Autism and Social Interaction

I just wanted to share some thoughts and reflections about something that is very prominent in people with Autism Spectrum DIsorders.  That is social interaction.  I felt the need to write about this because I have noticed my difficulties in this area more recently.

Recently, I have decided that I probably need to spend more time with other people, interact and reach out to others more.  For a long time, I had just stopped trying to do this, and now I remember why.  Interacting, conversing, and spending time with people can be very difficult for me.  I often find that I have no idea how to initiate a conversation, how to participate in a conversation, or how to end a conversation.  Sometimes I am able to manage some kind of interaction, but a lot of the times I try to determine what to do and my mind goes blank and I can’t think of something to say, or how to keep a conversation going.

I also have a hard time making plans with people, or asking if they would like to get together to do some sort of activity or go to some place or event together.

I just wanted to bring this to people’s attention.  I would say that a major issue for many people with Autism Spectrum Disorders is social difficulty.  And there is a range in this difficulty.  Some people are more apt than me, other people have basically very little social ability at all.

Also, sometimes I get used to a certain social environment and arrangement, but then if you change the setting, or the familiar order of a certain social setting or activity, it becomes harder to interact in this environment.  For example, usually Church has their service indoors.  But once a month, it is held outdoors.  I have gotten used to approaching, talking to, and interacting with people when the service is indoors.  But when we moved outside, even talking with people I am very comfortable talking with indoors became like a whole new situation.  I wanted to approach familiar people but I couldn’t figure out how to approach people and start conversations when I knew how to do so indoors.  A lot of people with Autism have a need for a certain order and familiarity.  If you change one little thing in their environment, it is like everything is out of whack for them and they don’t know how to handle it.  For me, when this happens, I tend to just kind of freeze because I don’t know how to operate in the changed setting.  For some people with Autism, a seemingly small change might provoke a total meltdown, and unless someone is familiar with what they are used to, no one will understand what is wrong.  They were fine before, but now they are totally overwhelmed and unable to function.

So I just wanted to bring this up.  I have recently been deliberately trying to interact with other people, and to spend more time with other people.  But this can be very difficult, and new situations, new people, changes of environment, can be very hard for a person with Autism to process and adapt to.  Many people probably need help with social interactions.  Oftentimes I can function very well in a conversation or social activity, but I might need help with some small things that I cannot seem to process.  I might need help when I get stuck and can’t bring to mind what to say or do next.  I might have everything figured out but one little detail, but that one little detail is jamming up the rest of my brain’s ability to process.  So it helps someone with Autism to have people who understand that sometimes they get stuck on certain things, and need some support to figure out those things and figure out ways to accommodate for them, so that those hitches don’t jam up and hinder everything else they might be capable of.