Imagine you’re sitting in a crowded coffee shop. Your leg bounces nervously under the table as you struggle to stay calm. You’re on a date with someone you just met a week ago and everything is going wrong.
The espresso machine hisses loudly behind you as the barista yells, “Large latte for Cheryl. Latte for Cheryl! Cheryl!”
Conversations from nearby tables blend together as the overhead lights somehow burn brighter by the minute and the tag on the shirt you’re wearing is digging into your ribs like a dagger.
Your date is talking rapidly about a new project they’re managing at work; often using corporate jargon you don’t quite understand. When he asks, “Enough about me, what about you?” You freeze. Is he asking what you do for a living? Or more generally about you? Who you are? What you like? The pause stretches uncomfortably long. You finally mumble something about what you do for work. Then quickly change the subject and watch his face transform from confusion to boredom as you rattle on about what you’re planning no planting in your garden this year.
Later, you’ll replay this conversation in your head dozens of times, trying to figure out where it went wrong.
When you’re neurodiverse, it can feel like you’re constantly guessing (and second guessing) how to communicate without coming across as weird or anxious or incoherently wordy.
In order to navigate these communication challenges, I’m going to help you understand how your brain works differently and learn how to work with your brain instead of fighting against it.
“Fixing” your brain or trying to make you think or act more like a neurotypical person isn’t what we’re after. Learning how to manage these situations with your unique differences in mind is.
So let’s try some practical tools to help you maneuver through some of the more prickly communication scenarios you may come across.
Executive functioning malfunction
It’ll come as no surprise that the executive functioning challenges you experience as a neurodiverse person can contribute to communication breakdowns. This can look like rambling, losing track of the conversation’s purpose, or being unable to articulate important thoughts despite having a deep understanding of the topic.
Even though you’re a thoughtful, intelligent, and genuine person, you may struggle to organize your thoughts during a social interaction. Say you’re on a date, and the person across from you asks a broad question like: “Tell me about yourself” or, “What are you looking for in a relationship?”, you’ll likely feel overwhelmed by the possible responses. You may provide too much detailed information all at once, or give brief, surface-level answers that don’t convey the depth of your character.
In these situations, leaning into your differences and attaching the conversation to your values can help things flow more smoothly. Instead of trying to find the “right” answer, use your values – what matters to you most in life and relationships (for example, authenticity, understanding, connection, joy … ) – to guide what you share.
How do you figure out what your values even are? Here’s a simple tool that can help.
The idea is to let go of what you think the other person wants to hear, and do your best to simply show up as you. Which can be challenging when you’ve spent your life trying to adapt to people’s expectations of you. So this may take some practice. But the more you bring your authentic thoughts and feelings into every interaction, the more aligned you will become with who you genuinely are; and the more likely you’ll attract people who embrace you, not a masked version of you.
What does that face mean?
One of the most challenging tasks of life – even for a neurotypical person – is to figure out what nonverbal cues mean and what clues they give us about what other people are thinking.
Is that person frowning at you or simply thinking about how their favourite team lost the playoffs last night?
That tone of voice feels like it’s in the realm of annoyed. Is that person annoyed at you? Or are they annoyed at someone else?
They just rolled their eyes and crossed their arms. Oh no! They hate you!!
Constantly having to guess (and second guess, and third guess …. ) what is happening in the mind of the person across from you is exhausting. So here’s my suggestion: don’t guess. Ask.
“Could you explain what you mean by that?”
“I want to make sure I fully understand what you’re saying. What I’m hearing is …”
“It feels like you’re thinking ______ , is that true?”
When I suggest this to clients, a common worry is: “I don’t want to ask these kinds of things because I don’t want to come across as anxious or needy.”
But guess what? You are anxiously trying to figure out what’s happening right now. And it’s okay to have needs.
Wouldn’t you rather be in a friendship or relationship with someone who welcomes these kinds of check-ins? Who is happy to be honest and direct and explore all the thoughts and feelings that are coming up for you both? Who wants to help reassure you that your feelings are valid but they were actually just thinking about their annoying boss and the face they made wasn’t even directed toward you?
The healthiest, happiest versions of connection include an invitation to show up as genuine, fallible, imperfect, anxious, and uncertain you.
