Getting to Know You

Normally when two people meet they will make some very quick judgements about the other person. These judgements will be based on how nice the other person is (i.e. how good they are with the social chit chat thing), how well they look after their appearance, how attractive they are… generally how well they present themselves and how good their social skills are.

However, good social skills aren’t always an indication of an honest and trustworthy character. In many cases I have observed the opposite to be true. Conmen have very good social skills, or they couldn’t do what they do.

I sometimes make judgements on people’s appearance, i.e. whether I like it or not, but I don’t make judgements on a person’s character this way. Having poor social skills myself who am I to judge someone who doesn’t mix well? For a while I couldn’t understand why NT people valued these skills so highly. Then I realised, most of the time this isn’t a conscious action on their part. Greater social skills means a greater ability to charm people, and this is what NT people are responding too.

On the other hand, an NT person may make a conscious negative judgement against someone who lacks social skills and they probably wouldn’t want to be seen around with that person in case other people made the same judgement against them. People enjoy being popular and being popular requires good social skills. Neither of these response is a reliable way to assess someone’s character.

When I meet someone I am generally quite nosey and I ask a lot of questions. This doesn’t normally go against me, people usually like talking about themselves, unless they have something to hide. Also it is a genuine interest, I love popular psychology books and programmes, I observe people all the time. It started out as something I had to do in order to fit in, now it’s become a bit of a hobby.

I’m quite good at it now. I can usually tell after some basic background information what type of person they are. Through working out their psychological profile I am better able to read between the lines of what they are saying. This is a different reading between the lines than what NT people do. When NT people read between the lines they are picking up on messages that have been imbedded purposefully. I am very poor at this, I don’t normally get it till I’ve gone home and had a chance to go over the conversation. When I read between the lines I am searching for what that person doesn’t want me to know. This makes me a better judge of character if not a very good conversationalist.

It seems strange to me that NT people aren’t interested in each other in this way. They are quite happy taking each other at face value. But then the NT world exists as a set of unspoken rules and NT people accept secrecy as one of these rules. Secrecy is almost essential if social etiquette is to be followed. A lot of social interaction is about disguising rather than revealing. Secrecy is a way of life, something they don’t even question.

I used to be very enthusiastic when I met people. What would their likes and dislikes be? What personality traits would they have? How would we get on? I was always hopefully this new person was going to redeem all others and turn out to be a friend. And when I did meet the person, I was like a puppy, bounding all over them. Over the years I’ve toned this down a lot. I’ve got burnt so many times! My naivety left me open to a lot of cruel tricks. Also, what I didn’t realise was that in the NT world, kindness is often taken as a weakness. If I’d met people wearing a tough, mean looking exterior I wouldn’t have encountered half the trouble I did. (But then, I also wouldn’t have grown very much as a person).

This is because people think they can harm you without any fear of a reprisal. They may think to themselves, this girl likes me, she wants to be my friend, she’s naïve and doesn’t know when I’m making fun of her, this is a good opportunity to show everyone how clever I am. Or a man might think, this girl likes me, I already have a girlfriend but I’m enjoying the attention I think I’ll lead her on. Those are just two examples of situations I have found myself in. Hopefully if you have ever tried thee tricks on someone I will have aroused your conscience.

Hints and Innuendos

What I find frustrating about NT people is that they never want to tell you things directly, it’s always through hints and innuendos. I think they do this mostly to save your feelings if they’re saying something unpleasant, or because they’re a bit shy about talking of their feelings, or sometimes I think they’re just showing off their superior skills in this area.

I tell people about my autism and how they need to be direct and talk in a straightforward manner with me, but I think they forget. Their minds are zapping ahead and they don’t remember to pause for me. But it causes so many complications. There have been so many arguments in my family because people think I’ve said or agreed to things I haven’t.

This tends to happen mostly between me and my younger sister. Not all NT people use the hints and innuendos technique equally. My sister does it a lot though, which can create havoc for me. She will say something which contains an unsaid meaning which she thinks should clear; I don’t get it, but because I don’t disagree, she assumes an agreement has been reached and all the while I am ignorant.

