Understanding Autism: Three Neurotypical Assumptions that Drive Me Witless
When will people stop assuming that we are all neurotypical extroverts who want to spend every waking minute chatting and socialising?
We all make many assumptions every day. It is impossible not to. We have busy lives in a complex world, and it is impossible to start every single process or task by going back to first principles.
Indeed, much human progress is based on standing on the shoulders of others and building on their work rather than starting from scratch. If every scientist and engineer had to start from nothing, we would still be living in caves trying to start a fire!
But assumptions can also be dangerous and unhelpful. A big problem with assumptions is that our default mode tends to be to assume that everyone is like us. While this is often understandable, it is also usually unwise. It is important that we recognise how much we have in common in valuing the whole of humanity, but it is equally essential to understand how wildly different we all are in almost every respect.
When you are neurodivergent, these differences can feel even more acute, as sometimes the most basic of assumptions made by others can be incorrect when applied to us. In practice, it is almost never correct to say that something applies to “everyone”, unless everyone is a very small group of people and you have factual knowledge to back it up. For example, when the push to get people back to the office after COVID-19 began, I read many proclamations that this would be better for everyone. That is just not true. For many disabled people, including neurodivergents, discovering that we could work successfully at home in an environment fully in our control was life-changing, so to both be told to go back to the bad old days and to hear that it was better for us was as infuriating as it was simply wrong.
But more generally, I find that most neurotypicals, even if they theoretically recognise that neurodivergent people exist, make assumptions that tend to exclude the life experience and preferences of many autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. Here are three of the big ones!
Chatting is the Answer to Everything
There is just so much talking in the world these days, and so little of it seems to be of any substance or make any great difference to anything. There are people who seem unable to ever keep their mouths shut for more than about 3 seconds unless they are asleep, and the answer to almost any problem seems to start with talking about it at length instead of getting on and taking action.
Now, by chatting, I mean oral conversation, either in person, by phone or on Teams, etc. I have slightly more sympathy with the view that increased communication is always helpful. Two or more minds are almost always better than one (though I do love the truism that no great breakthrough was ever made by a committee!) But all too often, it feels like chatting is the only method of communication that NTs use, and that talking indefinitely is expected to somehow magically deliver results that will only come from taking action.
We do not all communicate best by oral methods. I much prefer to do almost all of my communication by text-based chat in one form or another. It gives me time to properly understand what is being said to me, and to consider my response in my own time. However, this alternative approach seems to be seldom considered, as a chat or meeting is the NT default response to almost everything. I honestly feel that if the Titanic hit the iceberg today, the captain’s first move would probably be to establish a working group to consider the response to an ice-related incident with monthly meetings to discuss the subject for around a year before action began.
Communication is great and important, but it changes nothing on its own. It needs to be backed with action. How have we forgotten that in so many areas of life? It is not enough to say that you believe in something, either as an individual or an organisation. You have to take action to reflect and implement that belief. I can say that I am committed to losing weight as much as I like, but while I continue to eat large amounts of cake, it will not happen. The same applies to organisations that repeatedly say they care about their people while doing nothing to address bullying and discrimination.
We do not all like chatting, and it is just one tool among many for moving things forward. It is not even the only way of communicating, and the growing assumption that it is the answer to everything drives me witless.
We All Enjoy Socialising and the Company of Others
Sorry to burst your bubble, but we really do not. Socialising will always be something that I endure rather than enjoy. I see the need for human contact, but I find I need an awful lot less of it than most other people, particularly neurotypicals. I enjoy spending time with my wife, but a great deal of our time spent together is spent in companionable silence rather than constant talking, because we know that we are both comfortable with that.
I know that others are different, and I have no issue with that. The problem is that those who love to socialise often seem unable to recognise that they should stick to involving others with a similar preference and instead constantly insist on trying to include everybody, whether they want to join or not.
In your private life, this can be difficult to resist, when you may be liable to being labelled boring or antisocial when you keep turning down invitations to social events. But in the workplace, it can be even worse, when NTs insist that everyone joins in their incessant programme of get-togethers, socials, whole team events and the associated icebreakers from hell.
If you want to socialise constantly and even pretend that some of it is working, you go for it. I am past trying to point out that meetings and other work gatherings are almost always the least efficient use of time and resources imaginable. But please recognise that some of us hate these events, find them exhausting, and just want to be left alone to actually do the work. You party animals do your thing, and leave me to do mine, please.
We All Share the Same ‘Secret’ Knowledge
Neurotypicals seem to operate on the basis that we all have access to a massive database of unwritten rules and “common knowledge” that I have never been party to. There are assumptions made about everything, from how you queue up, how you order food, and how you behave in any given situation.
One of my favourite Dilbert cartoons is of a meeting where one person is asked for an update on their area and sets out a long list of problems. The response from the chair is that it is customary to just say that everything is going well!
In our modern multicultural and fast-changing society, these assumptions can be even more unwise. I was horrified (and felt very old) recently when a much younger colleague mentioned that they had never written a cheque in their life.
We all come from very different places, times, and backgrounds, and we all interpret the world differently, sometimes very differently indeed. As the pace of change in the world continues to accelerate, assumptions will become even more unwise.
But it is often these social conventions that I find hardest to navigate. Even when I know what is expected, I may find it hard to do the right thing. I cannot make small talk, so if I am left standing with others in a situation where it is expected, we will be left in awkward silence if the other person does not take the lead!
Then there is my preference for taking a logical approach, asking questions, and getting on with taking action, all of which often seem to fly in the face of social conventions. Challenging injustice and speaking out when things are wrong also seems to be the wrong thing to do much of the time. But how am I supposed to know when it is the right time to do so, and wouldn’t it help everybody if we all communicated clearly rather than dancing around important subjects instead of playing silly social games involving hints and nudges? Most of the time, lying for the sake of politeness helps nobody.
Unfortunately, the mistaken assumptions that others make about me in these areas pervade most aspects of modern life, especially in the workplace. We are all very different, and giving people options in almost everything is key. We all need to get better at remembering that others are not clones of ourselves and do not wish to be, and I very much include myself in that.
Neurodiversity is still an emerging idea for many, but it is a very important concept, and it needs to be normalised as soon as possible. It is better for us all, and recognising the differences in our thinking for the asset that they are can only be for the good of us all in the long term.
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