In this episode, I propose that we as a society begin to redefine what social awkwardness means. I discuss the typical definition of social awkwardness and offer an example for you to consider. Maybe we shouldn't judge the differences of others & instead should look within to truly understand why you feel uncomfortable around others who are different. What is it about a flat tone of voice that is so frightening to you? Why do you feel so compelled towards creating more conformity; when variety is where true growth occurs? Why do you feel uncomfortable past the plateaus of deeper thinking?
In this episode, I propose that we as a society begin to redefine what social awkwardness means.
I discuss the typical definition of social awkwardness and offer an example for you to consider.
Maybe we shouldn't judge the differences of others & instead should look within to truly understand why you feel uncomfortable around others who are different.
What is it about a flat tone of voice that is so frightening to you?
Why do you feel so compelled towards creating more conformity; when variety is where true growth occurs?
Why do you feel uncomfortable past the plateaus of deeper thinking?
Hello everyone. So today I'd like to address the topic of social awkwardness. A lot of autistic people can be perceived as socially awkward, so I wanted to explore that in this episode.
First of all, what is social awkwardness? Social awkwardness is when you feel uncomfortable and out of place in social situations; it feels unpleasant. Social situations when meeting new people can be awkward.
A few signs:
You feel super nervous in social interactions.
You misread people or don't pick up on social cues.
You avoid socializing whenever possible.
Conversations don't flow; people don't get your jokes or find them offensive.
There are a lot of awkward silences when you talk to people.
So this is the typical definition of what social awkwardness is, and I wanted to explore this idea. Social awkwardness most of the time is defined by neurotypicals. But I ask you this: if you're neurotypical and you're listening to this, do you think that you would feel out of place in a room filled with only autistic people?
Suppose you were the only one in an entire room who wasn't info-dumping, talking extensively about a topic, who wanted to have surface-level conversations where everyone else around you only wanted to have deep conversations.
Suppose you were the only one in the room who wasn't shaking your body, flapping your wrists—suppose you're the only person in the room who wasn't engaged in some sort of movement.
Suppose you're the only person in the room who was doing some kind of parallel play where everyone is focused on their own activities, but you don't have any activity.
Suppose that everyone else is telling jokes around you, and you just don't understand why they're funny because they're so literal it almost seems boring to you—like, how could anyone find that funny?
And you're walking around and everyone seems to be deeply engaged in these discussions about different parts of life, and everyone is so passionate, and you just don't really feel that. Would that be socially awkward for you? Would it?
That's kind of an example of what it might be like if a neurotypical person entered a room filled with autistic people. Probably the neurotypical person would be deeply confused watching autistics interact, because there would be no eye contact—so you're the only person who wants to make eye contact in a room full of people who aren't making eye contact, that might make you feel kind of awkward.
And then suppose that everyone else around you is totally okay with silence, but you want to talk, and you're the only person in the room who wants to talk where everyone else just kind of seems annoyed that you're interrupting the flow of silence. That would feel pretty awkward, wouldn't it?
So I'm using this example because I think that it's important to illuminate something for you: a lot of the times autistic people get perceived as socially awkward when we don't actually feel awkward at all! In fact, we feel quite natural in what we do.
Stimming for us is as important for us as breathing is for you. It's not something that feels awkward to do; it's something necessary for our well-being.
And so there's also the disconnect to body language. Autistic body language is very different from neurotypical body language—I've touched upon this in a couple of previous episodes—all the way down to facial expressions. So your facial expression for a neurotypical person is going to be different from the facial expressions of autistic people. And so it would kind of result in this total disconnect where for neurotypical people, anything that doesn't mirror their body language feels deeply uncomfortable.
For autistic people, we're used to not having that mirroring, and so it doesn't really bother us. In fact, it almost allows us to be more open to understanding and truly seeing the other person that we're talking to, because we're not making baseline assumptions that neurotypical people are. We're not making assumptions about you sharing our thoughts on something.