Because you know what? Everyone has insecurities. Everyone gets anxious. Everyone has doubts. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if you decided that, instead of suffering in silence, you started to share these experiences with your friends and partners and they (hopefully) supported you through them?
The more you practice this approach, the deeper connections you can build, and the more likely you are to attract people who appreciate who you truly are.
Too many sights, sounds, smells ….
I have two young daughters and the other day we were heading out to the movie theatre when my six-year-old said, “Mom, don’t forget my headphones!”
When she was younger, we took her to a movie theatre for the first time and when I looked over at her about 2 minutes into the experience, I noticed she had her hands over her ears. She turned to me and said, “It’s too loud!” My poor little lady spent the rest of the movie like that. Ever since then we’ve brought her kitty headphones to the theatre so they dampen the sound and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming for her.
While you may not want to bring your own kitty headphones everywhere (or maybe you do: which is a lovely idea!), there are ways for you to manage the sensory overload coming at you that can impact your ability to stay present and fully engage in the conversation you’re having.
There are practical things you can do to reduce the sensory overwhelm; like using noise-dampening ear buds, wearing sunglasses, or meeting in a quiet coffee shop instead of the busy, popular one.
There are also psychological tools you can equip yourself with for those sensory overload moments. It’s very common to have learned to tune out your body and brain signals that things are becoming too much for you. After all, as a young child you were probably told to sit down, stop fidgeting, listen, stop closing your eyes, take your hands off your ears, and stop getting so upset because it’s not a big deal that everyone is trying to talk to you, touch you, and crowd around you during your fifth birthday celebration. Shouldn’t you like all this attention?!
The world told you it wasn’t okay to feel overwhelmed and express those emotions. So you learned to tune out the body signals that told you it was all becoming a bit much. You learned to mask.
I’m going to invite you to tune back in.
Before going into an environment that could potentially make you feel like running for the hills, do a self check-in. What do you notice in your body? What thoughts are coming up? What fears and anxieties do you notice? What sensory challenges do you anticipate coming up for you?
Then, take it a step further, and let’s make a plan.
As I love to say to my clients: anxiety hates a plan.
When you have a flexible plan (yes: being flexible is key because we need options when things don’t go exactly according to plan) it allows you to talk yourself through the moment knowing there are aspects about it within your control. You have steps. You have ideas. You have solutions before the problem even arises.
Do some brainstorming: what do you have control over? What can you do that can help you stay regulated? Bring something to indulge your need to fidget? Stay in a calm, soothing environment the morning before meeting in that busy coffee shop to help ensure you aren’t walking into that situation already overstimulated? Ask to take the coffees across the street to a quiet corner of the park? Meet at a time of day when your energy levels are typically highest? Eat a snack beforehand? (Hangry has a whole other level to a neurodivergent person!)
There will always be things outside your control. Always opportunities to feel overwhelmed. And there will also always be things you do have control over. Things you can do to support yourself.
You don’t have to grin and bear it. You can check in: what sensory challenges might come up for me in this situation? What can I do to support myself, self-soothe, and do my best to stay regulated?
When you feel stuck in processing or side quests
Managing conversation flow and turn-taking can sometimes feel like a monstrosity of a task when your brain always wants to take a left turn.
Knowing when to speak and what to say; or feeling like the conversation is ripe with opportunities to go sideways into a completely different topic (what I love to call “side quests”), can make things feel clunky and create a sense of disconnection.
You can leave the conversation feeling like you felt too awkward or inhibited to say anything, or like you dominated and didn’t let the other person get a word in. Either way you can end up going over and over what just happened and feeling like you messed up.
So try this dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) hack: Do the opposite.
If you tend to shy away and put all the focus on the other person, or allow them to do all the talking, challenge yourself to contribute more to the conversation.
The tricky thing is that you may want to contribute more, but you require more processing time which means your conversation partner could already be moving on to a new topic when you’ve come up with something witty to say. If this feels like it’s the case for you, remember that it is perfectly fine to say something like:
“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier about ________ , and I wanted to add ….”
Or perhaps use this option when you need more processing time: “That’s really interesting, I’m just thinking about it for a minute because I want to really take in what you just said.”
Or try this for bringing a tangent back on track when your partner is in the midst of a topic shift and you have more to say: “That reminds me of what we were originally talking about, can we chat about that a bit more? I have some thoughts.”
