Understanding Autism: Strangers in a Strange Land

I would love to visit Japan one day. I find it a fascinating country, and I very much admire the culture of honour and respect that seems to exist there and is sadly lacking from many other parts of the world. But if I were to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun, one major point would worry me greatly – I know that almost everything there would be different from my own experience and understanding.

Now, this is one of the joys of travel, and I am sure that it would be fun to learn. But I also have memories of stressful occasions such as arriving in Oslo quite late at night on a work trip and struggling to find my hotel in a country where I knew the alphabet, could read the signs and maps, and almost everyone else spoke English!

Travelling to a place where almost everything is unfamiliar, including the language, alphabet, and social conventions is challenging. It is very hard to figure it out for yourself when you are not even used to differentiating between the symbols which are used for any from of written communication. With a language like French or German, I could at least make a guess at the meaning of many of the words. But when another alphabet is used, I would be lost.

Then there is the social structure, and what is and is not acceptable. These things exist in every country and culture, but you may struggle to find the written down, other than perhaps in a tourist guide. In some places, for example, it is deeply offensive to point with your finger or to sit with the souls of your feet facing someone else. But you are unlikely to work this out for yourself, except perhaps by doing the wrong thing and getting a very negative reaction!

But these challenges are not confined to when we visit a new country or culture. Many autistic people have a similar experience every day of our lives, even in a country and culture in which we have grown up. I have always lived in the UK. Yes, I can speak and read the language, but almost nothing about the world around me makes sense, even after well over fifty years.

Our society is based on a foundation of unwritten rules and conventions that it is assumed that everyone knows. Perhaps we are expected to be born knowing them. Certainly I still discover things every day that it turns out my neurotypical friends and family seem to have been born knowing! How, for example, do you determine when it is polite to end a conversation, and how do you do that? Indeed, how do you start a conversation when it seems necessary without it feeling forced or you looking like an idiot? How long is a moment or a couple of minutes (it is definitely not 120 seconds in my experience!)

Autistic people often spend our lives like tourists in a country that is completely alien to everything we understand. The world is just not built for brains that work as ours do. If it were, it would be a lot fairer, communication would be clear, and the concept of “time for networking” would likely not exist!

When you are autistic, every day can be an adventure whether you want it or not. You cannot choose to visit a very different culture as you do when you go on holiday – you live in one every day. It is the only show in town.

There is another big difference between being on holiday and living somewhere. When I am on holiday, I generally do not mind sticking out as a tourist. It means you need to be wary of scams, but it also means that people recognise that you may need help, like directions or in reading a menu. But most of us prefer not to stand out in this way every day of our lives. I have lost count of the number of times that I have been openly mocked for not knowing or understanding something that was apparently common knowledge. For saying what I thought when I was asked for my views instead of somehow knowing what the other person wanted to hear and saying that. For not wanting to spend huge chunks of my life “socialising” in noisy, bright places that hurt my head.

The desire to fit in at least some of the time is strong in many of us, especially when we are younger. I have reached the stage now where I no longer care if people think I am weird and I embrace this, but that was not the case for most of my life, nor is it for many others. It is a luxury I have through being old and in a good place at home and at work. I know that I am very lucky in this respect.

But it is hard to fit in when nothing makes sense. You are like a novice joining a highly experienced dance troupe and attempting to keep up with the moves that they know perfectly and you can only copy as you see them. At best you are clearly lagging slightly behind, but more likely you stick out like a sore thumb. That is often not a comfortable position in which to be.

Autistic children face the same struggle, though of course they may not even know or understand why they are different. My school days were utterly miserable. I struggled to make friends, and I was bullied constantly as most children who are different tend to be. But I did not know what to do about it. I was just being myself, and the social skills which seemed to come so naturally to all of the other children were beyond my comprehension.

Being autistic in a neurotypical world is exhausting and bad for our mental health. It is little wonder that so many autistic people have conditions like anxiety and depression. We either spend much of our time masking our autistic traits and trying to copy others in order to fit in, or trying to be our authentic selves with no understanding at all of almost everything that is going on around us, especially the behaviour of other people.

At this point, I should provide a nice, neat solution and practical tips for resolving this. But I am afraid that all that I can suggest is that we all try to practice greater awareness of the fact that we are all different in almost every conceivable way, and that assumptions are almost always misguided and unwise. If something is important, spell it out. If someone asks what seems to you to be a stupid question, answer it rather than mocking the person making the enquiry. Finally, understand that for some if us, ordinary day to day like is hugely challenging and exhausting, because almost nothing makes sense. We are doing our best, but we really do live every day of our lives as strangers in a strange land.