The Transition: 1995–1996
To shorten the story, we start with the period when I wondered if I could ever work again. Asking for help is not easy for an autistic person. I determined correctly that psychiatrists could not help me. They ask me questions on and on and I personally could not internally solve the problem.
My family was helpful. My father told me I had to find out why I was getting fired. That meant I had the gift of time to find answers. I could move from mourning to active investigation to an eventual conclusion.
I was fortunately able to connect with a life skills coach. I cannot name him with confidence thirty years later, but the work he did mattered. A coach can only help a client who is genuinely open to change and be honest with myself. I was playing for keeps. I had been trying to earn my own living and failing badly.
What the Transition Required
The transition was expensive — thousands of dollars in 1996. I came from a family with financial resources, so I was not facing homelessness. That privilege mattered, and I acknowledge it. But having money and spending it wisely are different things.
The coach helped me understand that I was dealing with an unprogrammed problem — one that required outside help, not solitary effort. Unless I was going to work entirely for myself as an entrepreneur, I needed to find someone willing to hire me. That meant confronting, honestly, what I could and could not do.
Some of the tools the coach used:
- Personal surveys — written on full sheets of paper in my own handwriting, covering job satisfaction and dissatisfaction, existing skills, and capacity to learn new ones. The goal was a complete personal transformation of attitude and self-understanding.
- A transition audit — the coach’s forms had me summarize my situation with these phrases: overwhelming; I am anxious; unusual and novel response; I am open to new perspectives and ideas; I take responsibility for the situation. There was the risk of lost experiences and more personal failure.
- Reviewing past successes — identifying situations where I had genuinely succeeded, including friendships that were made and sustained, and others I perhaps should have pursued but didn't.
- Taking extensive notes — buying notebooks and creating written structure where none existed. For an autistic person navigating an unstructured period, the notebook is essential.
- Adult education on a guerrilla basis — attending night classes and public seminars to practice communication skills in low-stakes environments. The distinction the coach drew between participation — actual interaction with others — and watching from a distance was important. Participation is not easy for the autistic person. Too much is happening simultaneously. Others can read you; you do not yet have the bandwidth to read them in return.
Investigating Myself
I was instructed to investigate myself completely: health history from birth, marketable skills, education, personality traits, relationships, and personal values. The central question the coach kept returning to was simple: What is the truth?
The coach introduced the concept of the oxymoron as a useful metaphor — connecting two near-opposite words to produce a new and unexpected idea. He asked: What do I want, and what is holding me back? Out of that conversation came the name Alien Being — because I simply could not fit into MBA-level corporate roles. A good oxymoron, he noted, was the name of the band Grateful Dead. It captured something real.
He also introduced the concept of initiation — doing something for the first time as a rite of passage. Being initiated into a new identity, through completing a challenging project or entering an unfamiliar environment, is one way of moving forward when the old self is no longer functional.
The mission statement we arrived at together: How to find new work that suits my personal being within one year, when I do not know what it is or where I fit in. The reframe was: I am the opportunity — based on the actual skills I possessed, not the expectations I had failed to meet. An emotional intelligence course I later encountered described this kind of reframing well: a stressful situation becomes a manageable challenge, and challenges are opportunities to develop capability and to help others.
I had to forgive myself for the job losses. My coach was direct about that.
Feedback I Wasn't Ready to Hear — But Kept
I was told in performance reviews and comments when I was let go from my jobs that I had an interpersonal skills problem and did not fit in MBA and executive sales environments. I do not believe that corporation managers were trained to discuss cruel details on why a person deserved termination from a job. I was told that I was rude. I now was going to learn the details.
In December 1995, I was introduced to a management consultant. I wrote down his feedback at the time and did not revisit it until 2026 — thirty years later. Reading it again, I could see that he had identified the roots of my interpersonal difficulties with precision.
He said I spoke with a drawl and failed to pronounce consonants clearly. My voice cracked under pressure. He observed that my eyes overwhelmed my other senses — a way of describing the sensory processing imbalance that is characteristic of autism. I read from other sources that lack of eye contact comes across as not caring for others, regardless of the internal reality. He noted that I appeared defensive when speaking, and that I did not project conviction. He did not think I would succeed in management roles.
One recommendation was to wear contact lenses. I needed glasses after my freshman year of college due to needed correction for distance. I got the lenses, and was able to put them in my eyes. I had to give up on the contacts due to lack of durability due to excess eye waste called detritus. I chose not to have LASIK eye surgery due to astigmatism and the risk.
I wrote a poem at the time:
I have been looking for work Unfortunately, I have been a jerk I am looking for reasons why So that in the future, I can get by
My identity shifted during this period — from MBA who could handle any challenge to educated worker who needs to carefully choose work environments due to interpersonal skills limitations. That was a painful but necessary correction. I had to listen to criticism and be willing to change. I effectively set aside the MBA, except for accounting coursework that later helped me earn the Certified Public Accountant designation.
The Golf Caddy Analogy
I had played some competitive golf as a kid, and when I was able to have a caddy, someone to carry my bag, I usually played better and sometimes had real success. The caveat is that the caddy had to be good, a better golfer, and can provide me with advice I can trust. The autistic person has the opportunity to get help to reduce distractions, and to deeply concentrate on the matter at hand. Another caveat is the cost of the help, but it is true that the autistic person is more dependent on help than someone outside of the spectrum.
Friends
I was capable of having friends, as I had success in high school. College was more challenging but I still knew a few people there. There were periods where I socialized less and had regression of my social skills, especially after job losses and while I was in jobs that I was behind a computer.
Dating was more important as an adult because the peer networks in school do not exist in the working world. I remember someone telling me that I had courage to attend a social gathering alone – I must have appeared really awkward that day. Better to be with a friend, if possible. I do remember going to events in New York City with some acquaintances in the early 1990’s, but after a move I lost contact with these people.
Early Childhood
After the two firings in 1995, my parents finally told me the full story of my early childhood. I was given the biography of my first five years — the hospitalization, the diagnosis, the therapy. It was crucial. I had not known that I had been formally diagnosed as an autistic child, and I had not understood that I was living with the long-term effects of early childhood trauma. Everything in my adult life that had been difficult flowed from that origin.
I also obtain a greater understanding of the relationship with my parents, and the degree of sacrifice they had in taking time for appointments and other work to get me to kindergarten on time.
Music reached me in ways that speech could not, and I suspect music can help people on the spectrum. My mother sang "Side by Side" (written by Harry M. Woods, 1927) while driving to my appointments for therapy at age 4. My father liked Johnny Thunder's 1963 hit "Loop de Loop." Somehow, I also remember "More" by Kai Winding, also from 1963 — though of course, as a young child, I had no idea who the artists were. I have followed the top 40 for the 1970’s and 1980’s for its melody and vocalists, and I maintain a collection on my computer and phone, though I do not play an instrument. I actually need captions to understand a lot of music which is hard because one cannot read captions with your ears.
I learned to sit still while my parents read me children’s books but I did not listen to the stories. I enjoyed picture books like “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel” by Virginia Lee Burton and “Who Built the Bridge” by Norman Bate.
With that history in hand, I began to see the connections. My difficulty following movement instructions — like the call-and-response of Simon Says — and my inability to coordinate my body well enough for team sports were not separate problems. They were expressions of the same underlying neurological difference. My athletic awkwardness and my social struggles were related.
