26th August 2019
One of the key diagnostic criteria for being diagnosed as Autistic is having difficulties with social interaction and communication. The level to which an Autistic person struggles with this depends on the person, as Autism is a spectrum condition, meaning everyone is different. I am no exception to experiencing social difficulties and displaying these problems. However, I often forget or do not realise to what level this can affect me. Recently though, I had a reminder.
Often at work I have to attend meetings, which despite my problems I do okay in. One of the key aspects I struggle with in meetings, or any social gathering for that matter, is knowing when to join into the conversation. Now I am very open about being Autistic at work, so my colleagues understand this and to their credit, the people I work with regularly help me by asking my opinions at the right time. Most meetings are with people I work with day to day but on occasion, like the meeting I had the other week, there is a member of staff who I never interact with.
The actual meeting was difficult to read. I think everybody goes into a work meeting with objectives and everybody, whether they realise it or not, wants an outcome. On this day, I certainly had an idea of what I wanted to happen as it was with a senior member of staff, someone higher up in the organisation who had an ear to the very top levels of the company. The rest of the folk attending were people I work with all the time. For the record, everyone including the senior person, knows I am Autistic.
I did find it difficult to express my thoughts and opinions with this person during the discussion, but I understood that he had access to information about the company that I don’t and logically this would mean we might disagree about certain points. For example, I might suggest that the company should do certain things, which in my head should just “happen”, whereas he might know information about budgets etc. which means it would not be the right time for these things to happen. We went through the meeting and to be honest I was a bit confused about the outcome. My colleagues all seemed pleased though with how it went and as I know they wanted they same outcome as me, I accepted my confusion and went with it. Taking the result from their lead.
It was afterwards that I began to get really confused. My colleagues seemed concerned about me. They thought I was really upset about about the outcome of the meeting. And when I say concerned, I mean very concerned. They spent at least twenty minutes explaining to me that the meeting went well, and it was the best result and that the person would move our objectives forward. I did understand this, even though I had some confusion after it had finished. However, my body language, facial expressions and communication must have told them a very different story.
Both of them even offered to listen to me if I needed to talk about it. The following day one of them even checked upon me to see if I was okay. Nice of him but all this concern seemed unnecessary to me – I was fine.
It did demonstrate something though. My social interaction can be truly different from the average. What I am feeling, thinking and saying can be interpreted totally differently by those around me. It takes an event like this one though to make me realize sometimes just how prevalent this can be.
Obviously it can also be worrying as it can lead to misunderstandings. It is what it is though. I am me and it is just part of being Autistic. The only way I can help this is to be open and honest with others and to help them understand that social interactions and communication is different for me and therefore both myself and them, have to work that little bit harder to make sure we truly understand each other. It can be challenging but it is not impossible so long as there is awareness, understanding and acceptance from everyone.
This is the first time you have been there.