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“It’s like Windows trying to communicate with Applemac”, said one of my clients, describing typical communication between ‘neurotypicals’ and autistic people. He went on to say ‘Both are valid operating systems but they can’t communicate without specialist software’. That’s where you come in – whether a counsellor, teacher, carer, parent or anyone living with or working with or caring for autistic children and adults. You need to be able to become that software and learn what the autistic person is likely to actually mean and intend – without ‘reading between the lines’ and inserting your own assumptions about what they meant. Most of us are pretty sloppy in our communications with others. We know our listener will ‘get’ what we mean, even where we omit quite a lot of information. We tend to use too many words, we ramble, we leave sentences unfinished, we are not precise in our choice of words, we use non-literal phrases and sayings. We operate in the knowledge that there is a mutual language system operating in our listener and so they will know what we mean despite all this sloppiness. We also assume that we have correctly understood what they are saying because they are also using the same system as us. But this is not the case when we are talking with autistic people. Autistic people understand each other perfectly well when they are communicating together – it is when a non-autistic person is speaking with an autistic person that miscommunication often occurs.
The difference in use and understanding of language directly reflects the differences in cognitive processing – thinking – that lie between the autistic and non-autistic person. Understanding differences in cognitive processing also allows us to understand and predict differences in behaviours. This is why we need to understand what those cognitive differences are if we are to be able to communicate effectively as well as understand and support the autistic individual. It is not a simplistic tactic of adopting a set of strategies – that will only help so far. What is needed is a fundamental grasp of the underlying cognitive processes. This may sound complicated but it really is not. Learning how autistic people are likely to be thinking and seeing things is really not rocket science, but it is essential if we are to make any progress in reducing the excessive levels of anxiety that autistic people experience day to day and if we are to become effective in supporting them in our roles as counsellors, teachers, carers, parents.