A lesson is that a diagnosis within the autistic spectrum is serious, and has to be monitored and be part of a high school and college student’s life planning. I tried for jobs related to sales and high social skills that were not for me.
It is possible that I used my senses of sight and touch to help me versus hearing and body coordination, like the blind person who has great hearing. I was told the coordination in my hands and arms was good.
The Ear and Coordination Science
In 2026, I read a New York Times article about a star basketball player, Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs. He is over 7 feet tall and can kick a basketball nine feet off the ground in the net of the basket. The article mentioned that all of the star’s senses were working at full capacity. Beyond the 5 well known senses, the article discusses a 6th sense, “Vestibular Balance” is what Google AI defines as “The vestibular system in the inner ear controls balance, spatial orientation, and eye movement by detecting head movement through fluid-filled semicircular canals.” I felt I received clarification from this.
Autism Diagnosis and Zeroing In
I found a book, Bruce Pennington's Diagnosing Learning Disorders from the early 1990s, and by the spring of 1996 I had zeroed in on autism as the framework that explained my life. To be clear: my talking skills were a greater weakness than my physical coordination. Both were impaired, but speech and listening were the deeper problem.
During this period, I learned specific things about my own behavior:
- I squinted my eyes approximately every three minutes
- I yawned when I was not tired — a sign of cognitive overload, not boredom
- I could not control the pitch of my voice
- I could not stand listening for extended periods
- I fidgeted constantly while seated
- I bit my fingernails
- I did not understand the reciprocal nature of conversation — that listening is as important as speaking, and that interrupting signals you are not listening
- I could not laugh easily when told jokes
- I rarely smiled
- I ground my teeth
The central question was whether any of this could meaningfully improve, or whether I would simply have to remain isolated.
A doctor told me that an autistic person can process as little as 25% of the information that a non-autistic person handles in real time. My brain often did not process information fast enough to speak coherently in conversation. Group situations, even groups composed of other autistic people, were overwhelming.
Job Search Having Autism
One can find work through word of mouth, mentors, volunteer and charity work, cover letters to known contacts, social media, temporary positions, and organizations like Toastmasters. Social outreach is obviously more challenging for the autistic person, and every strategy that reduces direct cold contact is worth knowing about.
In 1996, a trade show was open to the public for free, and I attended. That is where I met the company that eventually hired me. Job search groups are limited in one specific way: you meet fellow unemployed people, not hiring managers. They are still useful for the social interaction and accountability they provide. Today, I am not saying that visiting a trade show is a job search opportunity giving greater event security and admission costs.
It is also important to secure employment before attempting to find an apartment. The rental I found required a job reference from my new employer.
Social Events: A Strategy for Overload
I have found that I can attend a social event for approximately one hour before needing a break due to mental overload. The strategy that works: go, engage for an hour, step away to recover, and return if energy permits. Do not treat leaving early as failure — treat it as self-management.
Before attending an event, it can help to review in advance the names of people who are likely to be present. Preparation reduces the cognitive load of real-time interaction.
One executive at a conference in 1996 described his job plainly: "My job is going to meetings and talking on the telephone." That sentence clarified something important. Over 50% of most management roles is interpersonal. For an autistic person, the job description must minimize the known weakness. Non-autistic colleagues will often interpret autistic struggles — delayed responses, flat affect, poor eye contact — as bad attitude or indifference, not as neurological difference. That misreading has real consequences for employment.
I was told in 1996 not to pursue additional schooling or computer programming. That advice was given in the context of my situation at the time. What remains true in any job is this: some interpersonal skills are always required. People in most organizations are paid primarily for interpersonal skills, not technical ones. Some programming jobs are now based outside the United States in other lower-paying countries. Temporary positions are often dead ends — low-paying, and structured so that the agency takes a share of the salary.
Today, artificial intelligence is reducing computer programming jobs and also accounting analytical jobs, so my 1990’s career strategies no longer apply.
March 1997: Confirmation That Improvement Is Possible
In March 1997, I met again with the consultant I had first seen in December 1995. He told me I had made major strides in my communications skills over that fifteen-month period. That did not mean that I totally escaped the autistic spectrum.
It demonstrates that genuine improvement on a deeply difficult problem is possible — with the right environment, sufficient resources, real effort, and time.
The Winning Formula
One concept that has stayed with me is what I call the winning formula for an autistic person in the workplace: being conscientious — disciplined, persevering, organized, self-regulating — in roles that require minimal real-time communication. When the environment matches the profile, the autistic person's strengths become visible. When it does not, those same strengths are negated by the requirement of having viable interpersonal skills.
Adult Classes and Seminars: What Worked and What Didn't
I attended adult education classes and seminars throughout the late 1990s. My honest assessment: communications courses will not substantially alter the neurological makeup of an autistic person. Practice helps at the margins, and self-knowledge improves. But the core is not going to change dramatically.
My approach became: I am what I am, and that cannot be substantially changed. So I work around the problem.
That reframe was not resignation. It was clarity. Knowing your actual limits allows you to deploy your actual strengths. That is not giving up — it is strategy.
From an adult class on vocal delivery, I learned about speaking in monotone and how to use emphasis words to add meaning and texture to speech. From a seminar called Insight, I gained an appreciation of the distinction between participation and observation — being part of the action rather than watching from a distance. That distinction sounds simple. For someone on the spectrum, it is not. Observation is natural and comfortable. Participation requires deliberate effort.
One seminar explored nicknames — how a person grows into a name given to them by others, and how that name reflects group recognition, not only judgment. The seminar offered non-judgmental conversation, genuine give-and-take. I found more ease connecting with parents of severely challenged children than with socially outgoing attendees — perhaps because those parents had developed patience, and perhaps because they reached out to me as a potential resource for their problem.
One memorable exercise asked participants to imaginatively revisit their own birth. I remember a sense of relief — of being glad to be out of the womb. I am not claiming this reflected anything literal. It simply illustrates the creative, embodied approach some seminars use. The exercise reminded me that water can be calming and regressive in the best sense — a return to something safe. It may be why swimming has been therapeutic for me throughout my life, and why I have wondered whether infant swimming could be comforting for autistic babies, offering a sensory environment closer to the womb.
At another seminar, I met a woman from a town I recognized. I asked her about the town. She was visibly taken aback — she had expected me to ask about her, her career, her name. I had chosen the town as a way of making the person comfortable without asking a question they might find probing. What I didn't yet fully understand was that most people want to be asked about themselves, not about geography. I was trying to start a conversation. I simply started it in the wrong place.
Time Management
I attended a time management seminar. My honest admission: I have never consistently used a calendar or day planner. I am telling you to do so — consistently — because time management is especially important for the autistic person, who needs more time to learn, more time to prepare, and more time to recover from demanding interactions.
The key insight for me was this: choose the tasks that actually matter, and do not spread yourself across too many at once. Autistic people require self-discipline and ruthless prioritization. The calendar is a tool for protecting your time and making your priorities visible to yourself.
Knowing What You Don't Know
A seminar I attended around the year 2000 introduced a distinction that has stayed with me:
- I did not know that I did not know — operating on false assumptions, unaware of the gap
- I know that I do not know — aware of the gap, and therefore positioned to research the answer
The first state is the more dangerous one. Decisions made from a position of false certainty are harder to correct than decisions made from acknowledged uncertainty. For autistic people, who can be confident in their own internal logic while missing crucial social and contextual information, this distinction is especially worth understanding.
