You Can Stay, But Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Autistic Experience of Joining Groups

The Housewarming Catastrophe

Recently, a friend moved into our neighborhood. We decided to put together a basket of goodies as a housewarming gift when she invited us to brunch one Sunday morning. We asked La Petite Fille to make a card for her. They are both artists. Our friend had given La Petite Fille some extra-special art paper — I don’t know anything more about it than that — but Ma Belle Femme thought it would be a nice gesture if she would make the friend a card using the paper.

It started getting towards the time to get ready to leave, and La Petite Fille was still in her pajamas. She was upset because she hadn’t made the card and now there was no time. The crisis felt very familiar to me, having procrastinated all of my life and often didn’t live up to expectations.

When prompted to get ready, though, La Petite Fille exclaimed that she hadn’t made the card and, therefore, didn’t deserve to go. She explained that she hadn’t earned her spot at the housewarming. Hearing her panic and self-recrimination got me to reflecting on our shared autism.

When we say that autistic people don’t have social awareness, it includes a wide range of social factors. Most frequently people think about social awkwardness on an individual scale. Saying the wrong thing, breaking the rules of turn-taking in conversation, not making eye contact, talking too loudly. A whole slew of social faux pas get thrown in here.

It occurred to me that it also includes this social lubricant that these small gestures make. The things that La Petite Fille was genuinely feeling in that moment and the emotions that I was projecting onto the moment from my own personal experience of having been there and done that seemed to me a part of autism that might not have received much notice. It isn’t the dyadic one-on-one social interactions but a kind of pre-social or peripheral social interaction.

In talking to La Petite Fille, it was clear that for her this failure to make the card was fairly catastrophic. At first, I had thought that it was a ploy to get out of going all together. I don’t blame her. Being autistic and going to a gab fest where topics were likely to change quickly and references to people and places unknown were likely to be frequent wouldn’t be too appealing. But, it wasn’t that. It was more the shame of not having provided an item that was expected of her. A kind of spiral became clear. First, comes the social failure to live up to expectations — Oh no! I didn’t make the card that everyone wanted me to make! Which is followed by a feeling of shame at having failed, but also not feeling welcomed to the group. The card acted as a entry ticket and became the sole reason her membership in the group was accepted. Having then failed to earn her position in the group, she then felt that she wouldn’t be welcome in the future. The shame of failure then becomes a shame that she carries forward and acts as a barrier for future inclusion. She’ll always be thinking that everyone else will remember her failure and more tolerate her presence than appreciate her contributions. She imagines that she is an emotional burden to the group.

Social Blindness

While it seems like that may be one reaction to one one social situation, it is actually two. First is the fairly straightforward, I didn’t know I was supposed to… mindblindness. It isn’t too far removed from the dyadic interaction. The other, though, is far more significant and far reaching. That is the blindness to these other social niceties that act as lubricant to our interactions. What are the events you bring a gift to? What makes an appropriate gift? When should you be fashionably late? How late is fashionably late? All of the things that most neuroconvergent people either navigate by instinct or when they screw it up, they don’t freak out about it because they have it in proper context.

As I reflected on La Petite Fille’s experience of all of this, I struggled to explain it, to find words for it. When I decided to write about it, I researched the words, terms, and phrases used to communicate these ideas, and much to my chagrin, I found that there had been a fair amount of work done in the area. Somehow in all of my reading in social psychology and autism, I had managed to miss it, and it’s implications. We’re going on a slight academic detour here, but bear with me because I think some of these frameworks are important for understanding how neuroconvergent folks have unconsciously developed the groups they belong to and how neurodivergent folks can be left out in the cold.

Social Rituals

In the sociology literature, there is a discussion of social ritual, which are used to help identify group members and promote social cohesion. But as the sociologist, Erving Goffman pointed out, we engage in interaction rituals everyday through small seemingly inconsequential interactions like saying good morning when we meet co-workers and making small talk at the water cooler. These rituals also serve to form community cohesion and group inclusion. Randall Collins took these ideas a step further and suggested that as we repeatedly meet at the company water cooler, we begin to form in-group identity with our shared experiences, stories, and understandings. He called this Interaction Ritual Chains. Groups will form their own idiosyncratic rituals, often informal, but important. Inside jokes if you will. Neuroconvergent folks do this without much of an awareness that it is happening in the least, but they know who belongs and who doesn’t.