Taking the direct and straightforward approach with an autistic person can mean having to changing old, sometimes negative behaviour patterns, and this can be very challenging. People don’t always have the other persons wishes in mind when they decide what they want and if that person is autistic the temptations to exploit their social naivety can be great. Being around an autistic person is a lesson in behaving well. If you behave well, the autistic person behaves well; you both understand each other clearly and there is no game playing.

Now that I am wise to the games people play (it’s taken me up to this point in my life to get there) I am constantly on the look out for them. I have been naïve and innocent so people have used these tricks on me many times. But now I have caught on! And I do my best to stop them. . Before I had a tendency to go along with what others wanted because it was easier than trying to figure out what was going on in the first place. But I am not as malleable and compliant as I used to be. My growing awareness has lead to some conflict, I think my family sometimes prefer me the way I was before.

There was this one time when I was planning to go away with my family. I was going to get a lift back with my sister. I absolutely had to back for work Monday afternoon. I checked with my sister when we would be coming back and she said Sunday, though it might end up being Monday. What she really meant was Monday afternoon, but she didn’t tell me this because she knew I would try and get a lift with someone else and for her own reason this was not what she wanted.

As the weekend was approaching I was getting more and more edgy. I couldn‘t get a straight answer out of my sister and I smelt a rat. Eventually, after some pestering she conceded that they were planning to come back Monday afternoon, I then told her I couldn‘t go. She was very cross saying I could easily miss work. I was cross because I felt someone had tried to pull the wool over my eyes. I think you have to be autistic before you realise how much that sensation can hurt.

Unconscious and Conscious Thinking

Before I began learning about autism I didn’t know anything about the many functions the brain performs. Like most people I had some hazy idea that the mind was contained within the brain, but I had no idea how the structure of the brain controlled the way I thought. The mind I thought was controlled by me, isn’t in fact. I think a lot of people have trouble accepting this fact.

I read about the conscious and unconscious when I became interested in psychoanalysis as a teenager. I wanted to figure out how my mind worked so I could fix whatever it was that was wrong with me. I also began reading lots of self-help books and spiritual literature. It took me a long time to realise what my problem was; that I had an autistic spectrum disorder.

Although I’d read a lot about the conscious and the unconscious I never felt I had fully grasped what these terms referred to. I couldn’t picture them as real things. They didn’t seem real to me. They seemed very vague, nebulous terms to me.

The whole time I’ve been reading about autism and how the autistic brain works I’ve been looking for a definition of these terms and now I think I’ve got there. This may be obvious stuff to some, but for me it was a eureka moment, because I could finally attach these terms to parts of my brain.

My unconscious mind, I believe, contains my memory (naturally) and my feelings. I‘m still a little unsure of pairing my feelings with the unconscious, as I only have my experience as an autistic person to go on. I used to think that emotions began in the conscious mind, but my personal experience contradicts this.

If my emotions arose within the conscious mind I would be aware of them the moment they happen. But I’m not. The physical sensations of an emotion are obvious; blushing, increased heart rate, tears, etc… all of which tells me I’m having an emotional experience.

Subtle emotions though are more difficult to pick up on. Maybe it’s different for NT people. If I am having trouble telling when I have an emotion this is because it is still in my unconscious. It seems to me that the unconscious is determining which emotions are released and which aren’t which would suggest that this is where they are first felt.

The conscious mind though, is my awareness. It is a logical thinker and the knowledge it acquires is passed onto the unconscious to be stored. Our conscious mind must be able to contain a number of thoughts at the same time to be able to think. This is our working memory. It’s like a very think slice of memory, just enough to allow the thinking process to occur.

You could say the main role of the unconscious is to store, and the main role of the conscious is to think. These would be neat definitions, but not strictly true. The unconscious is also a thinker. When we can’t figure something out using our conscious mind we often wait for our unconscious to come up with something.

Lastly I would just like to say something else I noticed about memory. Our memory contains both events that have happened to us and knowledge we acquire. We acquire our memory of events without any conscious effort, but knowledge requires more effort before it becomes part of our memory. I think there are two different mechanisms at work here.

