Non-Verbal Communication and Autism -- Some Personal Consequences

Autism is considered to be a communication disorder. It is of course much more than that, and the definition of dis-order depends on one's standard of order, but in a world dominated by neurotypicals, our differences are considered to be disorders. And given the consequences, we might as well call them that.

When we think of a communication disorder, we are typically thinking of language as communication. However, much human communication is non-verbal, and here autistic people face a number of hurdles as well.

I recently came to understand the degree to which this is true in a recent situation in which I was being correctly redirected to do something other than what I was doing. When the person redirected me, I realized she was right and that I should be doing something else, so I immediately complied. A bit later, though, she asked me if it annoyed her that she had redirected me.

When I am concentrating on something--as I was in this case doing--I tend to get "in the zone." If you do or say something to get me out of the zone, I feel immediately annoyed. I cannot help it, but I can often get over is as immediately as I feel it. What I didn't realize is that I also showed that annoyance on my face. Which is just as immediate and something I can't help.

Now imagine that I have been doing this all my life. Which I have. Without realizing it. Which I have. How do you think people will react to me? Or think of me?

For my regular readers, you may remember that this is not the first time this has happened to me where my attention was drawn to the look I was giving.

But I do have to wonder how many times something has gone awry because I was giving a look that I was unaware I was giving. 

This just ends up on my growing list of things I seem to have to tell people about me so they won't misunderstand my words, actions, and now facial expressions. Meaning I'm almost certainly going to have to always tell everyone I'm on the spectrum just to create the conditions under which I'll be less likely to be misunderstood. Meaning I'll get all the fun and pleasure of being directly discriminated against when people know I'm on the spectrum.

So those are the choices: open discrimination against me for being on the autism spectrum or have people decide they don't like me because of my "attitude." I've decided to take my chances with the former.