Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers

by John Elder Robison

  Yet I also feared them, especially my father when he flew into drunken rages. I felt many things about my parents at different times, and I guess the sum total was what you call love. For the most part, my relationship with them just rolled and bumped along. They didn’t do much to elicit strong positive feelings in me, whereas they did quite a bit to elicit rage and resentment. Was that love, too?

  The conclusion was inescapable: Many aspects of love just are not very nice. With that perspective, it’s no surprise I wasn’t quick to say, “I love you.”

  The inability to read the unspoken signals from other people added up to a childhood filled with anxiety. I thought about that when writing this chapter. Was my experience typical of kids with Asperger’s?

  My first thought was, All kids with Asperger’s must be the same way I was. Luckily, a moment later, I realized that that was just the old problem of not being able to put myself in others’ shoes. I reminded myself that I am not the center of the universe. Note to self: Other kids have had different thoughts.

  There are some Aspergian kids whose mirror neurons work better than mine. They may have found real comfort with their parents. There are also kids who grew up in safe environments, who never knew the constant anxiety of an alcoholic family. Some unlucky kids grew up in even more violent or dangerous homes than I did, where there was no safe place, no matter where they looked. Asperger’s or not, some grew up more anxious than I, others less. Like almost everything else in the world of mental health, there’s a continuum. But I think it’s fair to say that many Aspergian kids share my anxiety to varying degrees, and it all started with those broken mirror neurons.

  When you can’t read the unspoken messages of love, all you have to go on are words and observed behaviors. If my life is a guide, those two ways of communicating messages can be sharply at odds with each other, something that paints a disturbing and troubling picture to an Aspergian kid.

  Emotional Triggers

  What does it mean when someone leans forward with his arms crossed on his chest? Is he happy? Sad? Aggressive? Reassuring? As you already know, I could never tell. Sometimes that ignorance got me into a lot of trouble.

  I can still remember breaking a fancy vase that belonged to one of my mother’s friends, back when I was four years old. I picked it up because it was pretty and I was curious. I turned it over to see the bottom, and when I did, the top fell right off and shattered on the floor.

  Why did that happen? Pretty things aren’t supposed to fall apart when you turn them over! I was embarrassed, and scared, and annoyed because the stupid thing broke, and I’d been holding it in my hand. But most of all, I knew I was in trouble. Even at age four, I knew what would happen. I had broken something nice, and a grown-up would yell at me. I’d been through that before. But this time, the grown-ups surprised me. My mother’s friend marched up to me, leaned forward, and said, “That’s just great! Look what you’ve done!” She even had a funny-looking smile on her face.

  I pondered her words, “That’s just great!” I couldn’t imagine why breaking the vase would be great, but she was a grown-up and I was just a kid. What did I know? I was just really relieved I wasn’t in trouble. I was totally oblivious to her sarcastic tone of voice, or her hostile face, or her angry walk. The whole concept of a sarcastic smile was way over my head. So I did the only thing that made sense with the information I had. I scrunched up my best smiley face and said, “I’m glad you liked it. I can do it again if you want!”

  That was totally the wrong thing to say. She went completely wild, berserk, even, and her hostile intent became unmistakable, even to me. I had to hide to survive.

  As an adult, I have the same blindness to sarcastic tone, body language, and expression, but I’ve concealed it beneath an overlay of life experience. I now know that there is no conceivable reason that I’d be praised for breaking her vase. Today my life experience would tell me that her words were not telling the real story, and I’d be able to respond in a more “normal” way. My first thought would still be, Who’d have thought the stupid thing would fall apart when I picked it up! But now I know enough not to say that, even though it’s true. Today, I understand that the vase may indeed have had a design defect, but it was my picking it up that tipped the balance. So the only socially acceptable response is to apologize, and I do.

  Actually, thanks to life experience, I’d also recognize her response for what it really was—snotty and nasty. That would diminish my desire to apologize, but I’d probably do it anyway because of the little bit I know about manners. According to Emily Post, when you break someone else’s stuff, you apologize even if the stuff was poorly made and just waiting to fall apart.

  I’ve learned a lot about reading nonverbal communication since growing up, too. I’d combine that with my knowledge of what it means to break other people’s stuff and their spoken words to conclude … sarcasm. When I was growing up, I heard that word, and I thought I knew what it meant, but I never recognized sarcasm when I heard it or saw it expressed by other people.

  When two people talk, their interaction takes place at several levels. Most of the “conversation” is not even audible. The messages between two people are sent through subtle changes of posture, facial expressions, and gestures. Those unspoken signals can carry almost all of the emotional content of a conversation. They are what set the feelings—warm, anxious, angry, or happy. But until recently, I had no idea there was anything to a conversation but the words themselves.

  It’s like I am missing half of the conversation, and I always have been. The left side of my brain is running full speed, analyzing the words I am hearing. I don’t have any impairment at all in my ability to make sense of people’s speech. It’s the other side where I have problems. While the left side of my brain is analyzing the language, the right side is supposed to be listening to the speech the way you’d listen to a song. My right brain hears the tone, the cadence, and the melody, but it doesn’t “read” those signs or discern what my partner meant by sending them.

