what the fuck am i supposed to do then
No, you’re supposed to do this.
So I’m autistic, closer to 40 than 30, randomly ended up in a conversation with an apartment neighbor.
She’s an approximately 50 yo mom, we somehow ended up talking about autism, how yes sometimes it can be closer to the stereotype of basically catatonic and nearly totally dysfunctional, but other times it can work in all these different ways, etc etc.
During this conversation, her autistic kid happens to walk by, and the mom says to her something like “child! this is ‘myactualname’, look at him!”
… and then me, ~40, her kid, ~20, both just did the deadpan / completely neutral stare at each other, both equally surprised yet compliant with this command, for about 15 seconds, untill i lost the staring contest / realized i had no idea how to gracefully ‘social’ my way out of the deadlock stare so i just made a joke relevant to the conversation i’d been having with the mom to try to give the kid an escape mechanism.
Myself being autistic, all that I gleaned from this was that yes, both I and this nice lady’s kid are indeed autistic.
Sweet of the mom to introduce her daughter to the like-minded neighbor.
Yes i thought so too, though it was rather abrupt and startling for myself and I imagine the kid as well.
But also it did work, and it wasn’t some kind of long duration ‘you must now socialize with this person’ type of thing.
Focusing.
I think I just realized why people think I’m weird
ADHDers: Blinking and sweating profusely as they try to maintain eye contact and focus on the conversation
One of my first hints I was on the spectrum was realizing that after my dad told me to make eye contact, I switched to “scarily intense conversation partner” for this very reason.
Wait, so what is eye contact?
The slightly less insane, slightly more spaced version of this, is when you are close enough to flutter your eyelashes together.
‘butterfly kisses’
I hate it.
Really? I want to do this with Rodney Dangerfield while jorking each other.
Thanks I hate this! 🫠
It’s a little hard to explain, especially without resorting to stereotypes (please forgive me if I do so; I’m trying), but NT people shift their gaze as part of active listening. We’ll fix our gaze more firmly if we’re saying something controversial, or draw it in if we’re saying something conspiratorial, or use it to gather our interlocutor’s attention before doing a facial expression. A lot of the “eye contact” that I make is actually with the bridge of someone’s nose, or their cheek, so it feels less intense while still showing interest. Some autistic people can become almost transfixed in their gaze, like they’re so focused on looking right into your pupils, that it seems to me they forget that the eye contact is in service of other conversation cues to help your interlocutors understand where your attention is.
Sometimes I have doubts if I’m autistic or not. Then I read shit like this and yeah I’m autistic. Did someone tell you to look at their nose or cheeks? That counts? How did you know not to death gaze into directly into their pupils when you make the effort to make eye contact? Eye contact helps with conversational cues?! Wild it make senses, but I’ve never put two and two together
Most neurotypicals do not think that much about the actual specifics and mechanics of microexpressions, because they both make and interpret them essentially subconsciously, most of the time, unless they are intentionally trying to act, intentionally ‘trying to read somebody’.
Whereas for us autists, it is an active, conscious, logic/analysis process and set of problems/equations/rulesets… that we essentially cannot turn off or not do.
The thing that makes ‘socializing difficult for autists’ is that neurotypicals all have different slightly different rulesets for how this kind of thing works, that they do not realize they have, and they very often have rulesets that are not actually coherent or logically consistent.
They then tell or expect autists to play by these rules that actually don’t make sense, or clash with another NT’s rules, autist gets confused, develops different masks for different people / social groups.
I have literally never had what I would describe as ‘difficulty socializing with’ another autist.
(Well ok I guess barring the situation of an autist who is either significantly developmentally disabled in other ways or is actually catatonic)
We will just actually explicitly discuss the microexpression rules, if it becomes an issue…
NTs generally do not like doing this, they will often get angry or exasperated if you try to broach the topic.
I grew up in the “look at me when I talk to you” times, I learned how to unfocus my eyes and just watch a blurry face talk, then as an adult I found that if you look very intently at their irises (specifically the ring around the pupils), people tend to break eye contact.
So now when I’m trying to show people I’m listening, I’m really just playing a game.
I always look at people’s right eye, and though I see their eye contact shifting back and forth between both of my eyes, I can never bring myself to do the same. Looking at the left eye just feels weird. Like, I already chose the eye to look at, stop making me devote brain power to thinking of when I’m supposed to look at the other eye.
I like to stare out a window.
Not always making direct eye contact is something I was told once as a strategy for seeming confident when you’re nervous; other than that they all come to me naturally via mirroring. It’s actually pretty hard for me to think and talk about this kinda stuff because I do it all intuitively, and it’s hard for me to divert enough attention to notice precisely what I’m doing during conversations because I’m too busy focusing on the other person and our conversation to think about how I’m emoting.
Feels like you’re getting at the crux of why this is difficult. It’s something NTs “just do” without thinking anything of it - like breathing. It’s not like they can explain the “rules of eye contact” but, also, they certainly will notice you not doing it and they might not be able to put their finger on why that interaction feels off to them.
It’s when your eyeballs are physically touching their eyeballs.
I read a hack about looking at their lips instead and it’ll work. Nope. More awkward.
I do the nose.
Forehead gang unite!
So many arbitrary rules, ffs.
Arbitrary rules would probably exist even if everyone was at the same point in the spectrum
Yeah, but then they wouldn’t feel that arbitrary :D.
(You are ofc right, that was part of the joke, cultural constraints/guidelines/rails exist whenever tho entities interact - it’s not like (from human-pov-)autistic cats don’t have culture, or problems with it.)
My boss only makes eye contact when he’s picking his nose
Asserting dominance. You must make eye contact and pick deeper if you want his job.
I don’t want his job it sucks
Also: Many people make the mistake and pick their own nose. You need to copy your boss. If he’s picking his nose, pick his nose as well.
Pick me a winner. 😳
It swings around 180 in other other odd ways. About 100 years ago, when I went through my dating period, I kept finding myself across tables from men who thought if I didn’t do this while they were talking, then I wasn’t attending to them or their words.
Ditto, on eyes turning inward to focus on and visualize what they were talking about, an aspect of full attention. Apparently, doing that meant I was tuning them out and letting my mind wander to other things. They “could tell”.
Needless to say, I encountered many a one date wonder who never moved past that initial interview.
Blinking, internal imagery, and not staring are pieces of standard, WNL attentive conversation.
wait, you guys do it unconsciously?
yeah it came by default with my os idk
is it TempleOS or something? 😭
nah he was schizophrenic
