Are you still lonely?
I want to talk to you about something that might be difficult to hear, and this might be controversial, but I think it needs to be said.
There’s a pattern I see happening with adult-identified Autistics that’s keeping them trapped in cycles of loneliness and social isolation, and we’re not talking about it honestly enough.
So many of us spent our entire lives being misunderstood, and then we finally figure out we’re Autistic, there’s finally an explanation, a reason why, there’s relief that it’s not just me, it’s not that I’m broken, but that I communicate differently, because I’m Autistic. And there’s this hope that this will be the key to unlock better relationships, and finally finding community. But sometimes, they’re feeling more isolated than ever.
They try to connect with other Autistics and neurodivergents, and there are some positive aspects of it, a sense of, I’m not alone, I’m not the only one, finally feeling understood, at least to some extent. And if they’re lucky, they make friends, or notice that most of the people in their lives that have stuck around are also likely neurodivergent, which suddenly makes sense, but they often find that even other neurodivergents are prickly to be around long-term, some of those new friendships, which started out so hopeful, don’t last.
And reinforces those old messages that you’re really not OK to be around. That it really is you after all.
And even with this new understanding, and a newfound acceptance of your Autistic communication style, being around people is hard, and painful, and triggering, and why can’t these people, of all people, better understand what you need? And they do, and they don’t, at the same time, and at different times.
And sometimes there’s even an unfortunate sort of reverse backlash, where you unmask in an Autistic group or community, or on socials, and someone else has a trauma reaction, and says that you need to phrase things better, and be more understanding of their trauma, and it feels like you’re being told you need to mask even by the Autistic community. But because you thought you should be able to unmask here, it feels even worse, it’s even more hurtful. And reinforces those old messages that you’re really not OK to be around. That it really is you after all.
Is any of this familiar?
What I want to talk about is why this is going on.
This is a pattern that is rooted in trauma responses that have become so automatic, so “normal,” that we’ve stopped recognizing them for what they are.
And here’s the hard truth: the desire to accept ourselves and our Autistic communication style, rather than blaming ourselves for socializing badly, can sometimes disguise that there is something for us to work on.
We can become so committed to the idea that there was nothing wrong with us, and it’s all because of what was done to us, that we’re not broken or wrong, that it can feel very all-or-nothing. If we’re not broken, then there’s no part of it that I need to work on.
The trauma response pattern
Let me paint you a picture. Someone finally figures out in adulthood that they’re Autistic, after decades of feeling like they don’t fit anywhere. They’ve spent their whole life being misunderstood, having their needs dismissed, being told they’re “too sensitive” or “too much.” Their nervous system has been in constant survival mode.
Now they know why social interactions felt like navigating a minefield. But they’re still hypervigilant. Every social interaction is still loaded with trauma responses from years of being misunderstood.
Figuring out the why doesn’t automatically undo decades of negative self-talk, of hypervigilance, defense mechanisms, and trauma responses. In fact, it can ironically get more intense after figuring out the why.
Every social interaction is still loaded with trauma responses from years of being misunderstood.
For example, someone says something as seemingly simple and innocent as, “how are you?” and you feel this intense, immediate need to scream, “how the hell should I know, I’m Autistic, I don’t know what’s going on in my body, and I hate your stupid neurotypical small talk, and why can’t you just say what you mean, do you really want to know how I am, or is that just a way to say hello?! How am I supposed to know?!” You probably don’t actually scream all that, but something like that is flooding your nervous system—and there’s no firewall—and you’re doing massive mental gymnastics just to process what was actually meant in order to give a reasonable answer, that doesn’t come across as “too much,” while trying to shield yourself from everything that’s coming up. And this is exhausting.
And when you’re tired or burnt out, this intensity becomes uncontrollable. You might get angry or confrontational over anything. The way something is phrased. The nuances of a word. A potential slight difference in intention. The thing that you think that they’re implying.
Have you had a conversation like this:
“When you used the word this way, it made me think this.”
“No, I didn’t mean that at all.”
“But now I have that in my head, and I can’t get rid of it, why did you say it like that? Now I’m going to be ruminating about that for days.”
Even when you’re essentially in agreement with the other person, it really doesn’t feel like it at all. You might end up arguing over hair shades of meaning or connotations.
Or if someone gives you praise for something you did well, or mentions your burnout, or asks what you’ve been up to lately, it might feel like they’re tying what you did, or the implications of what you didn’t do, to your worth, or reinforcing capitalist ideals of productivity. And you want to say, “fuck you.”
These are all trauma responses.
Again, is this at all familiar?
What this looks like
Here’s the hard truth: this trauma response pattern is what makes such people exhausting to be around, even for other neurodivergent people.