Autistic people are more likely to challenge the norms, and it's not because we don't like the norms (although some of them do need to change), but it's that we're free from that. We're freed from that by default. We're not trapped in this extreme desire for conformity against everything else. We're not trapped in the dopamine chasing of social status. We're not trapped in doing anything that it takes to fit in like everyone else, because we know we're not. And there's great power in that.
And so in that scenario where you're the only person in the room wanting to make eye contact and no one wants to make eye contact, would that feel uncomfortable? But what if it didn't? Suppose it didn't. Suppose you're like, "You know what? I'm me, and that's okay," and you walk in and you're just doing your thing.
But then everyone else around you sees you trying to make eye contact, and they're like, "Who the heck is this guy? Who—who comes in here and tries to make eye contact with all of us when they know—they must know that it's deeply uncomfortable, that it hurts?" But you don't know that, because you don't have the same frame of reference. You don't know that at all.
And so then it can create this interesting disconnect, right? Because you're over here in this room filled with people who are all autistic except you, and you feel confident in your own skin, you feel confident in your body language because it's everything you've ever known. But everyone else perceives that as socially awkward! Everyone else perceives that as socially awkward because they don't have a frame of reference for understanding it.
Neurotypical people don't understand why someone might be flapping their wrists; they think it's something that should be punished. If you want evidence of that, I have tons! Look up ABA, look up Autism Speaks—they have so many abusive therapies. It's deeply uncomfortable to even think about for me, to be honest. I was one of the lucky few who wasn't deeply traumatized in some of these therapies, but basically it's by the same person who created gay conversion therapy, and they can electrocute autistic people, and there's a long story there. But long story short, it's a different type of body language. Being autistic is a different body language than being neurotypical—different facial expressions, different means of communication.
Suppose you're the only neurotypical person in a room filled with autistic people. All the autistic people are talking about a new project, and they're all flowing together like it's obvious they're all connected, they're all cohesive, they're all talking to each other and taking each other literally. And then you come in there, and you're making all these assumptions. Someone says something in a flat tone of voice, and you instantly feel offended! You instantly feel offended because for you, a flat tone of voice would only indicate disinterest. But no one else seems offended, and you kind of—you kind of look around, you're like, "Wait, why is no one else offended by this? Why is no one else reacting to this flat tone of voice?" And it's almost kind of confusing.
That's kind of one example of what it's like to be autistic in reverse. So in that situation, do you think that would feel awkward for you? I'm asking genuinely, because maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't. It really depends on how confident you are in your own skin. If you're confident in yourself and confident in your body language, then you'd be comfortable navigating any social situation, and you could walk up to a total stranger, talk to them just as easily as you could your best friend.
But suppose you were looking for that external validation from other people—which is a trap that a lot of neurotypical people fall into, and some autistic people too. But suppose you're looking for that validation, then someone calls you socially awkward. Someone says, "Hey, because your body language does not match mine nor matches my assumptions, I'm going to give you this label."
And so this is what I challenge: is it an accurate label to say that all autistic body language is socially awkward? I don't think so. I think that's false. Why should one method of body language be superior to another? This is the question.
If someone's flapping their wrists, why is that uncomfortable to you? If you're neurotypical and you see someone shaking—shaking their body like crazy—why does that feel uncomfortable to you? Why is it? Is it because you're wired in a way to maintain conformity despite all the costs of maintaining it? Is it because when there's something that goes outside of that little bubble of conformity that you've always known, it makes you feel uncomfortable because it's different, and different means scary? Is it because that conformity gives you so much dopamine that as soon as that conformity is broken, you're suffering?
I'm asking a serious question. If you're neurotypical and you're listening to this, please, if you have answers, reach out to me, because I've been wondering. I've been trying to figure this out.
So my point is that one method—one modality of body language is not superior to another. Likewise, one modality of facial expressions is not superior to another.
Autistic people would feel completely at home in a completely silent room where nobody's talking. We don't feel a need to constantly fill every void with words; instead, we're in the present. And I think that's—I think that's beautiful. I think that's just really beautiful that we can all sit there together and just from being in the same room as the other person you feel happier. You don't even need to say a word, you don't need to say a thing, because you're happy in your own space and you're happy with other people as well. You don't need other people to return that external validation for you to feel whole as a human being.