Networking: The Ten-Minute Conversation
Networking requires meeting strangers and sustaining conversations with them for approximately ten minutes. That is the goal — not a deep friendship, not a brilliant impression. Ten minutes of genuine, present engagement.
Volunteer Work and Speaking
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I did volunteer work and public speaking about my experience. I can only report from my handwritten notes, as my memory of the details is limited.
I spoke at a conference attended by Tony Attwood, the British psychologist widely known for his work on Asperger's Syndrome. From my notes, the audience found me overly authoritative — I apparently came across as a "know-it-all." I can assume I had poor eye contact and did not welcome questions openly. When the question arose of what age a parent should tell their child about an autism diagnosis, Attwood said twelve. I said fifteen. The audience sided with Attwood. He was almost certainly the better public speaker. I note this not as self-deprecation but as an accurate record.
I was also told something that has stayed with me: if you cannot manage the relationship with your parents, you cannot integrate with others. Understanding the full story of my childhood intervention gave me context when I was with my family — and that context, in turn, made it easier to be with other people. The two were connected.
My Father's Words: 1998
In 1998, my father said to me: "I never knew someone who struggled harder than you."
I keep it here because I want the reader to understand: the people around an autistic person — the family, the occasional colleague who takes a chance — are carrying something too. My father's words were not pity. They were recognition. I had been struggling, visibly, for nearly four decades.
Dating and Relationships
Starting in 1999, I made a serious effort to begin dating, and I had more success sustaining relationships than I had expected — though I did not marry. What I learned is that constant social participation is the best way to maintain and develop one's skills. Regression is a genuine danger when you are alone too much. Fitting in with anyone requires adjustment and willingness to change.
The people I met came from different places, had different tastes in entertainment, kept pets, had children of their own. I never had children. Each relationship required me to enter a world shaped by someone else's history and preferences — and that is true for everyone, autistic or not. The autistic person simply has less margin for the unspoken adjustments that others make instinctively.
One concept I want to address directly: kindness. Kindness means sacrificing your own resources — time, money, comfort — to help another person. The key to kindness is balance. The question is how to be genuinely kind without compromising your ability to work or to maintain the other relationships in your life. That balance is harder to find when your baseline energy is already depleted by the effort of daily social interaction. The autistic person must budget kindness carefully — not because they lack the impulse, but because the reserves are smaller.
2001-2012: Lived My Life
After the intensity of the late 1990s — the job loss, the diagnosis, the transition, the therapy, the public speaking — I stepped back from focusing on autism and simply lived my life. I turned my attention to work, to relationships, to travel, and to the things I genuinely enjoyed.
I bought a house in 2004 and spent the next three years completing repairs to get the house into live-in condition. I did a lot of painting, mostly indoor, with an emphasis on the basement and the kitchen cabinets. I can stand still and use my hands. I also enjoyed vegetable gardening and yard work where the actions can be a form a meditation.
One project I completed was passing the Certified Public Accountant exam. I had to identify the coursework I need to take, after learning what credit I had from prior undergraduate and graduate work completed. Then find a university that offered night classes. I got the night work done in 2008. Then I took review classes, another significant cost. I was able to pass the four parts of the exam on my first try in 2009. One negative is that my work performance did decline on having to concentrate on studying but I managed to keep the job. Another negative is that age age 48 I was not offered the opportunity to join a CPA firm to gain my apprenticeship to be a full-reporting license to work in public accounting. This task has to be done by age 35.
Caring for My Parents: 2012–2023
In 2012, I began devoting increasing time to caring for my aging parents. This continued for eleven years, until my final surviving parent died in 2023. Caregiving is a slow process, a treatment with love and respect. I have to take each day and each task one-at-a-time. I had to observe them and realize they are now at an older age and could only do what they could do. I felt they always gave the best effort but it was toughest in the last 6 months of their lives.
After I delivered my father's eulogy, the last parent to pass away, I was told that the emotion I showed mattered more than the words I spoke. That feedback stayed with me. I had worked hard on the words. The emotion came on its own.
To cope with the loss, I said to myself: "Big boy, two feet." I was acknowledging, plainly, that I no longer had my parents to fall back on. The phrase came from somewhere in my memory — perhaps my parents calling me a "big boy" when I was young, and my grandmother on my father's side always speaking about "standing on your own two feet." Those phrases had become part of how I understood resilience and keeping to the principal of doing the right thing.
Travel, Photography, and Family History
I have always enjoyed travel, photography, and sightseeing. Once in a while, I am in exactly the right place at the right moment — the lighting is right, the subject is right — I am viewing the obvious and take the photograph.
Between 2016 and 2020, I toured towns throughout Massachusetts. The mix of white wooden buildings and mill structures was compelling to me — particularly the brick buildings constructed between 1865 and 1910. I documented these through Facebook posts, and those posts attracted attention: Facebook invited me and my partner to an entrepreneurs' group dinner in late 2019.
Genealogy became another genuine strength. Autism, with its capacity for sustained focus on structured data, is well suited to building a family tree. I wrote to municipalities — including New York City — to obtain historical records that identified some of my great-great grandparents. Genealogy software connected to family trees extending four to fourteen generations. The research was started in 2014 and in 2025 I able to expand my tree while improving the accuracy based on improved software.
Work Since 1996: Finding the Right Environment
My work experience since 1996 is its own story, but I will say this: I found a long-term affiliation with a small company where I reduced my job title to Accountant and performed necessary work in the background — consistently, reliably, without the interpersonal demands that had undone me in larger organizations. As my parents aged, I negotiated reduced hours. After 2020, I transitioned to working from home.
Looking back at 1994 to 1996 — the period when I attempted management-level positions, failed, and fought to understand why — I see it now as the necessary crucible. I had to test the limits of what I could do before I could honestly accept what I could not.
Autism and Work: What I Have Learned
In my experience, when I have spoken about my autism, the subject that generated the most interest is work. I have had the opportunity — involuntarily, but genuinely — to test how far an autistic person can go in a conventional workplace. I hit walls. I experienced failure. I had to redefine what success meant for me. Here I am in my sixties, and I consider that a real outcome worth describing honestly.
Choosing the Right Career Path
A career must be built on expertise, with minimal need for complex real-time social interaction — group meetings, spontaneous spoken exchanges, office politics. The goal is to become an expert whose unique technical skills reduce the demand for interpersonal performance. Reliability and predictability are important traits.
This means: pursue post-secondary education in the building trades, accounting, a licensed profession, or even medicine. A career with a qualifying entrance examination works in the autistic person's favor. You can prepare alone, concentrate, and demonstrate competence through performance rather than personality.
I did not plan sufficiently during college or graduate school — I did not do the informational interviewing that would have helped me understand what careers actually require on a day-to-day basis. I paid for that gap for years.
One observation I was given that stays with me: "Whether I smile on the job is the fit for the job."
The Job Interview
Success in the job interview depends significantly on the style of the interviewer. I obtained two positions in which the interviewer did most of the talking, and I sat quietly until the offer came. When the interviewer was skilled at drawing out conversational back-and-forth, I struggled and did not get the job.
I made the deliberate decision not to disclose my autism to employers. Instead, I structured job descriptions to minimize my known weaknesses and maximize independent tasks. That approach requires honesty with yourself about what you can and cannot do — and the discipline to hold the line in negotiations.
Everything in a job search is a negotiation. The clearest example from my own experience: I negotiated a position as a management accountant rather than a chief financial officer. That distinction — in title, in scope, in expected behavior — made the role workable.
