Of
the many issues that autistic people face that impact their daily lives,
probably the one category of issues that impacts them the most are social issues.
The inability to easily make friends, follow the social rules that govern our
society, and have enough social sense to navigate the different institutions in
our world greatly impact an autistic person’s ability to succeed in life, and
impacts their quality of life heavily.
At
the same time, those social rules differ highly in different social settings,
and in different cultures, societies, and communities. Although differences
exist between neurotypical people and autistic people
all over the world, virtually every person is born into a culture, society,
family, community, and country. Each person grows up within that family and
community, and hopefully develops strong social ties within that community and
gains acceptance in their family. I was born in the
At
the same time, there can be different norms even among people of the same
culture and country—when I traveled to East Texas on a speaking tour, I was
immediately notified by the person who organized my presentations that I would
be expected to abide by social norms quite different than the ones I had grown
accustomed to in the Chicago suburbs.
Our
social norms, beliefs, and values are not universal—they are cultural and
societal. Anyone who travels around the world will soon realize that the
cultural values of people in different countries and ethnic groups can have
different values than where they live. As Americans, we have social norms that
are American—and when we teach social rules to autistic individuals, we are
teaching American social values. People in other countries have different
social values than in
In
addition, people with autism are impacted differently in different countries
around the world. At an autism conference, I met an autistic woman from
Social
rules exist in every culture and society. Some are spoken, but others are
unwritten—something that Dr. Brenda Myles calls the “hidden curriculum.” In her
book of the same name, Myles talks about how these rules are not taught to
people but people still expect other people to know them. At the same time, it
is precisely these unwritten rules that autistic people often struggle with. As
a person with autism, I have struggled with understanding many unwritten rules
of society—wondering why people have expected me to know them. And many other
autistic individuals have as well. The autistic individual Judy Endow talks about
her own personal struggles in her presentations and recent book about the
hidden curriculum, and gives certain examples of her social mistakes—such as
when she realized that an “adult” gift store is not typically a place to go buy
a gift for your grandmother, even though she is an adult, and that you are
expected to arrive early to a doctor’s appointment yet not to a friend’s house.
Throughout
my life, I have tried to understand why it is so many typical people know
social rules, and after long hours of thought, I have developed a theory based
on the experiences I have had and my autistic friends as to why it is autistic
people cannot instinctively pick up social rules the way typical people can. I
have lived a lifetime of making many social mistakes, and sometimes upsetting
people as a consequence of breaking social norms. I also am very sensitive to
other people’s emotions and feel intense guilt over the fact that I have upset
many people in my life. These feelings of guilt, combined with a desire to understand
myself, compelled me to spend many hours thinking about the underlying causes
of my social deficits.
Why?
I have spent hours pondering that simple question in my head. Why is it that I
seem to fail to understand the social rules, unwritten and written, that other
people around me seem to instinctively know with ease? And why is it that I
often do not agree with the social rules of my society, and struggle to
understand why other people put up with rules that I personally feel are wrong?
I have spent a lot of time thinking and pondering answers to these questions.
In the process, however, I have comprised a possible theory, or explanation, to
explain why the autistic mind struggles to understand social rules.
In
this article, I hope to put in words what I have surmised for my own struggle.
I hope that this theory can help other people with autism and their families
understand the social deficits that impact their daily lives.
I
have come to the conclusion that, although unwritten rules may not be written,
they are still taught, contrary to what others might say. However, they are not
taught verbally or by written instruction—they are taught by reinforced
emotions. Typical people in a given culture and subculture all have a basic
sense of what makes them comfortable and uncomfortable when they are
socializing together, and most people do not want to make other people
uncomfortable. And the rules for the neurotypicals in
one culture are different than in another—an American neurotypical
person has different unwritten rules he or she must follow than a Dutch neurotypical person, for example. Unwritten rules, I have
come to believe, emerge based on those mutual feelings of comfort and
discomfort. People engage in social behaviors with each other that make them
comfortable—and create rules to prohibit things that make people uncomfortable.
There is usually a link between what behaviors are inappropriate and what
behaviors, if people engage in them, make other people uncomfortable. However,
those rules are understood based on mutual understandings of what’s comfortable
and what isn’t. A typical person, for example, does not pick their nose when
they are with a group of friends because they know that if they do, they’d make
their friends uncomfortable. And those people don’t pick their nose when
they’re with him or her because, if they did, they would make him or her
uncomfortable, and people typically don’t want to make other people
uncomfortable.
At
the same time, autistic people do not have the same feelings of comfort and
discomfort that typical people have. Things that interest autistic people will
bore neurotypical people, and things that interest neurotypical people bore autistic people. Likewise, many
things that make neurotypical people comfortable, such
as inappropriate behaviors or conversation topics, do not make autistic people
uncomfortable. Throughout my life, I have noticed is that whenever I break a
social rule or do something inappropriate, I may make other people around me
uncomfortable and/or upset but do not make myself uncomfortable and/or upset. At the same time, when I am with my autistic friends,
we will routinely discuss and engage in behaviors that would make many neurotypical people uncomfortable.