And so what a lot of autistic people fall trapped to: they never get that positive reinforcement from socializing when they're young, and so then they think that socializing means pain because they feel rejected from such an early age. Someone called them socially awkward once, and then they got trapped in that external validation cycle of thinking, "Oh, I guess I'm socially awkward," then they adopt the label for themselves, and then they continue to limit themselves from the future label! So then the next time there's a chance where they could socialize or gain some more social skills, they actually choose not to because the risk-to-reward isn't there.
Autistic people get less dopamine from specific types of social interactions, including eye contact and surface-level conversations. The quickest way that you can bore me is through small talk. If I have to talk about the weather, I just can't—like it's—it's painful. It's almost painful to talk about the weather past maybe a second of whether you need an umbrella for it raining or not.
That's the question, isn't it?
Why do you think that your modality of body language is superior?
Why do you think that your modality for facial processing is superior?
Why do you think that your modality for mirror neurons is superior?
Why does it make you feel so uncomfortable when someone is different? What is it?
And if you were in a room surrounded with autistic people who were flowing in an intellectually stimulating conversation, not making any eye contact, and going 47 layers deep in philosophy, you might feel uncomfortable right? Or not. But whether you feel uncomfortable or not, does that mean that suddenly you're socially awkward? I don't think so. I think that these labels reflect an interesting shift in our society. I think it's really interesting to consider all of this, because most of the time people that get labeled as socially awkward are simply deviating from the norm, and that deviation is what makes neurotypical people feel uncomfortable. That doesn't mean it's inferior; that doesn't mean it's superior either. It's just a different modality.
And if you miss a social cue—everyone has missed a social cue in their life. Everyone! Neurotypicals, autistics, ADHDers—everyone has made a social mistake at some point in their life. Do you think that that one social mistake is enough for you to be labeled as socially awkward for the rest of your life? Heck no, you don't! You don't have to listen to the labels that other people assign to you. You don't. You get to pick for yourself.
And the more that you feel empowered to walk into a group and to talk with people as if they are you—because they are, it's all you, it's all an extension of who you are, it's all a reflection for you to discover yourself—the more you can do that, the more comfortable you'll be in your own skin, and the less need you have to rely on these external labels.
And so I hope that after listening to this podcast you begin to reconsider:
Why do I desire conformity?
What is it that conformity brings that makes me feel comfortable?
What is it that I find triggering with people who do things different from me?
Do I find myself superior to other people because I do similar things as everyone else?
Do I believe that I am a superior person because I can fit in better than anyone else?
Honestly ask yourself: are you superior because you're able to pretend to be like everyone else? Are you? Is that really what you want? Do you really just want to be like everyone else and have absolutely no individuality? Do you just want to stifle that creative spirit that you were born with, that Divine creative essence that is just crying to come out, begging you to come out and express it? Do you really want to stifle that? Do you want to say, "You know, I could learn to play the piano, but I'm not going to because most people don't know the piano"? Do you say that to yourself? Like, I just—it's baffling to me, I don't understand.
And I'm—I'm not judging it. I want to make that clear: I don't think that the autistic way of presenting oneself is superior, I don't think that at all. But I don't think it's inferior either. And society does—society thinks that autistic people are inferior in social situations, so much that I am literally struggling to find research that actually considers: maybe it's not a deficiency, maybe it's just a different modality. I'm struggling to find research that will actually challenge this idea. Maybe autistic people are like people with a different operating system! Instead of judging us based on neurotypical standards, maybe you should judge us on autistic standards.
Before I knew I was autistic, I didn't understand why I couldn't do certain things. I didn't know about masking, I didn't know about any of that. And as soon as I found out—oh my god, my entire life changed. I realized, "Wow, I'm doing great! I'm doing amazing! I'm doing so great!"
