Support - Developing Social Skills & Independence

She may need rules to work with. Society is this sort of 'tribal' network, like a network of fungi or a network of plants, which communicate through roots. Gardening analogies are really useful when it comes to helping understand human beings. 

Most of us don't understand the incredibly rich and vast complexities of fungi, how they operate, how they're important to human life. But if we desire to know, it's best to learn a bit of latin, maybe join a foragers group and get a microscope. Human groups are no different. Anthropologists will have a set of rules for how they operate in and with tribes as an outsider. And we're really no different. Autistics use language as function rather than a sort of theatrics of meaning. It's already a bit tricky to navigate a social collective when I either have 5 different interpretations for what someone could mean and find that none are correct or have a sense of being lost in the crowd without it triggering the internal switch to raise awareness of being lost, which would alert me to do something about it. Up until my mid 30s I didn't know what I didn't know and so didn't know how to ask, it was just this overwhelming feeling of being ghostly.

Groups present a danger. They can be a mob or a mosh pit. It's not a bad thing to recognise their power or - 'force' (if you think of the force of gravity). The question here is how to take REALLY small steps to find my own sense of being in a world I am possibly a mismatch for. 

My way 'in' was through Philosophy and Religion. I started looking into matters of what it means to be human and what is existence in my teens. This caused panic in my mother, so I had to keep it secret and to myself. It did not cause panic in me, as the more I explored in the science of being the more clarity I gained. And with better clarity, came a better ability to afford my own being. 

Now, I will say that ancient wisdom, turn of the century ethics, humans who could help make distinctions between seemingly similar behaviours or social nuances and structures brought a great deal of resolution and calm to my world. The ability to name and call out a thing is quite grounding. And I also discovered what connects us as humans - things which are below the surface, values and principles of being. Elements everyone shares like the fate of existence. Chesterton, Orwell, Classic poets and Russian playwrights. I took a logic class (the structure of how we reason) and this helped a great deal.

She needs rule books, guide books. Simon Griffen wrote a fantastic and humourous one recently called "ƒ^çking good manners" - and it's slightly fun for teens / young adults with the juxtaposition of a socially nonsense word and some rather good expectations of what we can all meet. My favourite sociologist / philosopher is Erich Fromm. He's easy to read and really helps emphasise social structures and matters of being human. I might start with his Revolution of Hope and the Art of Loving. But also, The Artists Way is an incredible book to help us learn to listen to ourselves, find our passions, and our place in the world.