I’ll
never forget the day I was told by my mother that I offended people by picking
my nose. Such an idea shocked me, as I had never experienced a similar feeling
myself when people picked their noise in front of me. I was at a public skating
rink when my mother explained this to me, watching my sister at a skating
lesson. I then spent the entire time suffering when my cheek started to itch,
scared that I would offend people if I scratched it. I was shocked to find out
that it was okay to scratch my cheek even though I could pick my nose, and it
did not make sense—why is one action offensive when the other is not? To my
autistic brain, both actions fall under the same category, and although I now
know the rule—to this day, I have no feelings of discomfort when people pick
their nose in front of me.
This
is something very important for people without autism to understand. Although I
was able to learn the rule against nose picking, I was not able to understand
it instinctively. Why? Because my autistic brain does not share the same
discomfort regarding nose picking that is shared by neurotypical
people. And the fact is, no matter how much I learn and understand about
how the neurotypical world, I will always be autistic
inside. I have never felt that discomfort that neurotypical
people have told me they feel when people pick their nose in front of them. And
because autistic people do not have the ability to read social cues and facial
expressions the way neurotypical people do, autistic
people are more reliant on verbal instruction for social rules than typical
people.
To
most autistic people, if they have never felt discomfort that emerges when a
social rule is broken, they cannot automatically assume that they are making other
people uncomfortable when they break that social rule. Put it another way, if
you have never felt uncomfortable when someone breaks a social rule in front of
you, how would you automatically assume that you are making someone else
uncomfortable when you break that rule? In my opinion, this is why many
autistic people cannot understand unwritten rules instinctively—the same
discomfort that neurotypical people feel and
instinctively know that compels them not to break those rules does not exist
among autistic people.
It
is possible for those same autistic people to learn if they are at a
functioning level that enables them to do so—but they often must be taught. At
the same time, autistic people often cannot read the nonverbal cues that neurotypicals can that help them understand if other people
are uncomfortable—therefore, autistic people have to rely more on verbal
instruction for social skills understanding. But sadly, not every person gives
them the verbal instruction autistic people need, expecting them to know rules
that they just don’t.
Autistic
people routinely mesh with social rules, written and unwritten, in society.
However, although there are many different types of run-ins that autistic
people have with social codes, I have concluded that there are two main
challenges that autistic people face when functioning within our culture’s
social rules.
First,
many autistic people just don’t instinctively understand the reason, the rhyme,
or the nature of certain social rules, and their brains cannot always
understand the social complexity that governs our social world. As a result of
trying to socialize with others within a system of rules that is difficult to
understand, socializing can sometimes take a lot of mental brainpower, and many
autistic individuals I know have to take breaks from socializing, even when
they are with close friends.
One
byproduct of the autistic person’s failure to instinctively “know” social rules
has been discussed by the psychologist Dr. Tony Attwood. In his writings on
autism and Asperger’s syndrome, he shares his
observation that many autistic people often find that they relate better to
their opposite gender. I have experienced this personally—although I am male,
my best friends have been female most of my life, in part because people tend
to expect others of their gender to instinctively understand the social rules
tied to their gender, yet do not expect people of the opposite gender to do so.
In addition, myself and others working with people with autism have concluded
that this works both ways—many girls with autism find that they are just not
able to understand and function within the complex social world of their
non-autistic female counterparts, a world of social complexity that has been
popularized by movies such as “Mean Girls,” “Sleepover,” and “Clueless,” and
often find that they get along better with boys as a result, viewing their social
world to be less complex. At the same time, many autistic boys find that they
are often more accepted by girls than other boys, since boys tend to be less
accepting of their differences than girls.
Meanwhile,
autistic people also are often dependent on being verbally told many social
rules, and often feel frustrated that people expect them to know unwritten
rules rather than being told them. Why neurotypical
people do not always give verbal instruction or are honest enough to tell them
when they are breaking social rules boggles the minds of many autistic people.
Remember that the social rules that neurotypical
people just understand with ease can be hard to understand. Likewise, many
autistic savants can instinctively figure out what day of the week a calendar
date is on, but many neurotypical people could never
perform that skill even if their lives depended on it.
Second,
autistic people just don’t understand why certain social rules exist, and can
view them as just random, meaningless arbitrary rules, or injustices. Our
brains work differently than neurotypical people. We
autistic people cannot always understand the reasons behind many social rules
the way neurotypical people do. Sometimes this is
because, as mentioned above, we do not have the same discomforts that neurotypical people do. For example, we autistic folk
cannot always understand why we cannot pick our nose in front of other people,
because we sometimes feel no discomfort when people pick their nose in front of
us.
At
the same time, because our brains think differently, we are often baffled by
the reasons why neurotypical people behave the way
that we do. For example, we autistic folk often fail to understand why it’s so
inappropriate for us to perseverate on a single topic of interest because we do
not get bored listening to one person perseverate on something the way typical
people do. I have also experienced personally that when I associate with
autistic people, we will often bond and discuss subjects that many people
without autism would find very uncomfortable discussing.
Making
these conclusions and formulating this theory has helped me understand, for
myself, the reasons why I have not been able to always follow social skills
properly in social settings. Obviously, this does not apply to all individuals
with autism—nothing does. But this is why I feel I have struggled with social
issues in my life, and possibly this may be how some other individuals with
autism feel as well.