A lot of autistic people get trapped in this—this cycle of never wanting to socialize ever again because the sensory issues combined with the labels combined with rejection sensitivity dysphoria combined with all of these things—there's millions of autistic people living in their own little trapped bubbles because they think socializing isn't even fun because of this misunderstanding. This misunderstanding of body language. And I think that's really sad.
You know, the fastest way to die is to start isolating yourself, seriously. It's so important to have a social support network, it seriously is. And neuroscience reflects this, health science reflects this. Look at anything: look at career, you need a social network; look at friends, you need a social network; look at health, look at heartbreak—like, literally look at everything, you need a social network!
So then why is it okay for society to decide whose body language is superior? Why is it up to society to decide whether or not we should strive for conformity? Maybe conforming isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Maybe instead of conformity, we can start to embrace this creative expression that lies dormant within us all.
There's this myth—or at least I think it's a myth, this is just a theory on my part for the record, I don't have any science to back this up yet—but there's this idea that autistic people are significantly more creative than others. I don't think that's actually true. I don't think that's true. I think this is what the difference is: from birth, we're not picking up on those social cues and that social feedback as much, and as a result from birth we are not stifling that creative spirit. We're using it. We use it from day one, and we use it, and that circuit expands in the brain! Because everything that you do in your brain—every—everything that you think about, when you think about something, it expands. When you think about something, it expands. When you use a part of your brain, it expands, literally like little electrical impulses shooting from one part of the brain to the other. You build more connections.
And autistic people have significantly more local brain connections than neurotypicals—significantly more! Yes, we have less global communication, but we have significantly more local communication. And that means autistic people can be geniuses. We're natural-born specialists. And I don't think that's superior or inferior to any other kind of modality. I think knowledge of that, whether you're neurotypical or autistic, knowledge of the way that your brain works is an incredible strength.
The difference is that autistic people, we're not stifling our self-expression—not mentally anyway. Maybe from a body language perspective we have to stifle a lot just to fit in and survive in this society—that's what masking is. But from a mental and emotional standpoint, these quote "restricted interests" (even the word "restricted interest" sounds like a deficiency—we should call it passion, because that's what autistic people are great at! We're passionate. We're passionate about so many things, we're passionate when we have a topic that we're interested in, we just keep going and going and going and going, far past the capacity and capabilities of neurotypical people). And this is probably what is so uncomfortable for neurotypicals to hear, because most people are afraid of going past that level of thought. Most people have a cliff where if you think about something past a certain point, it begins to feel uncomfortable.
So I hope that after listening to this you've gained a better perspective and understanding for what social awkwardness is, and how can we redefine it instead of just saying everyone who's not like me is automatically socially awkward. Maybe we can redefine this. Maybe we can redefine this and say, "Hey, there's different modalities, and that's okay. There's different modalities, and that's something that should be celebrated, that's something amazing!"
How boring would it be to live in a world where everyone was the same? Do you want everyone on earth to be exactly like you? Serious question. Like, that would be—that would be awful. I mean, it's good to love yourself and everything, but if you think about it, how boring would that be if everyone is exactly like you? You'd be stuck doing the same things every day, and there would be no variety, and no way to learn, because you couldn't learn—you would just be doing the same things, and everyone on earth would have the exact same flaws, and that would be total stagnation! It wouldn't be good for growth, for you, for society.
So we need variety. We need this—we need this variety of different body language, we need this variety of different facial processing, we need this variety of mirror neurons, we need this variety for growth and for expansion. We need this variety to break out of this conformity that this society has created that is holding the world in stagnation. You got to break out of it! I know that conformity feels comfortable, I know—I know it brings you joy, I know. But you got to find some way to break out of it, because that's not where growth happens. That's just not where growth happens. If you do the same thing every single day, how can you expect a different result?
So maybe we should redefine what it means to be socially awkward. And if we did—if we do define socially awkward as having autistic tendencies, then maybe that's not such a bad thing. But I think we can find a definition that's more suitable. I think as a society we can do better. I think that by embracing and recognizing the beautiful variety that life has to offer, we'll become more and more connected with that dormant creative spirit that is within us.