On the other end of the spectrum, if you tend to dominate the conversation and find yourself constantly going on tangents, stringing topic after topic together into one long rant; practice deliberately taking a listening stance. When you feel the urge to jump in, instead try a half-smile (to encourage yourself to take a minute and not just dive right in with your thoughts), take a breath, and simply notice thoughts like, “I need to say this now or I’ll forget.”
Then label it: “I’m just having an urgent thought” and shift your attention back to listening, for now.
Does this mean you never get to talk? Of course not. But when you find yourself going on and on or constantly interrupting your conversation partner, slow it down. Give the other person the opportunity to explore their own thoughts and feelings in more depth before you dive in with your viewpoint.
A helpful strategy to employ when you feel the impulse to interrupt or dive into a tangent is to ask yourself: “Will this contribute to the conversation we’re having right now?”
The neurodiverse brain can easily create connections between seemingly unrelated topics. So before you go off on that side quest, check in as to whether that tangent will be beneficial to the conversation you’re having or if it would be more productive, supportive, or effective to stick to the current topic.
At the end of the day, whether you feel like you need and want to speak up more, or you’re dominating the conversation flow, try a different approach. Try experimenting with doing the opposite.
Wait. Are they judging me?!
A common challenge for the neurodiverse brain is the anxiety around feeling judged or criticized by other people.
This is born out of actually being judged and criticized, in both verbal and nonverbal ways, from a young age. Being different is hard. Being labelled in overt ways (like being called “weird”) and covert ways (like being picked last in gym class) sends the message that your differentness isn’t welcome in various social situations.
This leads you to become hypervigilant to any perceived sense of being judged or rejected – even when this isn’t actually the case. Sure, there will be some situations where people are judging or rejecting you. That’s (unfortunately) life. And there will also be situations where you feel like you’re being judged or rejected when the person is simply grumpy because they didn’t have time for coffee this morning. They’re tired and annoyed and it has nothing to do with you.
Whether you are being judged or not, doesn’t matter. Your reaction to it and the impact it has on you does.
Next time you feel that protective, overcautious voice in your mind say: “They think you’re an idiot!” try the acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) technique of simply noticing it and creating some distance between yourself and the thought.
Say to yourself: “I notice I’m having the thought that they’re judging me.”
Or: “I notice I’m feeling anxious that they’re judging me.”
It’s key to say: “I notice I’m having the thought/feeling” instead of: “I’m having the thought/feeling.”
This specific approach creates distance between you and the thought. It’s similar to saying “I’m a person who has autism” versus “I’m autistic.” It’s part of who you are. It doesn’t define the entirety of who you are. Similarly, it’s just a thought or feeling. It doesn’t have to define you or mean something deeper. It’s just a thought. Just a feeling.
You have agency in whether it continues to have a chokehold over you.
Creating distance will allow you to evaluate whether you want to continue to buy into that thought or explore another option.
“I notice I’m feeling anxious they’re judging me. Interesting.”
You can take this a step further by visualizing your thoughts as leaves floating down a stream or clouds passing in the sky. This helps you continue to observe your thoughts without attaching to them.
Take a couple of breaths. Watch those leaves float down the stream; or the clouds drift into the distance. Create that distance. Have compassion for yourself for thinking those thoughts (don’t judge yourself for your own thoughts and feelings). Detach yourself from the claws of anxiety.
Just because you’re telling yourself a story about what someone else is thinking, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Being you is key.
It’s crucial to not assume that neurotypical communication patterns are the only way to communicate. Or that trying to become more neurotypical in your communication patterns is the goal. The real goal is figuring out where there is some discomfort or anxiety within your own strategies and how your particular approach could be leading to some disconnection.
Pick one of the five topics we just explored that feels most relevant to you and play around with a strategy I suggested.
Keep in mind that it’ll likely feel clunky and awkward and require a lot of effort in the beginning because you’re trying something new. Like riding a bike, you don’t sign up for an Olympic race through the Swiss Alps on day one. You figure out how the pedals work, play around with the gears, try some different ways of sitting in the seat to get as comfortable as possible. Similarly, you settle into some simple foundational therapeutic strategies and build your skills from there.
Be curious. Explore what works and doesn’t work for you. Above all, focus on creating deeper connections by being genuine and leaning in to your differences rather than trying to fix them.
Remember: your differences are your strengths.
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