Last week my husband and I started The National Autistic
Society Early Bird Plus programme. It’s a 10 week course designed to educate
parents of children diagnosed on the spectrum so that they can understand
Autism and their children better. Of course we are taking this course because
our six year old son is Autistic, but my husband came out of the class saying
that he had found it more helpful in understanding me. The one thing that we
both picked up on that helped to explain the way my brain works is
mind-blindness. I was familiar with the concept before, but this is the first
time I have heard its name.
Mind-blindness is the inability to understand that other
people think and feel differently to the way we do, and that people don’t
automatically know what is going on inside your head. This can cause a number
of problems when it comes to interacting with other people and I think that it’s
been a very important factor in the breakdown of many of my friendships over
the years.
If I’m upset about something, whether I’m with my friends or
not, I always expect them to know that I’m upset and I then become frustrated
and angry with them when they don’t rush to support me. It could be that I
haven’t seen or spoken to them for a week, that I haven’t told them that I have
a problem, and that they have no way of knowing I need them at all – but I will
still not understand why they aren’t calling me or coming to see me. Time and
again I have been deeply hurt by a friends apparent neglect, when in fact they
don’t have a chance to start with, because of course they’re not mind readers.
For the same reason I know that relationships that I thought
were still strong have died while I wasn’t paying attention. Because I was
still thinking about my friend, still caring about them, still nosing about
their lives on Facebook, I still felt that the friendship was strong – but without
making actual contact how were they to know I still cared? Unfortunately I have
a specific problem with initiating contact with anyone, even my closest
friends. I am much more likely to wait for a text, a phone call, an invitation,
than I am to get in touch with them first. Eventually people must think that I have
lost interest in them and no longer want to be friends. The result is that one
day I turn around and realise that people I count as my closest friends aren’t
even my friends at all anymore.
The inability to understand or accept that other people think
differently to the way you do and can’t immediately understand what you want
from them can also cause a lot of frustration. I have seen it in my son who
will never tell you what he wants to do, but rather insists on asking people to
tell him what he wants to do, and then becomes frustrated when they don’t know.
Often he will say ‘Look inside my head and tell me.’ My husband has pointed out
that I do much the same thing when I ask him to choose what we are to watch on
TV, but then will become irritated at everything he picks until he picks the
programme I want. If, god forbid, he settles on something that wasn’t my first
choice, it’s likely to end up in me storming out of the room and giving up on
an evening together entirely – because I’m angry with him for not automatically
knowing what I want! For some reason I am unable to express what I want, I need
him to arrive at the conclusion by himself.
It’s the same when I’ve arranged to do something with a
friend and they ask me ‘what do you want to do.’ No one should ever ask me
this, because the answer will always be ‘I don’t mind, you tell me.’ I usually
do mind, but I will never under any circumstances make that decision unless I
am with family.
Conversations can also be extremely frustrating, because the
chances are I’ve already run over in my mind how I expect a given conversation
to go. I’ve already played out both parts in my head, heard specific responses
to what I’ve said based on how I think people should react. When I then carry
out the actual conversation and the person I’m talking to reacts in their own
way, and not the way I expected them to, I am extremely unsatisfied with the
conversation and may even try to repeat it in the hope that this time I will
get the response I’m looking for. I drive my husband mad with repeating the
same thing again and again until he gives me the ‘right’ answer.
I think that mind-blindness is perhaps one of the leading
factors in the feeling of isolation that I carry around with me constantly,
because it makes it extremely difficult for me to understand other people and
the way their minds work, and causes confusion, disappointment and frustration
when they don’t understand me the way I expect them to. I am hoping that with
my new understanding of this particular problem I can work on overcoming it,
but I also know that although I have a voice that is extremely verbal and often
doesn’t stop talking, I have another voice that is locked away inside my head
talking away to an imaginary audience and there are some things that most people
take for granted that I can’t do any more than I can fly.
