For Autistic Adults, Making Friends Can Be Complicated
Being an autistic adult and making friends is probably harder than it was when I was a teenager (this might not be true for other autistics, but it’s my experience).
Being an autistic adult and making friends is probably harder than it was when I was a teenager (this might not be true for other autistics, but it’s my experience).
When other people take choices away from autistic people, it can make us believe we are useless and destroy our confidence. It can even lead to us putting ourselves in dangerous situations, just to prove we can do things.
We talked with several autistic people about how non-autistic people can be good friends to autistic people. This is their advice.
You know where I didn’t learn how to figure people out like that? Anywhere that was not a game. Not in previous jobs, not in books, not in school. I learned these life skills using a table top role playing game (TTRPG), purely by accident.
An autistic young person has the right to have an active and willing agency in the process of deciding who to befriend, what boundaries should be set on such friendships and who they are just not comfortable with.
Going slow and watching for patterns are your two best tools for staying safe with people. People have patterns of behavior, and if you take your time getting to know them, they will fall into their patterns. Watch for red flags and decide ahead of time what you will accept and what is unacceptable.
Anonymous Photo © Carissa Rogers | Flickr/Creative Commons [image: Adult and two children, silhouetted against a lake and colorful pink sunset.] I started working with autistic children in the mid-nineties, as a volunteer in a magnet school. The experience was influential, and I went on to become a psychologist, getting a PhD focused on autism
My job title is Personal Assistant, which I like. I think direct support work should be viewed as assisting a disabled person who is your boss, not taking care of someone passive.
Interview by M. Kelter theinvisiblestrings.com Anlor Davin is the author of the upcoming memoir, Being Seen. In her book, she describes lifelong struggles with “sensory chaos” and social pragmatics, all of which culminated in an adulthood diagnosis of autism. She was raised in France, but later immigrated to the United States. We recently spoke via email about
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