somewhere very far away

As is often the case, I find myself inspired by a post on the hub, this time about the myth of the autistic person in their own little world. This seems to be one of the most pervasive misunderstandings, to the point that it has entered the popular subconcious as a “truth”–despite it being nothing of the sort.

Usually, the concept is presented as something of a travesty: autistics (especially children) are in a “world of his/her own” and need to be “drawn out” by parents, teachers, support workers. This comes out of a misperception of the reality of autism: it is viewed as a (possibly semiwillful choice of) emotional and social isolation. In reality, the isolation that autistics feel is only one part of the disorder; sensory and other perceptual differences are at least as important and all three blend together in individual combinations. Autism is better thought of as autisms, plural–each affected person’s precise combination of impairments will be unique. For me, my sensory and perceptive issues are a bit worse than my social skills, but my theory-of-mind is only good when I’m calm, and my emotional skills are quite frustrating (and not just for me). All that means, in the end, is that this is my autism. It bears no strong reflection on any other spectrumite except in the sense that we all share some difficulty in each of the three areas in the classic triad of impairment: communication, social skills, and imagination.

(For the record, I’m at a loss how autistics are supposed to each have a world of our own from which we must be coaxed if we’re also meant to have impairment in the imagination. The two ideas seem contradictory, given most people have a simplistic idea of imagination.)

What non-autistics don’t seem to realize is that everyone has “a world of his/her own.” Everyone has the ability to withdraw when overwhelmed by a situation. An easy example is this: you are riding public transport–a bus, a subway, a tram, what have you–and alone. You have nothing to do, like read a book or play on a laptop, and no one to talk to. Most people, in this situation, might find themselves staring out a window (or trying to keep their balance on an overfull train). What do you think about while you are in your own world? Something that interests you, that entertains you? Perhaps you contemplate the people in your life and how to strengthen your relationships with them. We even have a phrase for this state: “lost in thought.”

But this is no different than being autistic; like most of the traits in autism, the difference is in the degree. Autistics may appear to be lost in thought more often and for longer than the average NT person.

The reason comes back around to some of the other differences that make someone identifiably autistic, specifically sensory and perceptive differences. What if you perceieved light–sunlight, lamps, any light–as brighter, more intense, than the people around you, as if you were the only person outside on a sunny day while everyone else had sunglasses? What if you had acute hearing, able to hear minute tonal differences or far away sounds, but lost the train of conversations when there is background noise, or found your hearing mysteriously shutting itself down because you are so overwhelmed by sound? What if the feel of ordinary textures, in your clothing or your surroundings or your food, felt twice as rough, or soft, or hard, or squishy? And what if you could make all of that go away, for a brief while, by going on the retreat? You’ll have to go back to it eventually, but a break makes the overwhelming way the world can feel so much more tolerable. This isn’t even to address the way social interaction, with its subtleties and heavy nonverbal (and often lost on autistics) components, can be just as exhausting–if not more so–than simply adapting to the physical environment.

In this light, trying to “draw an autistic out of his/her own world” is not just misguided and poorly conceptualized, but potentially cruel. Everyone needs some down time to process what’s going on around them. Introverts need more than extraverts, and autistics may need even more. Trying to engage with someone when they are not ready can lead to tantrums, or at least snapping (like before the Kate! concert when I was in a decidedly need-to-be-alone mood but was unable to fulfill that need).

Engage with autistics. Treat us with the dignity and respect you would show anyone. And when we tell you–verbally or not–that we need a break, respect that. Don’t worry, we’ll come out of our worlds on our own, just like anyone else, once we’ve had sufficient time to work on whatever we’re busy working on–just like anyone else.