Autism Misunderstood: When Survival Looks Like Personality

We’ve been talking about Autism wrong. What if so many "Autistic" behaviours aren’t preferences at all, but adaptations made in order to find safety?

Note: In this Article when I say Autism I’m talking about Autism level 1: “high functioning” or “high masking” Autism.

There’s a general perception around Autism that it comes with “antisocial” behaviour as somewhat of a personality trait: that the lack of eye contact, bluntness and desire to play alone is a preference.

What I want the world to understand is that what is often assumed is preference, is actually a protective mechanism.

It’s wrong to assume Autistic people “have” antisocial behaviour as a result of the disorder instead of as a result of experiencing rejection.

This distinction is one that we need more educating about and not enough voices are talking about it.

To give a quick example of what I’m talking about take eye contact.

Autistic children avoid it, but it’s usually written off as personal preference. But this is only half the picture, the full one being that if a child constantly experiences being misunderstood, eye contact becomes unsafe. It becomes tricky, scary. And it stops.

The logic follows: if something hurts you, you avoid it. You learn: don’t do that! It’s dangerous.

So fear, not preference is often the real reason behind the lack of eye contact. Can you imagine what that must be like? Yet I hear things like:

“Autistic people don’t like eye contact.”

“Autistic people prefer to play alone.”

The implications are that Autistic children are choosing disconnection.

That they are less interested in people. Less emotionally engaged.

This ignores the fact that their social needs are entirely similar to the rest of the population.

It minimises their humanity.

Autistic children are often simply doing the most logical thing and yet we are labelling them antisocial.

High Needs?

When Benji was three, we went to see a child psychologist because I was worried about him being so sad. Everything seemed to make him cry. We struggled to understand why.

I remember sitting there crying and telling her: “I just want to make him happy.”

The psychologist told us that for a high-needs child, the world itself can feel overwhelming.

He wasn’t high needs. The world was asking too much of him.

This is another example of labelling and how language shapes our understanding of a problem.

The Heart Balloon

A year later, when Benji was four, we attended birthday party with an entertainer. I noticed immediately Benji chose to play alone and not sit with the group.

He sat by himself, playing in the grass. I encouraged him to join the group.

Still he pottered around insisted on sitting in my lap, far away from the activity.

Then the entertainer started making balloon creations for the boys. He asked them to tell him what they wanted him to make:

“Sword!”

“Gun!”

“Spaceship!”

The boys named their choices and pretty much asked for the same things.

When it was Benji’s turn he asked for a heart. A pink one.

And something about that moment broke me. I truly realised just how differently Benji was experiencing the world to everyone else for the first time (I didn’t know he or I were Autistic then but began to suspect it). What mattered to him most, was connection.

Was a big old symbol of love.

Yet the big bright and bouncing heart he held was in stark contrast to his own, one struggling to stay afloat and in isolation of the rest of the world.

Benji didn’t prefer being alone and never had.

When I began to understand language was important

Since then so many parent / teacher interviews, therapy sessions and assessments have revealed the same thing: a deeply troubling language of Autism.

Statements like:

“We want to keep him from falling behind”

“How do we minimise the challenges?”

“How can we close the skills gap?”

It’s really another way of saying: How do we make this Autism go away? Autism is the problem.

But it’s not.

Language is the problem. Our inability to correctly understand the Autistic experience and use the right language to talk about it so that this understanding can be shared: it’s an environmental problem, not an individual one.

If our starting point is “eliminate the problem” instead of “understand the problem”, we will continue to miss the clues that matter most!

Instead the solution is painfully simple:

Stop changing them. Start by making them feel safe.

Safety Changes Everything

When eye contact becomes safe, they will make more eye contact.

When speaking up becomes safe, they will use their voice.

It makes sense.

A person (Autistic or not) would rather quietly withdraw rather than risk embarrassment or misunderstanding. I’m ashamed to think how often I misunderstood and didn’t try to understand.

Eye contact still becomes less used at home whenever he feels unsure of himself. When he is afraid of saying the wrong thing. When he worries he is demanding too much attention.

As a mother, how could I possibly think of reminding him to make eye contact when I know it’s not the issue? In fact it might be downright emotionally and psychologically damaging to try to force a child to do something that feels threatening to their safety.

I wish someone had explained it to me earlier. However, I’m grateful that I am also Autistic because I believe that is why I’ve managed to understand what’s really going on.

Autistic children don’t have less need for connection. They need a softer, more attentitve environment to find it. They need a world that is more patient, more warm and more gentle that the one they currently have.

At home, where we slow down and reassure him constantly, he blossoms.

At home he knows we will keep trying to understand him until we do. He knows his voice matters here.

Final Words

Autistic children don’t prefer disconnection! They withdraw because they learn connection is too emotionally risky, confusing, exhausting, or humiliating very early in life.

Many children are carrying the invisible burden of trying to minimise themselves. Thanks to language, they’ve internalised that they are the problem.

When we as a society can stop projecting Autistic behaviour as defiance, avoidance, selfishness, argumentativeness, or disinterest…the Autistic experience will be a very different one.

Therapy will focus on building confidence by starting with the environment and people around them. Their teachers. Their parents. Their siblings.

Not with them.