- Hi everyone, and welcome back to Aspergers
from the Inside, you're here with Paul.
Today I wanted to talk about
how sometimes socializing can be incredibly draining
and incredibly painful, even,
if you don't have the energy to do it,
and to explain a couple of the reasons why that is,
and how it actually makes sense.
Sometimes, when we don't understand
the reasons behind things,
it's easy to think, "Oh, I should be able to do it,"
or, "there's something wrong with me
"'cause I can't do these things."
But actually, autistic behavior is human behavior,
and the things that we do, and that we have trouble with
are actually really common for everybody.
So I'll give you an example.
I go to the gym in the morning, very often,
and sometimes it's necessary
for me to actually talk to a person at the front desk
to get to my class properly
and that is really, really painful
at 6:00 a.m. in the morning.
I've already pushed myself to get up in the morning,
I've already pushed myself to get there,
and get dressed, hopefully, if all things went well,
the extra effort required to interact
with another human being at that time in the morning,
in my mental state at the time, is just way too much
and feels harder than an hour of exercise
at that time of day.
And the reason is,
because when you interact with someone else,
there are certain things you have to do,
and if you don't do these things, then it's considered rude,
and you essentially damage the relationship.
And those little things are the reason
that socializing is very tiring
and sometimes even painful to try and do these things
when you don't have the energy.
So what are the things that I'm talking about?
If someone says, "Hello," it's polite to say, "hello," back.
If someone asks you a question, it's polite to respond.
If someone interacts with you,
it's polite to just respond a little bit,
or give someone eye contact, or smile at them.
There's a huge list of things that are polite to do
and that if you don't do, you'll come across as rude
because you didn't do them.
Now, there are a couple of options to get around that,
but the easiest one is to say, "I'm too tired
"for this kind of social interaction, at the moment.
"I'm going to decline your invitation
"to come out to dinner,"
or, "I'm gonna decline your invitation to go to this party,"
or, "have a phone call," maybe a phone call
is too difficult for some, at some times.
And this is actually relatively easy
to explain to someone else
who doesn't experience the same level of tiredness
from everyday kind of of social interaction.
So imagine the most extroverted,
outgoing, loud, energetic person
that you can thing of, you know,
life of the party, talking to everyone, making conversation,
sort of really bouncy energy, running around,
that takes energy, and it's very social,
and you get lots of connections,
and it's fun, and that works,
but it also takes a significant amount of energy.
And if you're not in the sort of bouncy-house-party mood,
then bringing yourself up to that mood,
just is not appealing.
You're like, "I don't have the energy for that.
"I'm just gonna go home early,
"and read a book, or something, and recharge."
Another interesting thing is people assume
that, if you're on the spectrum, you don't like socializing,
and you're not the kind of person
who can have that kind of really high energy,
really hyper-social kind of activity,
whereas what I found,
is firstly, it really depends on the person
but also, even within the one person,
those that I know on the spectrum
that do do that very often, socially,
it still takes a significant amount of energy.
And then later on, they need to recharge,
and build that energy up again.
And if you're out of energy, then any cost is too much.
So it's a little bit like, "Can I afford 20 cents?"
Well if I don't have 20 cents,
no, I can't afford 20 cents, bad luck.
So if you're absolutely drained,
and a lot of us push ourselves
really, really hard to our limits
until we've got absolutely nothing left,
and then either stop, hopefully, or crash or something.
So if you don't have anything left,
then even the most simple responding to someone
when someone talks to you, that's the hardest one for me
because you absolutely need to interact
with someone to not be considered rude
because they don't know what's happening.
So if someone smiles to me, and waves to me,
and I just ignore them, they're like, "Well why?
"What did you do?
"Why did you ignore me, what's wrong?
"Are you angry, do you not like me?"
And they will come up with all of these thoughts
and explanations for why I didn't wave back.
The reason is probably because it was too much effort,
and energy, and it was too painful for me to try
and do that at the moment, so I didn't do it.
But in the moment,
there's no easy way to communicate that to them.
Sometimes, at autistic events,
we use things like a little card or something
saying, "I'm tired, don't talk to me at the moment,
"or if you do, just realize that I may, or may not, respond.
"And if I don't talk to you,
"then please just accept that I don't wanna talk to you."
And when you understand that from a person,
it makes the socializing significantly easier
because if someone talks to me and I don't respond,
they know that that means
that I don't really wanna talk at the moment
and they know it's nothing personal.
(sighs) I keep wanting to get into the dynamics
of how it actually works on an emotional
and communication level.
Okay, I'll do one really quick thing with that.
The biggest thing is that people need to know
what's going on, otherwise, they assume something,
and they also need to know something
about you and your intentions, otherwise,
they will assume something about you and your intentions.
So every time you come close to someone
or get in someone's attention span
it is absolutely necessary to communicate to them
who you are, and what you're doing,
and give signals as to how to interact with you
in a positive way.
And if you don't do that,
then the other person gets really freaked out,
they get suspicious, they feel awkward,
they think you're being rude,
they get all of these negative, emotional reactions,
which they blame you for,
which is sort of half true, I suppose,
because they don't even know where it's coming from,
and then they end up not liking you
or feeling like, "Oh, that person was a bit weird,"
just because they didn't understand what was going on.
I think I've drifted significantly from the topic
but anyway, bringing us back, socializing
and even those really little things
like waving back, smiling back,
responding to someone's question, can be really painful
when you don't have the energy to do it
and that's why someone like me, for example,
who is usually completely fine with all of those things,
can sometimes not be fine.
I remember an example of a friend
who got a taxi from the airport to the city
because she didn't wanna talk
to the person selling the bus tickets,
even though it would've saved a significant amount of money.
Now someone from the outside, who already knows
how easy it would be, would know
that it's actually not significantly more interaction
to talk to the person selling the tickets,
than it is to tell the taxi driver where you're going.
But when you know you don't have energy, the risk, the risk,
that someone might ask you a follow-up question,
or that you might have to ask for help,
or you might not know exactly what to do
and have to get into this dialogue with someone else
when you just don't have the energy for it,
that risk was too much, and she said, "No, not doing that.
"I know how to catch a taxi," (fingers snap), bam, bam bam,
"I'm going," or these days
with ride sharing apps and things,
you don't even need to tell the person where you're going.
Okay, way over time, stopping now, thanks for listening.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
If you've got examples of social things for yourself,
things that are particularly difficult
or ways that you cope, please leave them in the comments,
it'd be really interesting to hear.
Thanks, bye.