It’s not our Autistic communication style, which, minus the trauma history, is perfectly fine. It’s the trauma pattern.
Yes, we have a tendency to info dump, but it’s the trauma pattern that ends up monologuing for hours about “everything is going to shit and I can prove it to you.” Or masking so hard they’ve gone completely silent. It’s all-or-nothing.
They require massive amounts of accommodation. They need people to speak in very specific ways, avoid certain words, predict their triggers. They’ve essentially made themselves socially high-maintenance while simultaneously being hypersensitive to any feedback about it.
And because they’re also trying to accept themselves and their Autistic communication style, it gets disguised as, “this is just who I am, you need to accept me the way I am, or I can’t be around you.” Or “If you can’t take all of me, unmasked, unfiltered, you’re not a safe person.” Or, “Nope, I’m not taking that, I don’t need to be friends with this person. I’m done putting up with any shit from anyone.” Or, “I’m not going to change to suit other people or people’s preferences. If you don’t like me, I’m just going to move on to the next person.”
And then they wonder why even other Autistics seem to drift away from them.
Even when they think they’re being authentic, it’s not the kind of authenticity that leads to connection and healthy relationships. It’s authenticity bathed in trauma. Not the authenticity of a healed nervous system.
Their impossible social standards
Let’s be honest about what’s happening here: this is holding people to an impossible standard, of knowing and predicting how you might interpret every possible thing that they might say, and then getting upset, or triggered, or depressed when something goes wrong—and it will, because this is an impossible standard—and then feeling misunderstood.
But of course you’re misunderstood. Because it’s impossible to understand everyone’s particular traumatized lens, through which they see the world.
Do you even understand, all the time, what you’re going to react to, or why you react to it the way you do? How is it possible for everyone else to always say the right thing? To always be gentle with you? To always understand. They are whole people with their own histories and triggers, and stresses and burnout.
And the Venn diagram of your trauma reactions and their trauma reactions is going to have some overlap. With some people it’s going to be a lot of overlap.
And some people react to this impossible situation by pulling away, avoiding social interactions as too much work, and not worth it, blaming themselves for being fundamentally broken (you’re not, it’s trauma), or blaming others for everything, but either way, being and feeling more isolated.
And some people respond by demanding that everyone else accommodate them. They place an enormous amount of emotional labor on everyone around them, so that people are walking on eggshells, trying not to say the wrong thing, trying not to trigger them.
The avoidance that follows
This creates a predictable pattern: the trauma responses make social interaction difficult, which makes them harder to be around, which makes social interaction even more stressful, which burns through their energy faster, until they just don’t have any energy left.
That’s when the all-or-nothing thinking intensifies. Social avoidance becomes the solution because it feels easier, or maybe it’s the only thing they feel capable of when they’re this depleted.
Even in Autistic and neurodivergent spaces, they find themselves struggling. They’re looking for curious, wonderful neurospicy minds who will understand and accommodate their specific needs. But these people mostly also have a complex trauma history with other people, and so the Venn diagram is going to have some overlaps. There are going to be moments of someone saying the wrong thing and someone getting hurt, when the pattern is this entrenched.
The hard truth
Here’s what we’re not saying in Autistic spaces: sometimes these trauma responses are keeping us isolated, not just because the world is cruel to Autistics—though it often is, and that’s what created the trauma responses in the first place—but because people’s unprocessed trauma has made them genuinely difficult to connect with, even for other Autistics and neurodivergents.
And what I see in many of my clients, and what I did myself for many years, is to blame it on other people not understanding us, and on bad neurotypical communication styles. And there are plenty of unhealthy neurotypical communication dynamics that I hate and are genuinely a problem. But it’s not all-or-nothing. Some of what’s going on is unhealthy communication, but some of what’s going on is our own defense mechanisms getting in the way of making connections, even when real connection could happen.
Yes, you spent decades being misunderstood. Yes, your needs were dismissed and invalidated. Yes, you learned that social interactions were dangerous. Yes, you learned to mask, or be “on,” or people please, or became ultra sensitive to any perceived rejection, or to think through every possible way that someone might take what you’re saying, and to hyper-explain to try to avoid all of those, or to blame yourself when miscommunications happened, or to avoid uncomfortable situations, and there were so many uncomfortable situations. Your nervous system was trying to protect you.
But those same protective responses are working overtime, and they’re exhausting you. And not just you, they’re exhausting everyone around you, including the Autistic community you thought would finally accept you.
This isn’t about blame. This isn’t about shame. This is about recognizing what’s really going on. This is a pattern that can change. But only if you’re willing to look at it honestly.
I’ve seen this cycle up close, I’ve lived it myself, and I’ve watched it play out countless times in my clients. And here’s what I know: it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Breaking the pattern: an analogy
But breaking this pattern requires acknowledging something uncomfortable: what happened to us wasn’t our fault, but the people who are responsible aren’t going to be the solution.
