn't mean it, stop doing the thing, then later say "I stopped doing the thing because I thought you wanted me to stop, even though you said the opposite, and I've been mad at you ever since" and that's the kind of thing that is very frustrating to deal with.
Remember that most autistic people have been traumatized out of trusting their own social instincts. Even the ones who were raised in accepting households will still have faced many, many neurotypical people with 0 theory of mind who lash out at anyone who doesn't follow their unspoken rules in every detail. Many people who have spent time in environments where they face unpredictable retribution respond with a combination of rules-lawyering and people-pleasing, and for most autistic people that is "society at large". So they're going to lean on those strategies.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 11:17 pm (UTC)This is a very good point! I have an autistic friend who was having trouble with a coworker who was convinced she was afraid of him, and because of the ablism at her workplace (she was working at a school with a bunch of developmentally disabled students) she didn't want to say "no, I'm not avoiding eye contact because I'm afraid of you, it's because I'm autistic".
Which brings me to my main critique of Liv's post: personally I find the "autistics are from Mars, allistics are from Venus" thing limiting -- people have a spectrum of different needs, and the most important thing is to make sure that people feel comfortable expressing their specific desire for accomodation without expecting to be stereotyped and given accommodations they don't want.
Related: this article by a woman diagnosed with autism late in life, which makes a lot of these points better than I do.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 07:14 pm (UTC)Allistic is specifically for non-autistic, but can include other stigmatized neurotypes such as ADHD. If I am not autistic, I am allistic.
Neurotypical includes many people who are non-autistic, but also excludes ADHD and other "cousin" neurotypes to autism. If I am not autistic, I am still not neurotypical, because I have ADHD.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 07:25 pm (UTC)I suspect that having online-first friendships makes swapping between voice and text easier, but the harder part for us has been to get not-massively-online visitors into the chat.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-02 10:05 pm (UTC)For example, the idea that "autistic people always say what they mean". This is impossible on its face because there isn't a one-to-one mapping between words and meanings! If it were really true that autistic people prefer to avoid metaphors and idioms […]
that's not really what that observation is about. that observation is more about subtext and lack thereof. for example, statement "the kitchen is messy", subtext "I am instructing you to clean the kitchen". an allistic person might say the statement to someone, expecting them also to understand the subtext, and would likely understand the subtext if someone said the statement to them; an autistic person might say the statement because it's a fact, without intending any subtext, and wouldn't necessarily notice there's anything but that fact to understand if someone said the statement to them.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-11 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-11 12:39 pm (UTC)I resembleMy sink resembles this statement(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 02:22 pm (UTC)When things have gone badly wrong with work communications, it's been when people have made assumptions about how I'll interpret their instructions. In one example that sticks in my mind I was told to figure out exactly how to do a mathematical process without losing numerical precision (fixed point arithmetic is weird that way). I spent a day looking at it and becoming increasingly convinced it wasn't possible. Boss person then informed me she'd gotten tired of waiting and had done it herself, sacrificing numerical precision. As far as I was concerned she'd done precisely the thing she'd specifically told me not to do, without taking any time to try and figure out if there were alternative approaches to do it the way she'd told me she wanted. Yes, she could decide to do that, but there was no reason to be annoyed at me for taking the time to try to do it the way she'd asked. (And that was 30 years ago and I'm still perplexed at the difference in interpretations).
That was someone being overly precise and leaving no room for interpretation, at least as I read it, other examples have been a lack of precision and an assumption I'll interpret things exactly the same way they would, then negative reactions because I didn't.
And then there's communication from me to others. I was criticized in a PDR for not communicating enough and had to do an on-the-spot reassessment to realize that the more stressed or in pain I am, the less I will initiate communication. I don't lost the ability to speak, it just becomes an unwanted distraction.
One of my bosses created a situation in which I had to take him aside and give him a considered opinion of exactly what I could guarantee physically, and he flounced off declaring that I was being "unduly negative". If I talk about something where I'm the expert, such as my own body, and you discount it because you don't like the answer, then I'm going to conclude that you're an idiot, and I'm going to apply that to everything else that comes out of your mouth.
I don't think I'm particularly given to extended info-dumps, but if I'm talking and someone is playing a game on their phone, I'm going to conclude that they're not interested (and rude). Fidgeting is one thing, doing something that actively requires your attention is another.
Conversational cues - ugh, no can do. Even with friends I struggle to find an opportunity to enter the conversation. So including people in the conversation may be something you actively need to manage, just like the moderator in a panel discussion.
WRT eye contact, possibly the one useful thing to come out of the Shared Space road planning fiasco* was the idea of eye contact as a negotiated transaction. Which is fine if you can hold the contact for long enough to negotiate, but if you can't it becomes a problem, especially if the NT person with the other set of eyes is trying to insist on holding it long enough to figure out what you're comfortable with. A flicked glance and looking away or down IS a fairly emphatic negotiating position on what's tolerable. I think the best approach is probably just to accept whatever the other person is doing and to make eye contact as you find it appropriate, but not try to hold it beyond a moment or two. At worst the NTs might assume you're shy.