When we remember past events, these are usually things our unconscious has chosen to remember, when we are learning new knowledge these are things that our conscious mind has chosen to remember. Knowledge I think can be divided into facts and wisdom/lessons. Facts, if they don’t get used can be forgotten, or rather the link between the fact and our conscious mind gets lost. This happens to me a lot. Wisdom though, permanently alters our personality, and stays with us forever.

Word Retrieval

I have poor word retrieval. My sister (the one who maybe dyslexic) has the same problem. What happens when you can’t retrieve the word you want is that you either say nothing, or instead a different word is substituted. The substitute word, though associated with the word you wanted, it is not a synonym but instead is associated in some weird Freudian way, because that’s how the unconscious works. So the substitute word is in most cases inappropriate and leads you to say some strange things, which might not be rude but are still funny to your listeners and embarrassing to you.

Personally I prefer saying nothing to saying something daft. Most times I can tell the word I want isn’t coming and there is another word that I can use if I want. It’s a bit like playing Deal or no Deal. Shall I choose this word or not. It might make sense and end this awkward pause, or it might not. Sometimes you might be half way through a sentence in which case you it is better to just start the sentence again and choose slightly different words. So you would pause, then say ’What I mean is….’ and try saying it in a different way.

Sometimes you might be near the end of the sentence. If I’m near the end of my sentence and I think people have got my meaning then I will leave the sentence unfinished. Sometimes I do this even if I don’t think I’m going to get the words wrong, it saves me the mental effort of looking for them. This sounds really lazy, but the mental effort required for me to talk and look for words at the same time is harder than you know. I think this is why I come across as a serious person, because I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m saying all the time. I can understand why some autistic people don’t speak even though they can. The rewards simply don’t outweigh the work involved, for them that is, and as they can’t see your point of view, you feelings don’t get factored in.

Sometimes, if you have very bad luck, a substitute word will stick. My sister says she often calls the kitchen the bathroom. It really embarrasses her. I told her this sounded logical to me. Both rooms have a sink, they are the only two rooms in the house where you meet water. For some reason they seem to be the coldest rooms in the house and the only ones without carpet; the only ones to be tiled rather than wallpapered or painted. There are lots of similarities.

Recently I was writing a story and I put down the word wave instead of flag. I actually had in mind a small flag to go on the bonnet of a government car and for some reason I put down wave instead of flag. I can see there are associations between the words; flags move in a similar way to waves when it’s windy and waving is also what you do with a flag.

Before we can think of a word the conscious mind must first have an idea it wants to express. Then it makes a request to the unconscious mind for the word that represents that idea. For instance you might be looking for the word ‘kitchen‘ or ‘flag’. Before you can say the word you must first think of the idea. I don’t know how the unconscious finds the correct word, there must be links then between ideas and the words we use for them. Maybe in autism these links are weaker. Hence the need for repetition when I am learning new words. These links can come and go, or maybe they become blocked, because sometimes I can think of a word and other times I can’t.

I find things drop out of my memory quickly if I don’t use them. After doing my French and German GCSEs, I’d say I lost most of what I’d learnt after a year. The same is true for numbers as well, I have forgotten my pin number numerous times because I didn’t use my card for a week. We have so many passwords for everything these days; bank accounts, email accounts, website accounts, etc… the only way I can cope is to use the same password for everything. Before then I was having to create a new password every time I wanted too buy something off Amazon.

Poor word retrieval I think explains some of the language difficulties I had when I was younger. Reading was hard for me. On the other hand I was good at maths, or rather I had a good memory for numbers. I could remember my times table up to twelve before anyone else in my class. Numbers are easier to remember because they have no associations. They mean one thing and one thing only and there aren’t so many to learn. Once you understand decimalisation, and you can count to ten you’re there. A word though is much more complex. Words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctives and other things besides. Plus your memory isn’t just linking one idea to one symbol when you learn a new word, it must be creating a whole host of connections with other associated words. However, if I don’t continue using words or numbers (like the answers to my multiple times tables), both can drop out of my memory.

