My autistic experience of friendships

By Josh Collins (part of the Reachout ASC team)

Here I am with some of my friends.

For me, an autistic person, at 24, I would say that I am in the golden age of friendships. Social occasions are more frequent than they are seldom. Parties, gatherings, catch-ups, and fulfilling conversations and events are not at all uncommon in my adult social life. If anything, I probably have a bit too much on. Considering that we are living through a ‘loneliness pandemic’ and having heard many people my age complain about unfulfilled social goals, the fact that I am at peak friendship is ostensibly exceptional and noteworthy.

Growing Up Autistic: A Different Reality 

However, growing up autistic, this was not the case. A lot of effort and soul searching was needed to get to this point. I want to share with you my story of how I got here and investigate why I had so much trouble in the first place. I call it an investigation because I want to understand why no one wanted to be my friend when I was much, much younger. I don’t think I will ever fully know; my brain was not developed to the point where I could have gathered the evidence and come up with a conclusion.

The Absence of Friends 

What I do remember is wanting friends and how that absence felt. What made it harder was a burning sense of avoidance. This often boiled into what felt at the time was anger. My working theory is that I was so overwhelmed and anxious about having friends, that it either became anger or was mistaken for the feeling of anger.

My Memory of Avoidance 

I remember being invited to a birthday party by a boy in my class. I had no reason to dislike him whatsoever. In fact, I had every reason to like him. I also could have gone to Puddle Town Pirates had I allowed myself to. That day, when I got home from school, I angrily stamped on the invitation and cried.

Why did I do this? Do kids just do weird things? Or was there something more? The whole cliché of ‘knowing I was different’ rung true for me, but as a child, I was too busy feeling for metacognition. Despite wading through the muddy waters of childhood impressions, what I have remembered and how I have remembered it will hopefully make you consider autistic relationships in a way you have not before.

The First Friend 

When it came to friends, I didn’t meaningfully have any until I was about eight. Here and there, my parents’ friends would have kids that I would interact with, and I was very close with my cousins as a baby. I made my first friend when I was making houses for the ants from twigs and leaves. Even though we both knew that ants had ant hills, not needing us to provide shelter, we spent the whole of lunch time watching the ants.

I remember the few words we exchanged that day:

“Do you have any friends?”

“No.”

“Me, neither… do you want to be friends?”

“Sure.”

I definitely see the humour and charming social obliviousness in asking someone if they have any friends now, but at the time, it really was how we connected. It was the thing we had in common, which I was taught was what friendships are built upon.

Learning to Embrace Differences 

Perhaps if I had the ability to meet a younger version of myself, I would encourage them not to just focus on what is similar, as we are often told, but to be helped to find a way to embrace difference in everyone.

A Diverse Social Circle 

These days, all of my friends are different, and none of them are the same. In fact, my main friend group is very diverse, and outside of that, the friends I have peripheral to my main sphere of influence are even more diverse. Knowing this skill earlier definitely would have helped me flourish.

Summing up this chapter of my life in one word would result in me painting the corridor walls of my old primary school with the letters **t r a g i c o m i c** in bright red. Autistic people are very much capable of appreciating the absurdity of their own behaviours, and this is empowering.

Sustaining Friendships 

Year 4 was around the time I was able to sustain a friend for longer than a few weeks. I would often find myself fighting and arguing over things I don’t remember now—topics that would have seemed so big at the time but are unequivocally small in retrospect. Some of these friends were bad influences as well.

The Influence of “Chris” 

One such example was a child I will call Chris, who taught me how to shoplift using sticks and stones from the very same part of the playground where I befriended my ant-friend. That ant-friend, incidentally, is someone I am friends with still to this day.

Autistic children are more than capable of navigating the world of friendships and relationships, given the right support. Not being plugged into the same socket as the rest of the appliances in the kitchen where friendships are made means that we are vulnerable to people who could take advantage of us. Additionally, it means that we think that people who are our friends aren’t our friends at all—and vice versa.

Trial and Error in Friendship 

It felt like I had to learn all of these rules through a cruel, gruelling process of trial and error. My friendship with Chris was off and on again up until Year 5, which concluded with a swift kick in the nuts from my leg. The last time I saw him was when I was invited to his house for tea. We watched YouTube videos and French dubs of The Penguins of Madagascar TV show, which we thought sounded hilarious at the time—all the while eating spaghetti hoops on toast.