A lot of the neurodiverse diagnoses are potentially co-morbid with Auditory Processing Disorder. With APD physical hearing works fine, but decoding it in the brain is iffy. That's where the background noise issues come in, I find it very difficult not to also try and process the background conversations, and my sister has pointed out that even one-on-one in a quiet space I use "pardon?", "sorry?" etc not because I didn't hear what was said, but to give my brain time to catch up with decoding it. You seem to be interpreting the issue back to front, noisy rooms will in general make this much worse, quiet rooms will make it much better, the issue with turning the volume up is not increasing the amount of noise, but making the voice you need to focus on significantly clearer than any background noise so that the brain doesn't try to focus on that as well. Specific volume, rather than general volume.
I have run into one who really pushed their insistence on precise meaning beyond what was reasonable, and was clearly angered that everyone else didn't, but to counter that are all the autistic authors using metaphor and idiom and symbolism with just as much facility as anyone else. It's a spectrum.
* Shared Spaces were supposed to be public spaces/roads with no physical kerbs or road crossings, drivers and pedestrians would negotiate who went first by eye contact. It apparently 'worked' in the Netherlands, and failed utterly, with serious accidents, in the UK. How it was meant to work in either country for people with visual impairments was cavalierly dismissed as not an issue. It was, but it took the government about 5 years to switch from "there's absolutely not a safety issue" to "there absolutely is a safety issue and any further planned Shared Space projects will not happen". And it belatedly occurs to me that depending on eye contact to negotiate who goes first was probably almost as much a problem for the neurodiverse community as for the VI community.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-03 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-11 02:43 am (UTC)They begin saying a thing when I am (variously) tuned out, and it takes me until nearly the end of what they're saying for me to start making the mouth-noises into words with meaning.
"Huh?"
They helpfully repeat the last few words, which were the part that I had actually grasped.
We've learned that "Can you repeat that from the beginning" is one of the useful phrases.
Variously tuned out can involve attention on something else, background noise too loud, pain too loud, or (my favorite) earbuds in and podcast on while doing dishes in the gross sink such that I need to wash my hands before being able to stop the noise or take the noise out of my ears. (Honestly if I could make one request of my partner to improve our communication, I would ask that they check both my ears and actively get my attention before starting to talk to me. Missing words makes me anxious and being anxious in that way makes me mad.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-07 06:32 pm (UTC)A thing other people haven't mentioned explicitly, I think, is that it is not reasonable or okay for a negotiation about volume to come down on the side of "you get to be in pain, and possibly also suffer long-term damage". There are subtitles; there are ear plugs specifically designed to filter "background" noise (Flare Calmer -- I don't have any experience with them, but they are a thing that exists); and just in general the solution to access clash is not for you to always cede.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-08 03:13 pm (UTC)How to be better
Date: 2022-07-20 03:42 pm (UTC)This site has a helpful section for allies: https://coda.io/d/Public-Neurodiversity-Support-Center_d4VV865uZRA/I-Want-To-Be-An-Ally_suPwt#_luXba
Also, something that really stood out to me about your post is this:
This a great example of internalized ableism, and there are two parts to it - the automatic prioritization of non-autistic people's comfort and perceptions over that of autistic people (which is the very thing that that makes autism disabling in the social model of disability), and the subtext that acting in a way that looks less neutrotypical would be bad for you, socially. I think exploring those feelings would be a great way to grow your empathy for the autistic experience.
Also, it very well might be socially damaging to have some neurodivergent-friendly default behaviors, but I don't think you realize how revealing that is about how your social group treats autistic behavior. Allistic people are in a much safer social position to push back on those norms, and doing some of the work of educating people about neurodiversity and putting social pressure behind the idea that its okay to be visibly autistic are great ways to be an ally. Showing that you care more about our rights, including the right to exist in public without masking, than about upholding neurotypical social norms is how you avoid being Schroedinger's neuro-supremacist.
The process of adapting your communication is to some degree specific to each person, but the first step of that process has to be one of you looking weird in public - and neurotypical people will always win that game, thus putting the burden of vulnerability, weirdness, and unmasking on your autistic friends.
You said: and I am delighted to tell you that it's very simple - if you want your friends to feel comfortable stimming, stim in front of them first; if you want them to be comfortable not making eye contact, be imperfect in your own eye contact; if you want them to be comfortable with more direct speech or dropping of social niceties, do those things yourself and then beg their indulgence; if you want them to get their sensory needs met, first talk explicitly about meeting your own, especially the ones that are a little weird. Check your privilege, give up your power, I assume this is a familiar refrain to anyone asking the kind of questions you are.
For a deeper dive on how to change in a way that is positive for your relationships with autistic people, I recommend Neuroqueer Heresies, by Dr Nick Walker. She goes into some case studies of creating autism friendly and allistic-autistic integrated social spaces. I also recommend the writing of Callum Stephen, Myk Bilokonsky (author of the link above), and Devon Price as good places to start listening to what autistic people have to say about themselves.