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Who wrote the social rule book?

Autismman

There’s a lot about autism or the definition of it that I just struggle to agree with. In order to judge something you must compare it to something else, that something else you may hold at a more absolute standard or shall I say society does. So the bigger picture is that the most highly educated people on the planet, the scientists, the doctors, the psychiatrists have all come together to agree on what is considered “normal” social behaviour. They have applied these rules and expectations to the rest of us. I write this because in reports namely mine it says “struggles to maintain and keep relationships” in order to struggle you must first seek them out which I do not so the applied logic here is that there is something missing within myself but the reality is it is just my personal choice, you do what feels right for you at the end of the day. Do neurotypical individuals ideally want to be popular or at the very least have a room full of friends? I think I have a strong aversion to other peoples expectations of me and what I “should” being doing. Isn’t it just that humanity has found a model that for the most part works and is going with it blindly. Perhaps my diagnosis is exactly why I struggle to understand these things, I have to question the workings of things too, if I don’t agree or understand them well they may as well be myths)

(Just a dump of what was on my mind, thanks for reading)

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  • Autismman said:
    Do neurotypical individuals ideally want to be popular or at the very least have a room full of friends?

    On the whole, I would say yes. There is a drive to be successful (popular = social success) and to have the validation and companionship of friends. There is a variety or appetite for these things amongst individuals but on the whole it is true.

    Autismman said:
    the bigger picture is that the most highly educated people on the planet, the scientists, the doctors, the psychiatrists have all come together to agree on what is considered “normal” social behaviour.

    I think you will find it is not the intelligent people setting these normal standards - it is the less informed masses and the media. The rules are becoming much more changable than they ever were due to the speed of dissemination of social media and the masses pick up on what is the new hot rule of the moment much more quickly.

    There are positives - the rise of the "me too" movement was one such event which has given women much more encouragement to stand up to a historic wrong is one such case.

    I think that the autistic issue of not getting the rules stems from the way our sensory filters do not activate as children, leaving us overwhelmend with sensory input while other children have more capacity for observing and mimicing the social interactions. They had the capacity to see the rule book in play and follow it while we were occupied with our special interests and stayed away from others.

    The good news is that you can learn it but it requires a lot of paying attention to something that doensn't really interest you which is one of our weaknesses. You can read up on it, observe it and mask/script to apply what you learn, but this all takes effort and energy which we are typically low on.

  • in reply to Iain

    I think my social difficulties were compounded by only ever playing with one other child before I went to school, if its right that children learn most of their social cues and stuff by the time they're 7 then I only had 2 years to learn and a lot of that was taken up with being ill.

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