Do you find it easier to communicate with autistic/neurodivergent people, or neurotypicals?
Do you find it easier to communicate with autistic/neurodivergent people, or neurotypicals?
I primarily ask this, because for a large part of my life, I have found it hard to build meaningful friendships with neurotypicals. I don't know any autistic people in real life, but wonder if it would be easier for me to build friendships with them?
Or maybe this has more to do with general struggles of being autistic, rather than how alike I am to others. However, I always find neurotypicals don't really go deep in conversation, but they enjoy small talk. Yet, I'm the complete opposite.
What has been your experience?
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As a support provider (think well-trained best friend), I have been working with people with typical and divergent styles for a long time, and have developed friendships at many different levels and in many different ways with the people I work with. We have the luxury of spending significant amounts of time together over several years. I get the chance to really KNOW the people I work with. If there is one thing I wish everyone, typical or not, understood, is that EVERYONE has social anxiety of some sort, to some degree. They have different ways to navigate that anxiety, with different results. I find that the key to being with other people is to be able to recognize their anxiety adaptive strategies, and to be able to tell, in the moment, how they are feeling, as evidence by their non verbals. For what it's worth, I hope anyone here can take some of what I have said and put it to use to develop success in their own social endeavors, or simply navigating everyday life. It is a life-time work to learn, and there is always something more to add to the body of one's personal knowledge and understanding, but the key point of understanding that anxiety is an overriding and underlying process that is ALWAYS present in social interactions can be a helpful starting point. This is a subject that is dear to me, so if anyone has any interest in talking more about this, please respond! 🙂
Interesting getting a different perspective. I guess as humans we aren't all so different. Maybe we are in neurotypes, but we may all be more similar than I expected.