Once these groups have formed, and they have unwritten rules. New members can join but only by jumping through a series of hoops to show that they belong, that they understand the unwritten rules. These rules could be called peripheral social rituals because the groups are so informal and many of the rules are universal with individual adaptations and ideosyncracies.

We’ve all experienced when we were hired for a new job. At first, you don’t know anyone. You learn people’s names and personalities. They learn yours. Who smokes. Who the vegetarians are. And who to avoid when and why — if you’re lucky.

As you gain further access to the group or your group membership solidifies, not only do you gain an understanding of what the inside jokes are, you get to start deciding what the inside jokes are. This is not always a smooth process. Violations of these peripheral social rituals, these chains of interactions can stall a member’s joining process. We’ve all seen what happens when someone gets to be too familiar too quickly with a group member perhaps they make a joke that is okay for an old-timer to make, but they don’t have the relationship with everyone else to withstand the strain. Leap-frogging some vital but unwritten social rules can scuttle the process. These ideas work great for neuroconvergent folks, but they leave some gaps for the neurodivergent.

The Tolerated Non-Member of the Group

Okay, now back to La Petite Fille. I think that by receiving the invitation to the housewarming, she had progressed from outsider joining to at least peripheral insider. Junior insider if you will. By not bringing her card, she had violated one of those vital yet unwritten social rules that could scuttle her insider status or her journey to being a more solid core group member either freezing her on the periphery or causing her to be dropped from the group.

Of course, all of this was nonsense in this case because there were four members of the group including her, two of them are her parents and one is a close family friend. Her membership in the group is solid. She was never in jeopardy of being dropped from the group. But, her experience gives us some important insights on how these ideas do apply to the neurodivergent.

Joining the Group as an Autistic Person

Joining a group is a much rougher road for autistic folks, especially informal social groups, cliques, and sub-groups. I remember being at work on a training day and finding out that “everyone” except me had gone to the coffee shop during a break. Somehow I missed the gang gathering en masse to go, so I ended up hanging out by myself somewhere while everyone else was off having fun and, more importantly, bonding. It was embarrassing, and for someone as paranoid as I can be, left me feeling like maybe I had been deliberately ditched.

Other forms of this failure to understand the social expectations of larger events included showing up empty-handed when being full-handed was the norm, like going to a housewarming without a gift. There is a form of social blindness at work here where you don’t understand the social rules involved in being included, rules that many people learned so early in their lives and so naturally that they may not even realize they are rules… until they are broken.

The Four Outcomes for the Tolerated Non-Member

So, there are four potential outcomes for neurodivergent folks trying to join groups that consist mainly of neuroconvergent folks — groups of neurodivergent folks are a whole different blog post. First, is the easy one. Congratulations! You made it! You are an accepted member of the group whose contributions and participation are truly important and honored. But then, there are the other possible outcomes in which you are some form of tolerated non-member. You’re a member of the group, but you never will make important contributions or participate in any meaningful way. In fact, there is usually real condescension directed at the tolerated non-member because when you’re different, you get what you deserve from the neuroconvergent. I figure it usually goes one of three ways.

Outcome One: Oblivious non-member

This is the neurodivergent person who doesn’t know there are hoops to jump through. They miss the peripheral social rituals. The neuroconvergent members see it, clock it, and condescend towards them — keeping the person in their place. The autistic person just doesn’t quite get why they feel vaguely uncomfortable.

Outcome Two: Catastrophic withdrawal

The neurodivergent person suddenly becomes aware of the ways they’ve violated the peripheral social rituals. They conclude that they cannot recover from it and withdraws from the group prematurely not giving themselves a chance. La Petite Fille fell into this category. It’s the I’m-going-to-eat-worms response. Potentially the most recoverable outcome if someone intervenes clearly and quickly.

Outcome Three: Chronic tolerated non-member

The person is fully aware of their status, but accepts the barely-disguised condescension because it’s the best available option.

What’s really needed here is for neuroconvergent folks to be aware of how difficult it can be for neurodivergent folks to navigate these social mine fields and lend a helping hand. You don’t even have to be clearly referencing their autism, you just have to give a clear invitation and some clear instructions. A “Hey, a bunch of us are going to the coffee shop during break if you want to join us.” Or, “Finding a gift to bring to the housewarming is such a pain, what are you bringing? Wanna go in on something?” When those things happened to me, I was always grateful for the direct instruction with the not so subtle because you’re a dumbass knife twist at the end.

Image Attribution

This image is from Wannapik and has a Creative Commons license.