Sequencing of Thoughts

You know, it’s strange how very disorganised an NT persons thought processes can be, or that’s how they used to appear to me. Now I know I just think differently. At university a number of people commented on my very clear and easy to read style of writing and the logical way I put forward my arguments. My essays always followed a very structured logical argument.

This though, is the only way I can write. I’d love to be able to write with a more carefree or loose style. I’d love to be able to write like Virginia Woolf, the way she wanders about between events that sometimes don’t even appear to be related and yet are.

When I was a film studies student we had to read lots of theoretical essays. Even though they were writing non-fiction, the style of these writers was very vague. They would jump around their subject and I found myself going back to certain passages to check what I’d just read. Sometimes I felt I was having to build the argument myself, other times I doubted there was one. Theses writers were explaining complicated ideas in a very complicated way. In what other subject would you find that? Even my NT peers would struggled to understand sometimes.

My dependency on logical and structured thought has its disadvantages in everyday life as well. One thing the psychologist recommended is that I go and see the Disability Employment Officer at the job centre. I had just found a job when I went to her. She gave me information on the things I needed to do before I started. This included making a claim for some new clothes to go to work in, getting a bus pass and finding which bus I needed to get. Also we talked about claiming disability allowance. The only problem was all this information was given to me quite randomly as we talked about the job I was starting.

I became very confused trying to put everything she was telling me into some kind of order so I could remember it. I asked her to repeat parts of what she told me, but it didn’t make any more sense. The speed at which people talk doesn’t help either. I tried a different tack and said it would help if this was written down for me. I told them how forgetful I was.

But I don’t think they realised just how confused I was, because they (she had a colleague observing) would begin repeating what they had already said. I think it was probably the third time I asked them to write it down, that her colleague put down some bullet points for me. There wasn’t much detail, but it was something. He wrote down disability allowance and then said ‘you remember where the link was for that?’. I wasn’t sure so he jogged my memory, but I knew I would probably forget these details once I had left.

NT people just think differently to autistic people. When they are explaining something to you, it could some instructions or they might be telling a story, they don‘t always follow a linear sequence. It is like they have a sequence in their mind and they can jump into it at any point and know where they are. The person listening is expected to be able to construct this sequence in their head also. Having a poor working memory I think affects my ability to hold a sequence of multiple events in my mind.

I find listening to people hard work in any case, it requires a lot of concentration. Trying to put what they’re telling me into some kind of logical order that I can remember makes it all so much harder. In a situation such as the one above I would normally just pretend I understood then go away and try and work it out for myself.

Since I’ve been diagnosed I’m trying to act more myself instead trying to act normal, which has meant I’ve started asking more questions and asking people to repeat what they’ve said. I was asking more questions at the meeting with the Disability Officer, but I didn’t come away feeling confident I had remembered everything. What I should have done, was take a pad and a pen and make notes myself. I could then have pieced everything together into a logical order later.

Repetition and Memory

My memory skills vary for different kinds of information. Facts, like dates and names, are difficult for me to recall and consequently my general knowledge is very poor. I love quizzes but I always do badly at them, or rather the results don’t really reflect my intelligence. People think if you are good at quizzes you must be clever, what it means is you have a good memory for facts.

What I am good at remembering are concepts and theories. This is very useful to me at the moment. Writing a blog like this where I am analysing my behaviour would be very difficult if I didn’t have a good memory for the theories I’ve read and also a good memory of my different behaviours. In this way I am able to apply theory to my behaviour and find the reasons to explain why I do the things I do.

Having a poor memory for facts and a good memory for ideas seems to be contradictory at first. When I am engaged in daily activities, it is usually details I am good at and generalisation I am poor at. So why when these enter my memory is it the other way round?

Something you should know is that memory is a scare commodity for me. I put as little in it as I can. Basically because I don’t trust my memory, I know it lets me down. Sometimes I think this is because so much of my memory is used up doing tasks that other people use their thinking processes to do. An NT person will know the rules governing social interaction and use this to guide them, whereas I use past experiences and my memory of other events to guide me. NT people learnt the rules of grammar to be able to speak, whereas I memorised phrases as a child.