Choosing a Company
Each company is different based on who is on the management team, size by number of employees or revenue, office locations, industry, and fit for your skills. Ownership can be a publicly-traded company, venture-backed company, smaller corporation, partnership, family-owned businesses, and sole-proprietorship. It was harder for me to find a match for my skills due to my autism being pronounced so I admit accepting job offers not worrying about the potential cultural fit for the job. But it is important to step back and think about the company situation.
Beginning a New Position
Starting a new job is among the most overwhelming experiences for someone on the spectrum. New people, unfamiliar processes, an unknown culture — all arriving simultaneously.
What I have learned:
- Take sufficient time to do the job correctly. Rushing to appear fast leads to missed steps and preventable errors.
- Set up a written list of procedures and follow it. The list is not optional — it is the structure that replaces what others absorb intuitively.
- Check your work. My mistakes most often happened when I did not ask enough questions, or when I moved too quickly past a step I did not fully understand.
- Know when and how to ask for help. I never liked asking questions. Everything felt hard. But the mistakes that cost me most were the ones I made in silence.
I had more success working for male supervisors than female ones. I believe female supervisors were often more attuned to interpersonal and emotional dynamics — precisely the area where I struggled most visibly. That is not a criticism of female leadership. It is an honest observation about the mismatch between what was expected and what I could deliver.
Disclosure and Job Title
A person's job title shapes how others interact with them — what they expect, what they request, how much latitude they allow. Choosing the right title is therefore a practical autism strategy, not merely an administrative one.
It is worth knowing, clearly, that in most organizations people are paid primarily to interact with others. Technical work is secondary. One blunt way of framing it: people pay other people to be their colleagues, their sounding boards, their professional friends. The actual work product follows from that relationship. For the autistic person, that reality requires a careful choice of environment — one where the ratio of technical to interpersonal demand is manageable.
In my experience within larger companies, I found it easier to interact with lower-level employees than with senior management. Senior leaders in most organizations are selected partly for social fluency. That gap was always visible, and always costly.
Money, Health, and Basic Stability
I cannot assume that every reader has access to sufficient income, proper nutrition, regular exercise, appropriate clothing, adequate sleep, healthcare, and safe housing. I did not face those particular obstacles, and I acknowledge that plainly. They are real obstacles, and they matter.
The sleep issue deserves specific mention. Since 2020, working from home has allowed me to take naps when necessary. That flexibility has been genuinely restorative. Sleep deprivation compounds every difficulty the autistic person already faces — processing speed, emotional regulation, patience, and the capacity to absorb new information all degrade quickly without adequate rest.
Meetings and Off-the-Cuff Speaking
In meetings, I would yawn and visibly squirm — physical signals of cognitive overload that others read as disengagement or disrespect. I could not speak well when asked unexpected questions. I simply did not like it, and my body made that clear whether I wanted it to or not.
One of the most challenging tasks I now face is speaking with AI-generated telephone voices — navigating automated systems that require real-time spoken responses to unpredictable prompts. This did not exist when I entered the workforce in the 1980s. It is genuinely difficult for me, and I want to name it because other autistic adults will recognize it immediately.
Mentors
People in business are often helped by mentors — more experienced colleagues within their organization, or contacts outside of it. From my experience, finding a mentor is informal. It begins with making a connection and recognizing that the other person's example has something to teach you.
One colleague advised me to pursue an accounting examination that genuinely advanced my career. That was mentorship, simply offered and simply received.
The challenges for the autistic person are specific: recognizing when someone is offering to serve as a mentor, reading the social cues that signal that offer, and sustaining the networking effort required to find external mentors. There is also the difficulty of finding someone whose experience is genuinely comparable — someone who has navigated similar challenges and can speak from a position of relevant understanding.
How can an autistic person lead others? Perhaps through the example of honest hard work and basic professionalism. Those qualities can win people over, even when charm is not available. I do not believe I was ever a formal mentor to anyone in my accounting career.
Conflict and Passive Aggression
Passive-Aggressive behavior is pattern in which direct conflict is avoided and the person works around the problem rather than through it. What I would say is this: the autistic person often avoids direct conflict because they fear losing — the exchange will move too fast, the words will not come, the other person will dominate. The autistic person hopes someone else will resolve the situation.
That hope is often disappointed. Conflict eventually has to be addressed. The approach that works best for me is preparation: gather information outside of the verbal exchange — through email, written records, independent research — and then present a case that acknowledges the other party's position. Most real information, however, ultimately comes from speaking directly with people. There is no complete substitute.
One of the most challenging tasks I now face is speaking with AI-generated telephone voices — navigating automated systems that require real-time spoken responses to unpredictable prompts. This did not exist when I started work in the 1980s. It is genuinely difficult for me, and I want to name it because other autistic adults will recognize it immediately.
Intensity, Focus, and Knowing When to Stop
My social and work strategy has always been to pick my spots. Work in focused bursts. Be fresh when it matters. Concentrate fully on one task at a time — what I think of as intensity — and bring full effort to each item before moving to the next.
The skill that complements intensity is knowing when to ask for help, and how to ask it. I was not naturally good at either. I needed emotion and adrenalin to push through difficult work. Narrow focus was both my greatest strength and, at times, my greatest limitation — it allowed me to finish things, but it also caused me to miss what was happening around me.
Bosses and colleagues appreciate hard work. They can point you toward opportunities. The autistic person cannot rely on charm or salesmanship to compensate for weaker performance — those social currencies are not easily available. The currency available is effort, accuracy, and reliability.
Checking Your Work
I appreciate the need to check my work to avoid preventable mistakes. My errors most often happened when I did not complete enough research, or when I moved too quickly past something I did not fully understand — and sometimes I did not know it was a mistake until afterward. The pattern is consistent: my mistakes happen when I do not ask others enough questions.
Work Strategy: Picking Your Spots
My social and work strategy has always been to pick my spots. Be fresh when it matters. Work in focused bursts, with breaks built in after roughly two hours. Deep thinking done while genuinely fresh — not depleted — is where the autistic person's best work happens.
In most social situations, it is better for an autistic person to go with a friend. Let the other person carry more of the talking and listening. There were many situations in my life where I was alone and simply had to tough it out. Both are real.
Truth-Telling and Office Politics
I like telling the truth. I often believe I have a creative, fresh idea — and I share it, only to discover that what I said came across as an insult to someone I had no intention of offending. Like a politician, there are moments when I have to say something I do not fully believe in that moment, because the unfiltered version would cause damage.
Office politics — the effects of actions on others, on the organization's relationships and hierarchies — did not interest me as an autistic person focused on the task at hand. People in large companies battle to put their colleagues down in order to get ahead. I never developed the instinct for that, and I never wanted it.
My tendency was to find what appeared to be an obvious solution and name it — especially when I believed no one else had thought of it. Autistic people have what might be called an urge to inform. The risk is real: comments that are not fully thought through can offend coworkers and superiors, regardless of intent. I am aware of this from my own experience. The challenge is sharpest when someone says, "Tell me what you really think" — and you have to respond immediately, when the literal truth is not what should be stated.
The autistic person depends on some degree of blind faith, because gathering full information is genuinely harder for us than for others. At some point, a decision has to be made on incomplete information.
The Choice to Tell Lies
People can lie for several reasons. The first is presenting information that turns out to be incorrect — which an autistic person may interpret as an intentional lie, when it was simply a mistake. The second is the subtle half-truth — information that is technically accurate but incomplete or misleading. The third is the deliberate, intentional lie.
