Communication

“I have pictures in my head...” I wrote this phrase in response to a LinkedIn post about how difficult oral communication can be for autistic people. The author of the post noted that they often ramble when trying to explain things.

I totally relate. I have been told many times that I talk too much and have been seen as exuberant, excited, outgoing, even extraverted. It turns out, though, that I am none of those things. My talkativeness, rambling, and anxiety about not being understood were exhausting me. They were not a sign that I enjoyed talking to people but were, ironically, an indication of the challenges I face in oral communication.

The problem is that the pictures in my head are not easy to translate into words. They are like dreams. I wake up with a sense of what happened but the images quickly blur and I can’t describe them well enough to make sense.

Often I want to share the pictures in my brain. Inevitably one of two things happens: I try to describe them, which leads to a lot of rambling descriptions and a bored audience or I think so hard about how to portray them in words that I lose track of the conversation. Either way, the interaction between my mind and the neurotypical world makes communication a tricky exercise.

Sometimes someone will ask me what I’m thinking about. People who know me well know better than to ask such a question. It either results in a rambling unintelligible explanation or extreme frustration (on one or both sides). It’s easier just to say nothing. Smile and literally say, “oh, nothing.” That’s as good as masking gets for me.

Decades ago I took a university class called, “Introduction to Communication Disorders.” I don’t remember much but, at the very beginning, the lecturer said, “There are three things needed for communication to occur: a message, a sender, and a receiver. If there is a problem with any of those things, communication doesn’t work.” I’ve thought about that statement many times over the years and what it says to me is that people don’t have communication disorders, as such. Communication becomes disordered when there is a faulty connection between the sender and the receiver, or when the message is formatted in a way that either the sender or the receiver can’t process.

Just because I think in pictures that I can’t always describe doesn’t mean?I?have difficulty communicating. If I were able to draw the pictures or act them out and the person receiving the message could interpret them in a way that aligns with my intended meaning, there would be no problem.

For some reason, communication among humans has evolved to be primarily through words, mostly spoken. Movements and positions of the body and face supplement the message. Sometimes tones, pauses, and inflection also add meaning. It is assumed that, if both the speaker and the receiver are fluent in the same language, all aspects of the message are transmitted and received in a consistent manner. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Many?manythings can go wrong, starting with the fact that everyone has a different brain and a different way of processing and transmitting information, so even variations in personalities and mannerisms in?neurotypical?people can lead to miscommunication. Add to this, underlying trauma, wiring entrenched by families of origin or other past experiences and a simple message like, “Did you get cat food?” can end in a fight and a couple sleeping in separate beds for the night.

In this environment, autistic people and visual thinkers often feel as if we are speaking a foreign language. In the first place, the message isn’t formulated in words. It can be pictures, numbers, diagrams, shapes, or colors. It might be even less concrete, such as bodily sensations or emotions. Sometimes the message isn’t even clear to the sender. Yet there is almost nothing more frustrating than a feeling of urgency to deliver a message without the ability to translate it into an intelligible format.

Imagine travelling in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and no one speaks your language. Also imagine you can’t see or move your arms. You can hear, speak, and walk. You encounter someone who can do all of those things but they can’t speak or understand your language. How do you communicate? Perhaps there are some words or sounds in common between the two languages. That could prove helpful, except in cases where there are words in different languages that?sound?similar but have vastly different meanings. You have an image in your head of a message you’d like to convey. Perhaps it’s a matter of great urgency — you need to find a toilet,?now. You might try asking a question in your own language, while crossing your legs and jumping around, trying to act out a message that conveys your emergency but knowing your words aren’t being understood. If the other person is looking at your performance in wonder, consternation, or fear you are unaware because you can’t see them.

Rather than solve that conundrum, I am going to leave it for you, the reader, to work out for yourself. What would you do? How would you go about communicating your needs in such a situation? Imagine yourself in the shoes of each person in turn.