  As a kid, I sensed that the emotional content of a conversation was expressed by people’s faces, bodies, and tones and that I was pretty weak at interpreting all that. In school, we heard about reading body language, and I just assumed other kids were like me. Looking back, I know that I was different. Nypical kids picked up lots of things I missed.

  Now that I’m aware of my natural weakness, it’s just one more problem to be solved. By careful study I’ve learned enough to get by. I may not get it right every time, but I’m proud to say I “get it” more often every day.

  Luckily, blindness to other people’s unspoken conversations can be compensated for. That’s because many, many people—not just Aspergians—suffer from this blindness to some degree. There are plenty of good books on reading body language and on nonverbal communication. I’ve described a few of them in the appendix (see “Books” under “For Further Study”).

  Reading about and studying body language and expression have been a big help. But there’s still a gap between me and many nypicals because our responses are often very different even when we both understand the same message. An angry person looks at them, and they get angry, too. It’s a gut thing, instinctive. An angry person looks at me, and I say to myself, Hmmmmmm, he looks angry. It’s more of an intellectual process for me. I get the message, but it doesn’t necessarily produce a response in me as it would in a nypical. Still, I’m light-years ahead of where I was before, simply because today I continually work to “get it.” Thanks to that, I’ve actually minimized my disability well enough that few people pick up on it at all.

  Yet it still hurts when people notice my different behavior, because it tends to happen in a critical context. “You’re not paying any attention to me” and “You don’t even care” are two refrains I’ve heard all too often. Even today it just crushes me to hear words like that, because they show the huge gap between the feelings inside of me and how the outside world perceives me. I can be
crying for someone inside, and he or she thinks I’m laughing or indifferent. Can my expressions and behavior really be that far from the norm?

  From people’s reactions to me, I can tell that almost every time someone around me gets a small cut or scrape, I fail to show the proper sympathy. Or when someone gives me something, I say “thank you” politely, but the “grateful smile” is missing.

  The worst thing is when I completely miss something because I’m preoccupied and my senses—such as they are—are almost turned off. That’s what happened recently when my friend Alan was jumping up and down with excitement, waiting to tell me about his new job, and I said in a flat voice, “Good. Have you got my car keys?” I looked up from my computer screen, and I thought I was paying attention and responding appropriately. After all, he had borrowed my car, and my first thought was to get my keys back. But the moment I saw his face, I realized I’d been totally inconsiderate, and I felt awful. I almost wished I could be a little kid again, before I trained myself to pick up people’s expressions. Back then, I was blissfully content, not knowing when I hurt other people’s feelings. Not knowing … those two simple words hold the key. I never fail to care when I know, but all too often, I don’t know when I need to care.

  In my own defense, I think my life experience shows that I feel things at least as deeply as anyone else. After all, people often say I’m exceptionally kind, sweet, and gentle. Those aren’t words you’d say about an inconsiderate beast. I know there is nothing at all wrong with my ability to feel joy or sadness or love or anger or anything else. All that’s missing is the trigger. With a nypical person, one look from someone else can set those emotions roiling. With me, it takes more than a glance. But once my emotions get going, they are as strong as anyone’s.

  Making and Keeping Friends

  In high school, I could recognize extremes of emotion. I knew enough to run if a guy came yelling and screaming at me with a baseball bat. But a girl with a subtle expression on her face … was she smiling at me? Laughing? Quizzical and curious? I had no idea. That led to a lot of awkward interactions and years of loneliness.

  I’ve worked to adapt as an adult, and though I still don’t read expressions well, I’m skilled enough that most people never know I am “socially blind” in that way. What I’m lacking with regards to the nypical gift of reading people instinctually, I compensate for with good observation skills and logical analysis. When I apply my observation, analysis, and past experience to reading people, the result is good enough to get by.

  My Aspergian way of seeing people has shaped how I act when I meet someone. It begins when the person approaches me. With people I know, the starting tone of our interaction depends on how our previous interaction ended, and our shared history. If there was tension when we parted last, I’ll approach with caution. If we parted on a happy note, I prepare to start off the same way. When I see you walking toward me, I scan my memory banks to recall what we were talking about, and what the mood was the last time we were together. That’s what tells me to act open and friendly, or cautious and reserved. I start out that way, and see if there’s a match with your behavior. Most of the time, there is.

  There are times, though, when matching the previous mood doesn’t work. For example, if we were energized the last time we saw each other, I might say, “Great, you’re here! Let’s get going!” Previous experience has told me that is the correct behavior with which to continue our dialogue, and you should respond in kind. But let’s say you don’t. You say, “Dude, back off! I’m having a bad day!” When I was younger, I’d have blamed myself for that failure. Today, if there’s a mismatch between us, I know enough to ask if something has changed in the other person’s life. I’ll just say, “What’s wrong?”

