I work as a Youth Peer Support Worker here at Suffolk Family Carers. My role is to mentor, coach and guide others to have a better understanding of their own neurodiversity. The position involves working with young people from 13-25 years old. I spend time with the young people and listen to their experiences and challenges. Being Autistic myself helps me understand some of these challenges from a personal perspective. I often share my experiences along with mechanisms and strategies to help overcome the anxieties and concerns related to them. The blog below comes from a conversation with one of the young people I work with, we will call him Mark (not his real name).
Feeling awkward
Mark and I were talking about how we had similar feelings of awkwardness and un-comfortability when in some social situations. Both of us have sensory issues linked to sounds and volumes of noise as well as avoidance to participate in small talk. So often we both avoid any unnecessary interactions. On discussing this in more detail we both realised that a similar phenomenon was occurring when we did participate in a conversation or discussion. Often it ended with others misunderstanding the point we were attempting to get across and even worse taken offence although no malice or ill intent was meant by any comment.
Logical Thinkers
Both of us are logical thinkers rather than emotional and like to state facts, figures and list evidence instead of express a feeling or emotion, we are often accused of speaking to the point and too directly. How we naturally engage with others and the type of language and terminology we use can have a negative outcome on any interaction, both of us appear to others as sometimes being mildly challenging or confrontational. We talked at length and shared many examples of when we had been told by someone we were rude, arrogant, pushy and opinionated, or we lack empathy or understanding.
Special Interests
It was surprising to hear that someone else shares the same life experiences. We both recognise that when we talk about our special interests we can become somewhat more passionate and enthusiastic as well as being louder, this can appear over confident and over bearing to the listener. We can over share or explain things in the most microscopic way, breaking down every aspect of the topic in to smaller detailed chunks, this may look like we are talking to the other person like a child or we think that they are inferior (which is not the case). We often won’t pause to give the other person time to come into the conversation. If someone does attempt to comment we may dismiss it and feel that they wouldn’t be able to contribute any value as they have not invested as much time and energy into the subject. When the talking point is not of interest we may do the opposite. Perhaps we only have one word answers, shake or nod our head or show a lack of willingness to participate. This too can appear and look like we are not interested or are finding the topic boring.
Is that really what I meant to say…
When you look at some of our characteristics and/or traits, which are part of our neurodiversity and identity, you could see us as being arrogant and rude. It’s understandable when you hear very direct and factual language. When the words and terminology may not be suitable to the social situation or environment. It may be difficult for you when we are loud and noisy, or abrupt and over confident, when communicating. When we talk too much or when we don’t talk at all. Although it may appear that we are just that irritating person in the workplace, down the pub or at the football match, we are not. We don’t have the intent to offend. We do not want people to come away feeling negative, we certainly wouldn’t want to intentionally upset or harm anyone. We may experience intense feelings of regret and be upset to have caused alarm or distress without having any intention to. For us we can come away from the interaction feeling low, frustrated and tired. A simple conversation can cause an ongoing anxiety throughout the rest of the day reflecting on what we could have said, should have said and didn’t say.
So when you are next in conversation with someone who may display some of the above mentioned characteristics, just think… Before you judge them as being arrogant or rude… Could they be autistic?