The reason behind dishonesty is often more complex than simple malice. People sometimes withhold or shade the truth because what they say in one conversation can affect others beyond the two people involved. The autistic person may not fully account for all the dimensions of a conversation — how the other person might discuss it with their own friends, colleagues, or family, and what effect that secondary conversation might have.
I do not like operating on false information. I prefer the truth, even when it is uncomfortable.
Performance Reviews and Feedback
Job appraisals can be helpful even when they contain negative feedback. I was told directly that I had "an interpersonal skills problem." I was told I slammed the phone down when ending calls. I now have to find a different outlet — pounding a fist, perhaps — because I use a flat cellphone. To be clear: temper tantrums, including the use of swear words, are not recommended. I feel genuine stress when I receive negative feedback, and I work to implement corrective action.
Earlier, I discussed the challenge for the reviewer of being trained to explain the details of the interpersonal skills problem. Thus, there is often less gained from these reviews, although the person must be willing to listen carefully without letting emotions get in the way.
Sadly, people can lose their jobs for much weaker reasons than mine. Not being a fit for a position is a real outcome, not an excuse.
Working with Difficult Bosses
Workers and bosses come in different styles. Some prefer confrontation, which requires enough working knowledge to formulate follow-up questions quickly enough to hold your ground. That rapid formulation of appropriate questions is a genuine weakness for me.
Knowing your boss — their personal situation, their strengths, their vulnerabilities — can be helpful, but only if you are actually in a position to act on that knowledge. An abusive management style affects all coworkers, not only the autistic person. The challenge is to let the boss exhaust themselves, do your job with whatever self-confidence you can sustain, and hold on.
When people have decided I was not a fit, some did not simply let me go. They worked at it — what I think of as the spinning crocodile, which does not take one clean bite but rolls and rolls until the prey is exhausted. Difficult questions, constant surveillance, criticism for asking questions I should have answered independently, general hostility, finger-pointing, physical gestures. The cumulative effect is dizziness and visible frustration — which then becomes evidence that you are the problem. Eventually, you either almost quit or are eaten alive.
I was told something worth passing on: the reaction after a bad event is often worse than the bad event itself. Overreacting compounds the damage. Restraint, in the immediate aftermath of something painful, is a skill worth developing.
Being Attacked or Teased: Ask Questions or Laugh to Fight Back
I want to name something I call the body slam — when a boss or superior takes an aggressive tack against you. Examples I have encountered: "I don't trust you." These are hard to respond to in real time, because it takes too long for the autistic person to formulate a response during a live conversation.
The best response I have found: "What do you have to gain by being so hard on me?" Ideally, said with a degree of lightness — even a laugh — though that is an advanced solution and not always available.
The key insight is this: if you can recognize that you are being verbally attacked, respond with a question rather than a statement. Not a punch, not a sharp retort — a question. This is not intuitive. It is not something I learned as a child, since I did not talk as a toddler. But it is the most effective tool available in those moments. Fighting back from verbal aggression is done through inquiry, not through escalation.
Childhood teasing is the same – respond with a laugh or question but it is hard for an autistic person to process the event and act fast enough with the response. One has to have the confidence in themselves to think outside to find common ground with the attacker.
Feelings and Emotions
People have asked me whether I have feelings or emotions. I do. But I may not laugh, smile, emote, or react to humor in the way others expect. I respond to different stimuli. I have genuine feelings about some things and block others out entirely — often because I need to complete work, and feelings are competing for the same bandwidth.
This is worth stating plainly, because the assumption that autistic people are emotionally flat or indifferent is wrong. The expression is different. The feelings are real.
Negotiation
Negotiation is not unique to autism, but every person needs to understand its fundamentals: fairness, thorough research from a position of some distance, and the goal of finding a resolution that both sides can accept. For the autistic person, the advantage in negotiation is preparation — the ability to gather and organize information before the conversation begins. The disadvantage is real-time adjustment, reading the other person's responses and adapting accordingly. Know your preparation advantage. Know the real-time limitation. Structure your negotiations to favor the former.
Gratitude
People appreciate being thanked. The autistic person's vulnerability here is real: it is easy to be so absorbed in your own situation that you do not register how much someone has helped you — and therefore do not acknowledge it.
I thank my family, my friends, my teachers, and the people I have worked with who helped me through the stages of my life. I am also aware that accepting a compliment gracefully is its own skill — it is a form of relating to the person offering it, and that requires presence and reciprocity. Both giving and receiving recognition are worth practicing.
Research and Finding Answers
Research is the ability to find answers to questions. In an earlier era, answers came from libraries. Now they come from online searches. But there is no substitute for reaching out directly to a person who might have an answer — or finding a company that sells the product you need, or going to a school or city that holds institutional knowledge.
Once you can formulate the question, you have structure. Once you have structure, you — or your support network — can find the answer. The formulation of the question is often the hardest step. It requires knowing enough to know what you don't know. That is not easy for anyone, and it is harder for the autistic person navigating unfamiliar social terrain.
Meeting Notes and AI
I tried to listen carefully in meetings, taking notes — a process that requires picking out important points in real time, under the pressure of simultaneous conversation. I actually served as the note-taker for sales meetings at a small company. It was an excruciating process.
By the end of my career, in 2025, Google Gemini was taking meeting notes for me, being able to listen and process and summarize actual human speech. Artificial intelligence made retiring easier – one example of my services no longer needed. I say that with genuine appreciation and a measure of humor.
Retirement
I am retired from working for a company. I do not have an accomplishment like taking a firm public, into acquisition or venture financing. My story is about the day-to-day grind — the sustained effort that supported me from my transition in my thirties to my sixties, through ups and downs and quiet competence in the background. I look forward to contributing to charitable work.
Taking Risks
I do not gamble at casinos. It is too loud and I do not think my mind is quick enough for blackjack and other games.
In my life, I am socially uncomfortable and do not have the relationships with people, including coordinating with neighbors in getting work done. I have been willing to take risks in trying to work out solutions myself. In addition, any conversation is risky because I feel awkwardness but I have to participate somehow. Also, do I know what considerations to research?
I have hired cleaners. However, there are slow and arduous tasks in organizing and cleaning a house that I chose to do. I cleaned and removed mold, dust and mouse waste to save money and avoid being overcharged. Wearing a mask is a good idea. I also will climb a ladder to paint trim around a house or clean a roof, but not too high off the ground. I like do-it-yourself work. Your savings for the cost of the work is tax free compared paying a contractor on net earnings after taxes. Of course, there is a risk of completing work that is not as good as done by a paid contractor. And, the risk of getting physically hurt, including hospitalization.
A hidden cost of life is the use of your storage space for possessions. Being organized is a necessity for the autistic person my mind does not want overstimulation. Whenever possible, unnecessary possessions should be donated to charity or people in need and not given to for-profit cleanout companies when the house is sold.
What Education Actually Gave Me
In college, I learned how to study for examinations by having determined self-discipline and executing the siege mentality. Hard work is a necessity for success. I attended a northern college so any cold weather today is compared to those days. My semester abroad turned out to be the most practically useful part of my education — it led directly to a job with a United Kingdom-based company years later. My MBA exposed me to golf in the South, which helped on family trips to Florida. I took enough accounting courses during my MBA to complete the remaining coursework for my CPA at age 47.
I did have social skills improvement in my school years prior to age 25, but completed a lot of catch-up while after age 30. The transition in the 1990’s was that important to gain the identity of being in the autistic spectrum. Social skills practice later in life helps also but to this day I feel the ceiling of my autism.
