A new perspective

It is not widely understood yet that autism is a psychology rather than a collection of behaviours, this is the only way of truly understanding the reason for their behaviours. The psychological characteristics of autism can be summed up as a natural and powerful predisposition to get everything right or to express this is another way,  to achieve a very high level of certainty about everything. Thirdly, the origin of autistic people’s social differences and difficulties, is an inability or limited ability, to imagine a neurotypical person's state of mind, what their intentions might be, what their thoughts and feelings are and how they comes across to people. This makes the social world a confusing, unpredictable and potentially risky place, which explains the social cautiousness and anxiety about getting things right or not. In addition, and not part of the psychology, are the sensory processing differences. Every autistic person has a different sensory profile with varying combinations of hyper and hypo sensitivities, which produce aversive or positive sensory seeking responses, all of which will have an impact on daily life.

The problem here is that in the same way that autistic people do not have an intuition about neurotypical thinking and social behaviours, neurotypical people do not have any intuition about the same for autistic people, the two brain types do not intuitively understand each other. Because autistic people are in the minority, they suffer considerably from being misunderstood. This is also born out by the fact that autistic people tend to gravitate towards each other socially because there is no natural barrier to understanding.

Autistic people spend a lifetime trying to decode the neurotypical social world around them, without any social skills training, and many have a lot of success in doing this, although it is often stressful and tiring. This is  because what neurotypical people do intuitively and automatically, the autistic person has to do consciously, and it is the enormous mental effort involved, together with a lot of anxiety about getting anything wrong,  that causes the exhaustion.

Autistic people often describe themselves as people pleasers, socially compliant or social chameleons, because they have a lot of anxiety about being their authentic autistic selves with anyone other than those who are truly trusted. This can also make autistic people very vulnerable to being taken advantage of. It is very difficult for autistic people to live in a world that does not intuitively understand them and as a result, they often spend a lot of time pretending to be someone they are not. All of these differences, many of which are really strengths, are commonly misunderstood with negative social consequences, leading to social withdrawal, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and other problems.

Autistic people are constantly triggered in a number of specific ways. Sensory triggers are the most obvious, but also change triggers when things happen unexpectedly, social triggers not knowing how to make and keep friends for example, and thinking triggers where the autistic person’s thinking style is very logical and focused on getting things right, being totally honest, with a very strong sense of justice, which is often mistaken for rudeness. 

When an autistic child starts to develop social awareness, they commonly start to develop feelings of being different and experience anxiety and confusion about the social language and behaviours of their peer group.  They discover that despite wanting to play and make friends, they do not know instinctively how to achieve this, and experience negative reactions which they don’t understand and cause significant distress.  Eventually many of these children start to adapt their behaviours anyway, in an attempt to interact more successfully and not stand out as different, which is called masking. 

It is essential that every autistic person knows who they are and why they are different, both in terms of their considerable strengths and also awareness of where they are much more sensitive, like to sensory triggers and unexpected change for example. The process of teaching these insights, we call psycho-education.

After a diagnosis that makes sense, the best endeavour an autistic person, or the parents of an autistic child, can undertake, is to develop a positive and realistic identity as an autistic person.

There is a consistency to autistic thinking made up of a number of principles which if understood, makes it easy to understand autism in the same way that autistic people understand themselves. It also means that any new behaviours will also be consistent with these underlying principles, making them easier to interpret and address correctly in a supportive manner that does not undermine self-esteem. 

Parents will significantly benefit from psycho-education, to minimise the triggers at home and be empowered to better protect their children from being misunderstood and mismanaged at school and other settings, which is a real risk for their mental health. The same is true for autistic adults who commonly experience a lifetime of anxiety and being misunderstood.

Traditional social skills training is an attempt to modify the behaviours of autistic people to behave in a much more neurotypical manner in order to improve social functioning, but  essentially it is teaching masking. So the changes are superficial, do not make sense to the autistic person and have no impact on underlying thinking style except to reinforce that the person is wrong.

Therefore, it is very important to approach any social skills teaching in a very different manner, if at all. It is not about saying that autistic thinking and behaviours are wrong, the teaching must be in the context of helping the autistic person to understand the alien neurotypical world around them, without having to conform to it and also  while validating their own way of seeing things. This is only possible if the teacher understands and acknowledges the autistic strengths and sensitivities in a way that makes complete sense. This requires a deep understanding of autistic psychology so the autistic person knows they are properly understood, which in turn is the only way to achieve a trusting teaching or therapeutic relationship. 

This is why it is essential to go through a process of psychoeducation first, before the autistic person or the parents of autistic children, can make a real choice about whether a better understanding of neurotypical psychology would be beneficial or not. Difficulties living in the neurotypical world start in early childhood, which means that the earlier the parents understand autistic psychology, the more protected their children will be against developing mental health problems in the future.

We, at Neurodiversity Partnerships, offer this education and training as a service.