I remember leaving his house early, limping home with a sore tummy, clutching onto my gut as I struggled back to my street, writhing in pain.

Teachers and Friendship Rules 

Teachers attempted to teach me the friendship rules, but they did so in a way that focused on the shameful and harrowing consequences of social faux pas. I speculate that this was how they were taught, knowing too many people who live in fear of losing perception points in a made-up game designed to make everyone feel bad.

Why Shame Doesn’t Work 

Shame is not a conducive or sustainable way to teach anyone, and autistic Josh at age 8 simply rebelled against it. No one taught me how to discern fake friends from real ones, often leaving me confused as I could not read the signs for myself.

A Cruel System 

We have enough information collectively as humanity; it is foolish to let anyone learn something so painfully through trial and error. Do we get children to learn every rule of mathematics from the basic principles ancient scholars had to find for themselves? When someone learns to drive, do we let them take the wheel and figure out what the gearstick and pedals do through experimentation?

If we did, fewer children would know Pythagoras’ theorem, and we would fear for our lives as we crossed the road.

Teaching the Tools for Socialising 

Yet, when it comes to socialising, almost everyone assumes they can be thrown into the deep end and know how to react to every single niche case. We are also capable of socialising. What we need help with is calibrating that sensor that tells us how to discern what people really mean—and for people to double-empathise and meet us halfway.

The Strengths of Autistic People 

For me, the worst injustice for autistic people is there being an untapped talent in every autistic person that would make them great friends:

– A strong sense of justice is great for loyalty and for sticking up for friends.

– Candidness can help facilitate important communication and hard discussions before it’s too late.

– Special interests make us interesting.

Beyond that, the way in which every person mixes the ingredients of their autistic traits, and their self is different, and it would be immensely beneficial if teachers and parents were to tap into our natural strengths as opposed to going against them.

Golden Time and Friendships 

At golden time, I would often draw these people I thought were my friends, using paper from the recycled paper box. I would let my imagination run wild with us having superpowers and going on improbable adventures. I would storyboard it all out and conjure up my own comic strips.

I’m sure you can imagine, then, how it stung when I found out that friends were hanging out without me or had reasons to dislike me for reasons they kept secret from me. They would often break off into their own factions for what they called “private chats.”

Intensity and Friendships 

From the surface, my behaviour may have come across as obsessive. Tragically, this was one of the things that got in the way of me having friends as a child. Feeling very intensely about a friendship was an obstacle, as this intensity would often scare people off, or I would be too much for people.

My Best Traits Were Seen as Unbearable 

As a child, I was upset that my friends found my best traits unbearable. My unbound creativity and generosity were seen as overkill to many children—who you would imagine would like such things—but not if it came from an autistic child they didn’t see as one of their own.

A Teacher’s Unkind Advice 

I defiantly kept those traits, as my sense of justice led me to believe that I should be accepted as I was (which is what should be taught). However, at school, I was taught by my Year 6 teacher that I would be laughed **at**, as opposed to laughed **with**, if I acted the way I was when I went to high school.

The Burden of Preventing Bullying 

This has always irked me. It put the onus on me to prevent my own bullying when realistically this was the job of the teachers. Perhaps I could be generous and suggest that my teacher foresaw that my new high school would not act upon it, and that people are not kind; even then, I fully resent this sort of cynicism of school systems.

The Complexity of Social Interactions 

Looking back, I now understand what it is like to be overwhelmed by someone else. Having seen it from both sides, I can understand why someone would want to avoid a very overwhelming person, but I also understand that it is manageable if you have the right communications toolkit.

Concluding Thoughts 

As I near the end of this piece of writing, wishing I had more time and space to include more anecdotes and examples, I would ideally conclude with a list of best practices. Unfortunately, I am only an expert in myself (if I can even call myself one).

For those who have read to the end, what I can advise is that socialising as a child shares the same complexities and nuances as your adult relationships today. The way I make friends now would all have worked 15 years ago; the difference now is that I have those skills, and through my own processes and learning, have found a way to tap into the magic of friendships.

Links

Reachout ASC have developed our Social Detective packs, based on teaching autistic and other children about how we cooperate and understand each other, how we listen to one another and how we learn to read social information to make the best guesses about what is going on.  For more information or to order a pack go to https://reachoutasc.com/resources/social-skills-pack/