School Studying Tips
- Choose a school strong in your area of interest. A genuine passion for the subject can help overcome the difficulty of listening to lectures and navigating social interaction in class.
- Study actively. Write things down. Memorize for two hours, then take a break — walk around to let the material settle — then return. Prioritize ruthlessly, and be patient. Expect to spend roughly twice as long preparing for an examination as a typical high-achieving student.
- Do one task at a time. Concentrated effort on a single task. Do not multitask.
- Go on the offensive early. Work hard at the beginning of each term and get ahead. It is harder to come from behind — other students catching up will have a social and communication edge that makes the same time investment more productive for them. Your early lead is your advantage.
- Patience is essential. The ability to grind slowly toward academic results, without losing heart, is one of the autistic person's most valuable qualities in an educational setting.
- Testing works in your favor. Memorization does not require you to talk to anyone. There is a structure to examinations — you prepare for it, you execute it, and the score reflects the work. That is a fair playing field.
- A profession having an entrance exam. Again, for me, memorization was easier than the interview.
- Siege mentality. I have to go into the hole and block the world out before final exams. Memorization does not require you to talk to anyone.
- Survivor. A psychiatrist used that term with me in college. I wrote one day, “Joking is fun, but seriousness gives you the willpower to move ahead. The danger is blocking out what is going on around you, but I managed to get through college despite struggling to listen to the lectures.
- Diary of names of people I meet. I did not do this, and I should have because I have a hard time remembering names.
Improving Interpersonal Skills
I have encountered very few clear explanations of what "relating" actually means in practice, so here is mine.
Two people meet — one non-autistic, one autistic. What the autistic person may not always know or consider is that the non-autistic person is continuously performing: facial expressions, smiles, head and body movements, statements, jokes — all deployed to develop a connection. The essence of socializing is the ability to listen to words while simultaneously processing body language, whether in a one-on-one conversation or a group. If a person can listen, react, and even mirror the other person, they will be liked.
The brain has to process all of this fast enough to smile at the right moment, or laugh at the right beat in a joke. There is enormous variation between individuals in that processing speed — measured in microseconds, and genuinely difficult to describe. It is what people mean when they say someone is "quick on their feet."
I believe — and I want to emphasize this as my opinion — that everyone, autistic or not, is affected by differences in processing speed. The spectrum of quickness is broad. Autism simply places a person at a specific and challenging point on that spectrum.
When a non-autistic person knows they are not connecting, they may increase their efforts — more smiles, more gestures — trying to elicit a response. This can frustrate the autistic person, who is already working at capacity just to follow the conversation. Sometimes the autistic person does eventually laugh — but too late, and with effort, rather than naturally.
There is another painful variation: someone who mimics your speech patterns back at you. If you have difficulty speaking clearly — a stutter, a monotone, a halting delivery — being mimicked is not playful. It is humiliation.
I know that I was so angry at times that I simply did not want to interact with people, and I could not smile. With very expressive, fast-moving people on a date — lots of hand gestures, rapid facial expressions, quick verbal exchanges — I give up quickly. Socialization is hard work. I fall asleep easily at the end of most days. Rest and naps are genuinely important. Even lying awake in a dark, quiet room can allow the brain to recover from the accumulated stimulation of social interaction.
Role-Playing and Humor
Role-playing can help people on the spectrum develop familiarity through practice. But in my honest opinion, it is impossible to fully escape the neurology — that is the diagnosis. You can build skill at the margins. You cannot rewire the underlying architecture.
My own sense of humor tends toward the dry, understated one-liner. I have difficulty remembering stories that build to a punchline — the traditional joke format. Humor is tricky, because the wrong comment can backfire badly. Humor is also largely spontaneous, which makes it genuinely hard to plan. What I have found works: observe the situation, look for an absurd or ironic angle, and offer it quietly. If it lands, it lands. If it does not, let it go.
One thing worth understanding about laughter: it is not easily faked. Each person laughs at the pace their brain can process the comedic impulse. Laughter is a powerful form of communication — it says a great deal without words, and it cannot really be manufactured on command. I have observed self-help classes on communication where the most verbally quick and socially responsive participants dominated, because they were naturally the fastest laughers and responders. The class was designed to help people like me, but it most visibly rewarded people who already had the skills.
People sometimes use laughter to respond to insults — a kind of social judo that deflects hostility. That is an advanced technique. For the autistic person simply trying to stay present and engaged, the more basic goal is to find at least one genuine moment of connection in each interaction, and hold on to it.
Physical Health and Presentation
A healthy diet and regular exercise matter — not only for physical health but for appearance and energy. Take care of your teeth as the smile is important. I have had braces even as an adult. I discussed contact lenses earlier which works for some people. Obviously dress for the occasion if possible. I am not a doctor, so I will not offer medical recommendations here.
In the 1996 job interviews, I did wear my contact lenses with a blue suit, dress white shirt, tie and business shoes.
Claude AI wrote, “How you look affects how others respond to you, and that affects everything downstream.”
Ability to Speak and the Voice
Talking matters — the sound, the inflection, and the timing of your voice. But how you listen also affects the quality of your voice when you speak. Try to be softer rather than rough. Let the voice resonate in your chest when talking. Aim for a quality of confidence, warmth, and presence — awareness of the other person and the purpose of the conversation.
Know who you are talking to. Know the reason for the conversation. Know what qualifications and knowledge you bring to it. That preparation reduces the likelihood of speaking from confusion or anxiety, which is when the voice becomes its worst.
I was told that mirroring — imitating the reactions of others — is how many people naturally learn to smile. Babies develop this capacity from birth, absorbing and reflecting the expressions of their caregivers. For some reason, as a baby, I had difficulty forming the neural connections required to execute that imitation. The closest approximation I have found as an adult: treat it the way an actor treats a role. An actor imitates a character. I imitate what I understand a socially engaged person to look and sound like.
Listening
Listening is easier in a one-on-one situation than in a group. The single most important rule of listening is simple: let people finish what they are saying before responding. Do not interrupt. Interrupting signals that you stopped listening — and in most cases, the other person will stop trusting you with what they had left to say.
Professional interviewers can smile and immediately generate a follow-up question. If something occurs to you, do not be afraid to ask it — but equally, do not feel compelled to fill every silence. Keep meetings short when you can. Avoid long monologues. Listen until you can no longer listen, and then ask a question to re-anchor the conversation.
Emphasis Words and Monotone
I was known to speak in monotone. The corrective insight is this: every syllable of every word has a different pitch or accent, and word combinations carry their own tonal variations. Saying "front door" — the word front is naturally emphasized over door. Practicing emphasis at the syllable and word level gradually loosens the monotone.
Consonants and Speech Pacing
Pronounce the consonants. Articulate the letters of each word. Speak slowly enough to be clear. Some people can speak quickly and still be understood — speak as fast as you can without mumbling. Clarity matters more than speed.
Eye Contact
Until relatively recently, I did not fully appreciate that looking away from a person during conversation gives the impression — unintentional but real — of not caring for them. Looking at people is a skill: not staring, but not allowing the eyes to wander either. People observe eyes closely, and they draw conclusions about emotion and engagement from what they see there.
When I was younger, I made no eye contact at all. I was using every available resource simply to talk — I had nothing left for managing how I appeared to others. Perhaps when hearing and processing spoken language is already so demanding, eye contact genuinely is a luxury. Eye contact is appropriate while listening, but can feel overwhelming for the autistic person due to the intensity of sustained direct gaze. The bandwidth is not there.