Here’s an analogy. (FYI, trigger warning about a hypothetical automobile accident.)
Say you get hit by a car, through absolutely no fault of your own; the car swerved onto the sidewalk where you were walking, where it had no business being, and it breaks your leg. It’s the driver’s fault, but you’re the one with the broken leg. You’re the one who has to do the work to heal.
No matter how the driver reacts, no matter whether they are sorry, or don’t take any responsibility for it, you have to do the work of healing.
It’s your bones that need to knit together again.
Maybe they’re an asshole about it. They blame it on the person who distracted them, and won’t take any responsibility for it. That sucks, and you might be angry or resentful or hate them. But that’s not going to change the fact that you have a broken leg and you have to go through the recovery process.
Maybe the driver is actually really, really sorry. But no matter how much they apologize, how terrible they feel, even if they pay for all of your medical expenses, they bring you meals in bed until you’re fully healed—I’m taking this to the extreme to make a point—they drive you to doctors appointments, pay you a huge lump sum for your pain and suffering. You’re still the one who has to do the healing.
It’s your bones that need to knit together again. You’re the one who has to do the physical therapy exercises. It’s up to you to strengthen the tender muscles again. You can get help along the way, you don’t have to do it alone, but no one can do the healing work for you. Not the driver, not the physical therapists, not the doctors. No matter how sorry the driver is, no matter how many people help, no matter how many resources they provide, no matter how supportive they are in your healing process, they can’t do the healing itself for you.
Either way, whether they take responsibility and do what they can to help, or whether they never acknowledge their part in it at all, the healing work is still up to you.
This is how nature works
That might suck, it’s their fault, why should you have to do all that work, but that’s how all of nature works.
(FYI, trigger warning for natural disasters.)
An avalanche or flood or earthquake can change the entire landscape in a matter of minutes. A lightning strike can fell a tree that’s been around for a thousand years. A hungry fox can change a rabbit’s life forever in an instant. There’s no cruelty in these things. They’re not evil. As in, there isn’t malicious intent behind them. The earthquake isn’t mad at the landscape. The fox doesn’t hate the rabbit.
But there are consequences. And they’re irreversible. As in, they can’t go back to the way things were before the change. And our lives are full of these moments, where we can’t go back to the way it was before the change. And we have to deal with what it is now. The damage can’t be undone, but it can be healed.
The damage can be healed
The damage can’t be undone, but it can be healed. What do I mean by “healed?”
I mean that we can come to a new normal where the trauma is not constantly raising our defenses or getting triggered, where it’s not controlling our actions and decision-making. Where it’s an integrated part of our past, and it has affected us, it has shaped who we’ve become, and may influence the path that we choose for ourselves, but it’s not controlling every thought and word and decision anymore. For example, what I’ve been through has directly influenced the work that I do now, but I’m not being constantly triggered anymore.
Does that distinction make sense?
It took me several years, of both therapy and processing my Autistic identity, to heal enough of my old wounds from complex relationship trauma, that I was ready to start socializing a little bit more again, and with new people, where I started having different outcomes. Better outcomes. Enough that I started believing that it really could be different. That those old trauma responses and defense mechanisms weren’t as needed anymore. That I could unmask and be safe. That some people liked the unmasked version of me. And to be genuinely OK when people didn’t. A lot of that was working on me-stuff. Working on my issues.
It took a long time for those trauma responses to calm down, but they did calm, and melt away, as they saw that I had new skills to be able to deal with difficult situations when they came up. Which of course they did. That’s always going to happen when people interact. There’s no such thing as a “completely safe person” who is never going to ever say the wrong thing. But I could deal with it better than I ever had before.
And I was getting a lot better at telling when these were the minor misunderstandings of two people interacting, but this person is worth repairing the relationship for, and investing in, and when these were the red flags of someone who is not going to be safe around, and I should cut my losses now and get out.
I was dealing with these issues in healthier ways. Not the old automatic defensive ways. Or, not nearly as much. I don’t want to pretend like all of that is gone and that I’m some kind of saint or relationship expert now. That’s far from the truth. But it’s sooo much better now.
Is this making sense?
The pattern, in review
What I’m trying to do here is differentiate a few different things. Here’s a concise version of the pattern that I’m trying to elucidate.
You were hurt by unhealthy relationship dynamics, and neurotypical socialization that didn’t account for your Autistic communication style, and that created defense mechanisms and trauma responses and made you some version of avoidant or prickly or uncomfortable to be around, and finally recognizing that you’re Autistic and simply have different communication patterns and needs, and you’re not fundamentally broken or wrong, can be a huge relief, and way out of a lot of the shame and blame that others have put on you, and you’ve put on yourself, and that doesn’t mean that you have no responsibility whatsoever.