I don‘t like people giving me information during conversations because I‘m so forgetful, and I never seem to have a pen and paper when I need it. Emails and texts are good because then I always have something to refer back to. If I know there is somewhere I can go to find the information later then I won’t bother even trying to remember. For example, if I know it is a film someone wants to see then I shall go onto the cinema’s website later to find the details, or jog my memory. If it is a reference for an essay, I shall just try to remember which book it was in.

To remember things I need to have them repeated several times, which can become very frustrating for the person you are speaking to you if you keep asking them to repeat stuff. A fact is a very small thought, forgetting a fact is a bit like losing some change down the sofa, you don’t notice it’s gone. A concept or an idea though, now that’s a big thought and big things are more difficult to loose. Big things seem pass into my memory with much greater ease, there is no need to keep repeating them.

I never thought of thoughts as having a size before, but I suppose they must have. I suppose it’s because we don’t tend to think of thoughts as having an actual physical presence. Any mystic or psychic however will tell you that they do. In which case they must also have a mass or a charge, but I think I need to do some research.

Space

Space like time, is another illusion of our universe. Like events in time, objects in space have a beginning and an end. We live in a world of beginnings and endings, and some people even believe that they have an end, that they will cease to exist when they die. However, our concepts of time and space where created to give us a specific experience that we could learn from.

By giving us lifetimes that have a beginning and an end we are able to learn much more quickly than we would otherwise. Our memories of any other lives we’ve had can be veiled and we can start afresh in a new life. We are given as many opportunities to learn as we need.

Science now tells us that time and space can be warped, and that theoretically it is even possible to travel through time. If this is so, how can anything have a beginning and an end, least of all ourselves?

Space is a concept I find difficult to navigate my way through. I can’t see it. I don’t think in terns of three dimensions. When I’m in a crowded space where there are lots of people I panic. I think everyone is going to walk into each other, including me. I’ve talked about this before. The reason I wanted to bring this up again was an experience I had a few days ago in the supermarket.

As I was entering the store, straight away I saw two people coming my direction. One was coming from my right the other from my left. I tried not to panic. Normally I would increase my pace to move out of the way as speedily as possible, but instead I decided to try and imagine where they would end up if they carried on in a straight line. I could see their paths crossing but this would be just after I had passed them, and that’s what happened. Everything was fine.

Crowds are usually a source of much anxiety for me, but I felt a bit calmer going round the shop that day. I couldn’t keep up this mental imaging though. It takes a lot of mental effort. Especially when I’m also struggling to find my way round the shop in an order that means I can get everything on my list without walking round the whole place ten times.

So shopping is really difficult for two reasons, I’m trying to create a sequence in my mind of the things I need to get, whilst avoiding running into people. I could try to work out the order I get things when I make my list, which would take some of the pressure off. Then I could concentrate on not walking into people.

I think pointing should also come under the category of space. I’ve been doing some more thinking on this point, no pun intended. When I saw those two people coming towards me and I projected their paths, I realised this is the same thing people do when they point to things.

However there is another element to pointing that makes it harder. If the object being pointed at is too far away for me to hold both the hand and the object in my vision, I am stumped. This is because I can’t hold the space occupied by the hand in my mind. As soon as I lose sight of that hand I no longer know where it is in space so I can’t project it’s line. I wonder if this is because I am such a poor visual thinker. Not all autistic people are like this, some autistic people think in pictures. I can only think in words. Maybe visual thinkers don’t have the same problems with navigating crowds and pointing?

I have been monitoring my own pointing. At first I wasn’t sure that I did point, but now I can say that I do. I don’t point to indicate the whereabouts of objects, but I do point to give directions to people. If someone asks me the way I might indicate left or right by pointing. (I’m not good at telling left and right, I have to imagine myself doing the brownie salute first). So there are two uses to pointing, one to indicate an objects position, another as a kind of sign language.