You have just completed an exercise in empathy — what it’s like to communicate with people whose brains work differently to yours and whose communication strengths do not match up with yours. The problems in communication between autistic and non-autistic people come down to a disconnect between the way one person formulates and sends the message and the other person receives it.

There are so many things that can go wrong in this process. Let me break it down even further.

1.?The message: Pictures form within my brain. They may be memories, stored deep inside, in the hippocampus. I may start to ‘see’ and recognize them. This might happen because I am listening to a conversation that triggers the formation of these pictures, which are a cue to me that there is a message I want to convey in response. However, from experience, I know that most people can’t understand the pictures in my head unless I translate them into words. So, as the pictures are pinging about from the hippocampus to the visual cortex and then to the language area, I furiously try to formulate words to go with them. Meanwhile, I am also still trying to listen to the conversation.

2.?The transmission: Having turned my brain-pictures into words, I must now transmit them to the motor cortex, which directs my mouth to form the words. There are often glitches in this process. Some of the words get lost or mixed up, and I can never be entirely sure I’ve got the message formed correctly until I hear it spoken out loud. Meanwhile an enormous flood of panic is starting to swell up from the pit of my stomach. I start to talk — words flood out. I don’t even know if someone else was already talking. Sometimes, when I hear my words, they sound right but other times they aren’t and I need to quickly go back into my brain to figure out what went wrong. But it’s too late — the first draft of the message is already out there and, as is the nature of all speech, can never be withdrawn.

3.?The receiver: I can only infer what it’s like to be on the receiving end, based on reactions or feedback from others. If I have interrupted someone, I may be told (either kindly or not) to please hold my thought until they have finished. When I stop talking, the anxiety increases as I try to decide if I should hang on to my words, reformulate them, or just forget the whole thing. In the ideal situation, my words seem to convey the intended message to the receiver (phew!).?However, more often, they don’t sound at all like what I intended. As I furiously scan my brain for better words, I see other pictures that relate to what I’m trying to say and I describe those too. I start to ramble and become aware of a shift in the energy around me as my audience grows bored, tired, or confused. I’m not sure which, though, because I’m too busy describing all the pictures to attempt to decipher facial expressions or body language. In the end, I appear to be going off on tangents, taking up too much airtime, or sucking the energy out of the room. (These are just some of the things people have said about me.)

The whole process is exhausting, to say the least. It is a major contributor to my social anxiety and fear of meeting people without being prepared. On the whole, communication goes very well if I have time to prepare. Knowing that most people communicate with words, I simply need time to translate my pictures. For me, the simplest way is through writing.

Don’t get me wrong — if I am prepared, if I have written notes and rehearsed or, if I am so intimately familiar with a topic that I can easily speak off the cuff, I am very good at oral communication. I may sound a bit robotic and I may not make eye contact, but the message is well formulated, conveyed clearly, and received as intended. Body language, tone, eye contact, and other ‘non-verbal’ cues are an entirely separate issue. Perhaps I need to wear a sign that says, “I am autistic. I’ve prepared a heartfelt and personal speech for you. While my tone may be flat and I may not look at you, I am deeply interested in conveying my message to you and sincerely want you to understand me.”

For me, the most common cause of autistic meltdowns is not being understood. Even the process of writing this essay has given me insight into my own communication process and how exhausting and frustrating it can be. It’s not surprising that, after all that effort, having my messages misunderstood would pop the metaphorical cork off the bottle that stores my anxiety. The picture in my head?now?is of a bottle of bubbles (perhaps sparkling juice, since I don’t drink champagne) being uncorked and the liquid spraying everywhere. That’s what it’s like when I can’t convey what’s in my brain.

In the finish, what is required is compassion and empathy. Those of us who struggle to communicate and understand each other need to have compassion for ourselves and one another. Imagine what it would be like to be the person that encounters a stranger who can’t speak or understand your language and can’t see or use their arms. Imagine trying to comprehend them. You might think they look a bit ‘weird’ or ‘crazy.’ But, instead of applying such judgmental adjectives, how about taking a step back and asking if there might be a better way. It might take a bit of effort and creativity but isn’t it worth it?