There’s still these trauma responses and defense mechanisms, and this is the part that you can do something about. In fact, it’s the part that no one else can do anything about, it’s completely on you to take responsibility for healing that part. I’m not saying to take responsibility for it happening, but to take responsibility for the healing.
Of course that’s uncomfortable to be around, that’s how trauma tries to keep you safe.
And until that happens, you’re going to continue having unfortunate social encounters, and that’s why unmasking can be so painful, because you’re not unmasking a calm or happy authentic autistic version of your, it’s showing the traumatized version to the world, and of course that’s uncomfortable to be around, that’s how trauma tries to keep you safe.
But it’s only after you’ve dealt with that trauma, and healed enough of those old wounds, that you can start learning healthier skills for dealing with difficult emotions, and healthier communication patterns, and embrace your authentic Autistic communication style, while also bridging the gap to neurotypical communication styles, and to get better at spotting which relationships in your life are worth keeping and investing in, and which are full of red flags and you need to get out of because they’re not going to get better with just you making an effort.
And after all that, that’s when unmasking is going to feel good, and be responded to positively by other people, in general. And then you’ll be around other people who can respond to you positively, because they will be able to take in the authentic, trauma-healed version of you, quirks, weirdness, special interests, directness, and all. And you’ll be embraced, and a pleasure to be around for those people.
And interacting with those people will feel good. And you’ll start to have more and more positive experiences with other people, which will overwrite those old stories, and it’ll be possible to believe that it can feel good, because you’ll have evidence that it can. You’ll be living it.
One tiny step at a time
This may seem like a lot and, honestly, it is, but you don’t have to do it all at once. This is a slow process, of tiny steps, one at a time, that add up over time. Right now, there is only the one tiny step in front of you.
And that one tiny step might be acknowledging that there is something for you to do. That part of what’s going on in all these unfortunate social encounters is within your realm of control. Taking responsibility for the healing process.
And I just want to reiterate that this doesn’t mean that there’s something “wrong with you”, you’re not “broken”, and you’re not “fundamentally flawed”. This is trauma. And the trauma has shaped who you are, but it isn’t fundamentally who you are. And it can be healed.
But I’m not putting it out there to be controversial. I’m not trying to stir anything up. I am saying this because I believe in what I’m saying.
OK, I’m curious what your response is to this. Please share in the comments, if you feel like it. Maybe you think I’m full of shit. Maybe you think I’m spewing ableist dogma. I don’t think I am, but I can understand that reaction. That’s a reaction that a trauma response could generate. And I’m expecting some pushback on this.
But I’m not putting it out there to be controversial. I’m not trying to stir anything up. I am saying this because I believe in what I’m saying. I honestly believe this is what’s going on. I’ve lived it myself, and I see it over and over in my clients. I’ve helped a lot of people through this, when they’re at a point in their healing journey that they’re ready to take the next steps, to try and work through some of those old wounds.
For some people, depending on the nature of their particular trauma history, it might take a lot of work with a really good therapist, preferably someone who’s neurodivergent or at least supportive. Especially if there’s what I might call big T trauma.
A lot of my clients have the kind of complex relationship trauma that I had, where it wasn’t a specific horror they lived through, or sustained, intense abuse, but the buildup of thousand small things over years and decades, that created a pattern of defensive reactions, like avoidance, or people pleasing, or lashing out, or ranting about the system, or demand avoidance, or rejection sensitivity, or defaulting to overwhelm. These are the kinds of things that I help people with on a regular basis.
They don’t always need therapy. Although if you have a good relationship with a therapist, that can be wonderfully helpful, it was life-changing for me. But it doesn’t have to be that. I’m saying this because I want to acknowledge that a lot of Autistics also have painful histories with therapists, and I’ve helped a lot of people without having to go into the original trauma itself. In fact, I’ve had a number of clients tell me that working with me was better than therapy. I appreciate the compliment, but I’m also sad about what kinds of therapists they were subjected to.
If you’re interested in more information about how I work with people on this, you’re welcome to check out this video about what I do, and there’s a link here to more about the kind of coaching that I do with adult-identified Autistics and AuDHDers, and some other neurodivergents and highly sensitive people who just like my style.
No pressure, this isn’t intended to be a sales pitch. It’s not about whether you work with me or not. This is intended to be a hopeful message, that it can get better. And that for many people, you don’t necessarily have to go deep into the original trauma itself to do that. But acknowledging where it came from is an important part of the process.
Okay, I think that’s enough for now. What do you think about any of this?
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Okay, I wish you a neurowonderful day.