I do believe this can be improved with practice. I do not have a clear memory of anyone giving me specific, practical feedback on how to improve eye contact without crossing into staring. Current guidance from AI tools suggests: approximately 50% eye contact while talking, 70% while listening. Focus on one eye, then the other, then the nose, and look away briefly after four to five seconds.
The Body and Stage Presence
Interpersonal skills can also be developed through what actors do — body conditioning, breathing exercises, vocal range work. Actors train their lips, tongue, jaw, sinuses, and chest resonance. They work on articulation and posture. Posture matters: sitting up straight improves vocal clarity and projects confidence.
I had the specific problem of jerking my head while talking. Keeping the head still requires conscious adjustment — slowing down, breathing, deliberate stillness. For me, practice helped more than knowing the theoretical techniques.
Conversations
Skilled communicators can process an extraordinary amount of information in fractions of a second — reading words, tone, body language, context, and subtext simultaneously. People on the spectrum process what they can handle, which is less — sometimes significantly less. Improvement comes with self-awareness, practice, and the ability to identify and prioritize the most important signals. Getting by with limited information is the reality. Sometimes, limited information is enough.
One challenge that often goes unnamed: recognizing who you are actually speaking with. Are they representing themselves, or an organization? Are they protecting themselves by hiding behind an institutional identity? Do you know more about the subject than they do? Do they want to listen to you — and are you genuinely open to listening to them? What are their body language and facial expressions communicating, and what are yours?
One crucial skill is the follow-up question — the ability to process what the other person has said and generate a question that keeps the conversation moving. This is where processing speed affects everyone, not only autistic people. My own slower reaction time can make others uncomfortable, even when no discomfort is intended. The split-second differences are real and very difficult to measure.
David Brooks, in How to Know a Person, described actual conversation as the exchange of emotions and feelings through voice and body movement — not merely the transfer of information. The other person may also have a completely different objective for having the conversation than you do. Both of those realities require bandwidth I often did not have: my struggles with eye contact, listening, consonant pronunciation, and occasional stuttering made every conversation a genuine challenge. Then add the possibility of someone mimicking those struggles — as a form of humiliation — and the difficulty compounds.
Practical Conversation Skills
In face-to-face conversations, body control, posture, and sustained attention to the subject matter are important. The key skill is generating questions as the conversation evolves — not waiting for the conversation to end, but staying active within it.
Questions that begin with who, what, or describe are useful anchors. I have been continually surprised by how quickly skilled journalists and television personalities generate exactly the right question in real time. The goal is to keep the conversation going — which means thinking of the next question rather than the next statement. This can feel counterintuitive. Some people are most effectively engaged not by your answers, but by your questions.
I have faced the opposite problem: giving speeches rather than having exchanges. Rambling on rather than listening. Perhaps I get bored, or perhaps I have simply run out of bandwidth for listening.
One observation from Rowan Williams' Being Human that stayed with me: silence in a conversation is not necessarily failure. Silence can follow a genuinely loaded question — "Tell me about yourself" — and the silence itself communicates something. The autistic person who freezes at such a question is not failing. They are processing. The challenge is managing that silence so it does not read as absence.
Temper and Anger
My family gave me direct feedback that I had difficulty managing my temper. My processing speed was too slow to produce a sharp verbal response in the moment — the instinctive retort, the four-letter word. Instead, I would stamp my foot, or hit myself in the head. I wanted, in those moments, to revert to being a two-year-old — to have the tantrum I could not articulate. On some occasions, I gave people a blank stare — the body language of extreme distress, though it likely read to others as coldness or contempt.
As I noted earlier, I was told I liked to slam the phone down when ending difficult calls. I now use a flat cellphone, so that particular outlet is gone. I have had to find alternatives — pounding a fist, for example. Temper tantrums, including the use of swear words, are not recommended. I feel genuine stress when I receive negative feedback. What experience has given me is the ability to recognize, more quickly than before, when a situation qualifies as a genuinely bad experience — and to respond proportionately rather than explosively.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to accurately perceive, appraise, and express emotion. A good listener takes responsibility for making a genuine effort to understand how the other person thinks, feels, and experiences the world. That requires identifying connections, understanding both sides of a situation, and actively seeking out insight and information.
Now that I have clarity about being autistic, I can at least view anger in perspective. When someone asks a hurtful question, the most useful response is to ask them, calmly, why they asked it. When someone asks me to do something that makes no logical sense to me, my reaction can be intense — that is real. The autistic person's need for logical consistency runs deep.
The autistic person is well known for depending on predictable routine. A surprise — even a small one — can register as a shock, leading to emotional overload, unless the autistic person has developed enough perspective to absorb it. Building that perspective is one of the most important long-term goals of personal development on the spectrum.
The more you understand a situation — including both sides of it — the less likely you are to overreact, complain disproportionately, or come across as a chronic complainer. That said: if there is genuine abuse, a complaint is appropriate and necessary. Knowing the difference between a situation that requires tolerance and one that requires action is itself a form of emotional intelligence.
Practice Your Skills
I have mentioned dating a compatible person and volunteering as ways to practice social skills. Adult education is genuinely useful. Social clubs can help if you can tolerate the stimulation they involve. Whatever format works — use it consistently. I have no doubt that one’s social skills regress if they are not practice or if the person is isolated alone.
Reciprocity
Autistic people struggle with reciprocity — the back-and-forth exchange that sustains a relationship. In my own case, something as basic as exchanging a smile was affected. Reciprocating means finding a balance — doing enough that the other person can genuinely consider you a friend. Not performing, but participating.
I found that I could substitute in practical ways. Helping with physical household chores as discussed earlier on risk taking— these were forms of contribution I could offer reliably when charm, humor, and easy conversation were not available. Putting genuine effort into selecting Christmas gifts for a socially active family is another example. It takes giving to make and keep friends.
The autistic person generally has to offer more in practical terms such as completing favors for people than the outgoing person who makes friends easily through humor and a natural smile. That is not an injustice to be resented — it is simply the reality of starting from a different point. Do activities with others that you genuinely enjoy. The enjoyment is visible, even when the social fluency is not. I now know why I could not be friends with some people due to my autism – not enough reciprocation or too much work to create the reciprocation.
One useful perspective: babies do nothing. They cannot converse, they cannot reciprocate, they cannot contribute. And yet people love them, tolerate them, and invest in them — because of their responsiveness and their growth. The autistic person, in many ways, is on a longer developmental timeline and has to make effort to gain support from others.
Appreciation
I am genuinely appreciative of the people who made the effort to befriend me — and of the consultants and professors whose guidance shaped my thinking. Being appreciative requires absorbing what is happening around you, and an autistic person who must block out key stimuli simply to remain functional may not be able to express appreciation as fully or as promptly as others expect.
I am not qualified to recommend medication, and I have real concerns about side effects. My own path was hard work, playing to my strengths, believing in willpower, and setting the weaknesses aside where I could not overcome them. Knowing yourself is essential for managing money, time, and the effort of self-improvement. Your potential is shaped by your neurological condition, and with practice people can improve but from my experience I could not go into some social circles unlike other people I know.
