I recently finished reading “Is This Autism?”, and took a lot away from this book. It contains an incredible amount of information and insight into the complexity of autism spectrum disorders. I made a video discussing some of the main points from the book that stood out to me, so be sure to check that out. However, I wanted to highlight some additional highlights on this post as there was more to talk about than I could fit in that video.
If you’re a mental health professional, you may want to check out the companion guide for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders.
One of my greatest take-aways from the book is the idea of pink flags. You’re likely familiar with the concept of a red flag—something that more or less screams and shouts for our attention. We might think of someone having little to no eye contact as a red flag for autism. Of course, there could be other explanations, but it’s a common sign of autism. The book introduces us to “pink flags”. These are signs that alone do not point directly to autism, but when there is a pattern, they should point our attention to autism as a possible explanation to explore. Is This Autism? has four categories of pink flags:
The book discusses the double empathy problem, which might make you wonder, what is the double empathy problem? In this case, the idea of this is that autistic and non-autistic people can be looked at as people from two different cultures. The double empathy problem is that when two people with different experiences of the world interact, it’s hard to empathize with the other. As a result, there can be a breakdown in communication and understanding. However, this is “often because of a divide between their ways of experiencing, understanding, and responding to the world, not because there is something inherently wrong with the people in one of those groups” (p. 57).
I think it’s easy to think that someone from a different culture or with a different experience in life is doing something wrong, or not viewing the world in the best way. As the quote suggests, we might even view it as something being wrong with them. However, I think this highlights that neither the person with or without autism is correct. Instead, they are simply different.
Is This Autism? says, “autistic individuals have a strong desire to connect with others, but little energy to do so” (p. 83). It is often incorrectly assumed by many—healthcare professionals included—that autistic people do not want friends. To maintain relationships, we have to use relationship management skills, not to mention that these relationships will likely be filled with social expectations that must be inferred. As a result, although autistic people want relationships, they are incredibly difficult to form and maintain, and require significant time and energy to be devoted to the relationship for it to be successful.
For example, it might be easy for a non-autistic person to recognize the different types of relationships that we can have. Not only that, but they may take for granted that they can intuitively understand the expectations that come with different relationships. As a result, it would not be surprising if an autistic child were to greet a stranger by hugging them—they might think that you greet people with a hug, since that’s what they do with all their family members.
Two important ideas I gain from the book are those of social motivation and social energy. Social motivation is one’s desire to connect with others socially. Social energy is the energy we have for social interaction. Like physical energy, some people have a lot of social energy—meaning they could easily make it through social interactions and not run out of social energy. In fact, they might even be energized by these situations! Some would call these people extroverts. However, for some, they have to carefully monitor and ration their social energy as to not have to leave a party feeling completely drained. These people would commonly be called introverts. People can have any combination of social motivation and energy: they might have both high motivation and energy, low motivation and energy, or high motivation and low energy. For many autistic people, the ladder will be the case. They are highly motivated and greatly desire social connection, but their energy levels to engage in social situations are low.