  Sometimes I hear how my failings distressed the other person, but more often I hear a tale of woe that has nothing to do with me at all. “I got an F in statistics and I’m really bummed and my parents are going to be really upset.…”

  At that, I’m relieved, and I might even smile. I had trouble with exchanges like that as a kid because other people thought my smile was meant as an insult. They assumed I was taking pleasure in their misfortune, and that made them angry. “You’re glad I got an F! Wait till it happens to you, and I’ll laugh, too!” It’s like I disrespected the person, when I really meant nothing of the sort.

  Today I try to quickly set things right. “No, man, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m sorry you got an F. What I’m smiling about is that you’re not mad at me. I was happy to see you, and you looked so angry, I thought I’d done something really bad.”

  Anyone can understand that explanation. It’s obvious once I say it, but before I do, nypicals take my expression the wrong way. It’s ironic—I fail to understand the nonverbal cues of nypicals, and they fail to read signals from me. It’s as if we are speaking two different languages. The result: a two-way street of failed communication. (It’s nice to know the failures aren’t all mine.) Naturally, I relate better to familiar people. They know and value me enough to give me a break when there’s a bump in the conversational flow.

  I am at my greatest disadvantage when meeting strangers, because with them I don’t have any memories to work from. Plus, I can’t generalize behaviors or even expressions from one person to another. I can’t look at a stranger’s face and think, She’s smiling just like Amy. When Amy smiles like that she’s happy, so this person is probably happy, too. Instead, I watch and evaluate, with a slightly anxious feeling. It’s as if I have to build a behavior database for every single person I meet in life. When I encounter someone for the first time, the slate is blank and I don’t know what to expect.

  New acquaintances also need experience with me, to get used to the way I act. Some people accept that I behave differently; others can’t. I always feel uncertain when I’m around people I don’t know, as I ask myself, Are they going to think I’m a jerk and reject me?

  People who become my friends develop an expectation for what I’ll notice or miss. After knowing me awhile, they figure out that I care about them even if I don’t smile or frown at their stories. They learn that I show caring in other ways, and that excuses my face’s failure to respond to their changing words and expressions. That’s really one of the root problems of autism: We care a lot, but all too often our caring is not triggered by the things nypicals respond to, and our caring may manifest itself in strange or unexpected ways. That can cause other people to think we are cold, aloof, or even sociopathic. That’s what people said about me for many years.

  When I was young my social failures led me to have low self-esteem, and I didn’t see any reason anyone would want to be my friend, unless he was also some kind of freak or reject. Today I know different. I know I have many likable traits, if only people take the time to discover them. That’s the trick—I have to act in ways that make people hang around long enough to see my good side. And the same is true for every other person on the spectrum. Social impairment does not equal unlikable, except in the most superficial sense.

  Like anyone, it cuts me when a friend I care about turns on me, but if someone I just met fades from the scene, I’ve learned not to be too troubled. In the first case, the friend’s abandonment of me is a rejection, and no matter what, that’s hurtful. But when a new acquaintance fails to stay connected, that’s not a rejection at all. Rejection implies previous acceptance, and when you don’t connect with a new person, that acceptance never happened. So it’s a simple failure to connect. I’ve learned that some people go together and others don’t, and it’s natural that some of the folks who meet me won’t “fit” well enough to connect. Now that I understand that, rejection from someone I don’t know is not much different from finding the wrong plug when you go to make a connection to your computer. It’s annoying, but you keep looking for the one that fits.

  Of course, I wish compatibility between two people were as obvious as matching up the cables on a computer. I worried about my own incompatibility a lot
when I was young, because I didn’t meet many people and I thought I might never make friends. Today, I know there are compatible friends and mates for anyone, if only we can find them. I sure wish I’d known that back in high school.

  There was a time when I saw relationships as all-or-nothing. I had a few close friends, and did not care one bit for the rest of humanity. Today I recognize that I can have degrees of friendship and connection with people, which widens my circle considerably. A nice person who’s a bit strange can still be an acquaintance, and I can still have enjoyable conversations with him. I may not share my innermost secrets, but that’s okay. I’ve learned that valuable insights can come from the most unexpected people and situations, and I benefit from greater openness.

  Presumably other people derive the same benefit, because the concept of limited friendship seems to work for many of us. There is a point, though, where I draw a line with new acquaintances. There are certain things people can say from which there is really no turning back.

  For example, “I think you’re trying to cheat me” or “I think you’re lying” is a relationship killer for me. Where do you go when someone says that? If a person believes I cannot be trusted, there is no basis for any further exchange.

  I once interpreted statements like that as a response to my gaze or my way of speaking. With a sense of shame I assumed that my own behavior had precipitated that reaction, so it was somehow my fault. Now that I’m older, I understand nasty phrases like that are more often a commentary on the speaker. Life experience has taught me that people who are quick to say, “You’re trying to cheat me” are most often cheats themselves. As one of my teachers said, it takes one to know one.

  Today, it does not bother me to hear such remarks, because they identify the speaker as a person I do not wish to be associated with. For me, that marks the end, and I move on.