Social Language

One of the main characteristics of an autistic person is struggling socially. This means that we don't catch social cues as well and we don't understand all of the unwritten social rules.

One thing that I can compare it to is driving. There are rules of the road and everyone who takes drivers ed learns the rules of the road in their country. Being autistic is like driving without being able to take drivers ed and not being able to read the signs on the road and not having anyone teach you the rules of the road. Everyone just expects you to pick it up on your own and instinctively know everything without any teaching whatsoever. It does get easier sometimes, as it would be to maneuver around the part of town that you are familiar with, like your neighborhood and places that you are frequently in. You learn to know what to look for and how to communicate somewhat effectively. This can be how it is with our close friends and family. We learn to catch little cues from them and learn their behaviors over time.

But meeting new people is a whole different story because everyone has a different social language, and it takes a lot of mental work to learn a whole new language for every person and every group of people that we meet. What verbal or non-verbal cues mean for one person can be completely different or opposite for someone else. It would be compared to traveling to a different city or even a different country and not being able to read the street signs because they are in a different language and not having a GPS to tell you where to go and what to do. I have heard about and seen pictures of what traffic is like in certain other countries and I would never be able to drive in those kinds of traffic conditions. There are also countries that drive on different sides of the road, and it is confusing for anyone not accustomed to that way of driving, especially if you don't know this information in advance. There are also signs in different languages in other countries that have different official languages than where you come from and if you don't know the language, you will be less likely to be able to figure out what they say. It can lead to lots of problems and accidents.

This is what it feels like for us in social situations. We don't know the social rules for each and every person and therefore it can cause a lot of problems until we are able to learn the social languages of everyone in our lives. Some of the "accidents" that happen in our social lives can be major for us and take a long time to recover from, much like a major car accident can cause major physical harm and end up in hospitalization for a very long time, or worse. We carry the scars from these social accidents with us for the rest of our lives and it can become a hinderance in future social interactions, the same way that a car accident can impact a driver whenever they get behind the wheel again. We are often very leery of trying certain social interactions that are similar to ones that have gone very badly for us in the past.

Please be kind and patient as we try to learn everyone's social language. It isn't easy to learn new languages all of the time and sometimes we need a lot of help in learning how to communicate effectively with everyone around us.