I am open to learning about brain research, though it is beyond the scope of this site. One honest consolation: you do not fully know what you are missing until you observe what others can do that you cannot — more frequent laughter, for instance, or easy conversation in a noisy room. That observation can sting, but it also clarifies. Participation with others will always be calibrated to your actual capacity to handle the stimuli around you. The people around you must be willing to accept you, and you must be willing to accept the situation and choose carefully what you participate in.
2026 Reading
David Brooks How to Know Another Person
David Brooks described five types of people: Outgoing, Organized, Curious, Nervous, and Kind — corresponding, respectively, to leaders, efficient operators, inventors, lighthouse keepers watching for danger, and caregivers. My career fell squarely in the Organized category — analytical work done for businesses, behind the scenes. But Brooks also argued that in life, each person must do all five things to some degree: lead others through conversation, invent solutions for themselves, watch for dangers, and care for people who need help. That is a fuller picture of what a complete life requires.
One idea from Brooks that I had never encountered before: a person can learn to hear the voices of others replaying in their mind — imitating internally the way people have spoken to them. I would never have thought to do this deliberately. It is a form of social learning that happens naturally for most people and has to be consciously constructed for someone on the spectrum.
Brooks referenced researcher Malgorzata Puchalska-Wasyl, who described four inner voices used in self-talk: the Faithful Friend, who reminds you of your strengths; the Ambivalent Parent, who offers criticism; the Proud Rival, who pushes you to compete; and the Helpless Child, who defaults to self-pity. All four voices are recognizable to me. Knowing which one is speaking at any given moment is itself a form of self-awareness.
In the research of my family trees, I did find a distant direct ancestor from Poland named Malgorzata.
Social Styles and Personality
The Tracom Group, based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, offers a Social Styles model that I find useful. The four social styles based on observable behavior are: Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytical. Google AI summarizes the five core personality traits as: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
Tracom's observation that behavior is easier to change than personality resonated with me — though as an autistic person, I have always felt that I needed to change my personality first, believing that better behavior would follow. Whether that sequence is right or simply the way it felt from the inside, I cannot say with certainty.
Ideally, a person develops all four social styles over time. I lost a job because my behavior was predominantly analytical, and it conflicted with the expressive style of my boss — who concluded that I did not understand the big picture. Looking back, the big picture the boss was describing was largely social: the ability to communicate comfortably across levels of an organization and to project confidence in real time. That was not a technical failure. It was an interpersonal one.
Rowan Williams on Human Consciousness
In January 2026, I read Rowan Williams' Being Human. Williams argued that human consciousness has a fundamentally relational dimension — that we connect to others and to ourselves through language. He described autism as a brain condition that disrupts this relational model of consciousness. That framing confirmed, from a philosophical direction, something I had understood from lived experience: the oxymoron at the center of my life — Alien Being.
Williams also made a case for broad education that combines left-brain analytical study with right-brain embodied experience — sports, drama, music, and leisure. That combination, he argued, produces a more complete person. It is a vision I wish I had encountered earlier. The left-brain path was the one I followed, because it was the one available to me. The right-brain dimensions were casualties of that necessity.
Williams emphasized faith in a supreme being as an affirming source — a grounding outside the self. Brooks, by contrast, described the person as a self-creator. Both perspectives have something to offer. The autistic person, who often must build their social self deliberately and consciously rather than absorbing it naturally, may find something useful in both framings.
Emma Hubbard on Early Childhood Autism
I also found value in the YouTube videos produced by Emma Hubbard on early childhood autism, which include concrete examples of eye contact and early social development. I recommend them to parents of young autistic children, and to autistic adults who want to understand what the early developmental literature looks like in practice.
A Final Note
Please send your comments by email to letters@alienbeing.org
Bibliography
Attwood, Tony. Asperger's Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals. Bristol, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998.
Bennett, Jennifer W., and Cindee Q. Peterson. "The Touch Inventory for Elementary School-Aged Children: Test-Retest Reliability and Mother-Child Correlations." The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1994.
Brooks, David. How to Know a Person. New York: Random House, 2023.
Dilts, Robert. Neuro-Linguistic Programming: The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience, Volume I. Capitola, CA: Meta Publications, 1980.
Feldendrais, Moshe. The Potent Self. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1985.
Grandin, Temple, PhD. "My Experiences with Visual Thinking, Sensory Problems and Communication Difficulties." Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State University, February 1996.
Google AI. Recent searches conducted online, 2026.
Hallowell, Edward M., M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D. Answers to Distraction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Hallowell, Edward M., M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D. Driven to Distraction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Hatch-Rasmussen, Cindy, M.A., OTR/L. "Sensory Integration." Beaverton, OR: Therapy Northwest, PC, 1995.
Hoopman, Kathy. All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006.
Hubbard, Emma. "10 Subtle Signs of Autism Most Parents Miss" and related videos. YouTube, various dates.
Kaufman, Barry Neil. Giant Steps. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1979.
Kaufman, Barry Neil. Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues. Tiburon, CA: H.J. Kramer Inc., 1994.
Kelly, Kate, and Peggy Ramundo. You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: A Self-Help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder. New York: Fireside, 1995.
Klin, Ami, PhD, and Fred R. Volkmar, M.D. "Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Assessment, Diagnosis, and Intervention." New Haven, CT: Yale Child Study Center, Learning Disabilities Association of America, June 1995.
McCallion, Michael. The Voice Book. New York: Theatre Arts Books, Routledge, 1988.
Merrill, David W., and Roger H. Reid. Personal Styles and Effective Performance. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1981. (The Tracom Group's Social Styles Model was first discussed in this volume.)
Moreno, Susan, M.A., and Anne M. Donnellan, PhD. High-Functioning Individuals with Autism. Crown Point, IN: MAAP Services, 1991.
Nowicki, Stephen, Jr., PhD, and Marshall P. Duke, PhD. Helping the Child Who Doesn't Fit In. Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 1992.
Pennington, Bruce F. Diagnosing Learning Disorders: A Neuropsychological Framework. New York: The Guilford Press, 1991.
Peterson, John. Enemies of the Secret Hide-Out. New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1966. (Children's book.)
Rimland, Bernard. Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior. Originally published 1964. Current paperback edition: Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Robison, John Elder. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008.
Rodier, Patricia M., Jennifer L. Ingram, Barbara Tisdale, Sarah Nelson, and John Romano. "Embryological Origin for Autism: Developmental Anomalies of the Cranial Nerve Motor Nuclei." The Journal of Comparative Neurology. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester School of Medicine, Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry, 1996.
Rodier, Patricia M., PhD, and Susan L. Hyman, M.D. "Early Environmental Factors in Autism." Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Pediatrics, 1998.
Rodier, Patricia M. "The Early Origin of Autism." Scientific American, February 2000.
Shore, Stephen M., M.A. Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co., 2001.
Shore, Stephen M., M.A., and Linda G. Rastelli, M.A. Understanding Autism for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing Inc., 2006.
Simone, Rudy. Asperger's on the Job. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons Inc., 2010.
Stanford, Ashley. Business for Aspies. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011.
State of Connecticut. Building a Bridge from School to Adult Life for Young Adults with Disabilities in Connecticut. 2001 edition.
Tannen, Deborah, PhD. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.
Tieger, Paul D., and Barbara Barron-Tieger. Do What You Are. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1992.
Weiss, Jared "The Backstory on Wemby’s Viral Kick Is Even More Wild Than the Video of It." The New York Times, January 9, 2026.
Williams, Karen. "Understanding the Student with Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Teachers." Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Medical Center, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Hospital. Pro-Ed., Inc., June 1995.
Williams, Rowan. Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018.