Unmasking Autism Diary #12: Why Autistics Ask So Many Damn Questions

Read now (6 mins) | Double Empathy Problem: from inside Angela's Autistic mind

May 24, 2023

Dear Diary,

Autistic people can be very literal. Because of our hyper connected brains and our tendency to be bottom-up thinkers, our minds can seem like one of those link charts you see on TV: the crime investigation boards with all the strings connecting things. We are trying to see all aspects of the topic. 

This leads to some serious miscommunications and allistic (non-Autistic) people thinking we are arrogant assholes. I wanted to share how that shows up with a story. 

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A lot of people come to me and they say I want to be a New York Times bestseller, and they want to write the story of their life and make lots of money from a book. They have no followers and no writing experience but their life has been crazy and people always say they should write a book. 

The other day a client came to me with a complaint. She had followed my process and got the result I promised, but it wasn’t the result she wanted. The result she wanted was to write the book she wanted to write and get the result she wanted to get.

I explained how great memoirs do come from unknown authors, but they tend to have been working on their craft as a writer for years or decades. If you aren’t dedicated and skilled as a writer, you can absolutely still write a book, but it’s unlikely to get a big advance and become an NYT bestseller. You need an agent in most cases and without a track record and a platform that will be difficult, you need 30-50,000 sales which will require quite a bit of marketing savvy, and the list is judged by editors who have exacting writing standards.

This is a pretty unachievable first goal, so I suggest we pick a more achievable goal together through my process. We talk through the options of different genres, goals, and marketing strategies. In this case, the author agreed to a book genre, goal, and marketing plan and we all signed off and got to work. 

But as our project started to wrap up, she reached out with a concern, she wanted to know how she would get that original goal of NYT bestseller status. I reminded her of our early discussions about this and how if she were going to go that route, we would have done the project differently. We would have created a platform building campaign, picked a different genre, and focused on getting a literary agent as a next step. 

“No,” she explained. She didn’t want any of that. She wanted this book and to be a NYT bestseller. 

I was confused. So we hopped on a call and I asked her to explain.

She said she was clear about what she wanted on the application and that we should not have ever taken her money if we couldn’t get that result for her. 

I explained we could get that result but it would be a 3-5 year process. She was adamant that if we couldn’t get her NYT bestseller status with her memoir, no list, and no writing experience we should not have taken her money. 

I reminded her of our strategy session where we reviewed the options and she remembered it exactly as I had. “I guess I should have said something then, but you kept telling me to trust the process.”

‘Jeez,’ I thought, ‘Was I gaslighting her by saying trust the process?’ 

I had to get clarity. I began to build the detective-like link chart in my mind. 

I grilled her with questions: 

• Why didn’t she say something until now when the project was over? (She didn’t know.)

• Did I not make her feel safe? (That wasn’t it.)

• Did she remember when I said every week that it was her book, and I wasn’t the teacher, and that if something didn’t feel good to speak up to me or to someone else on my team? (She did.)

• Did she understand that in my role as developmental editor, my job was to help develop her ideas and create a strategy that matched with the content? (She did.)

• What should I have done differently?

She was clear. My mistake was taking her money. 

Okay so the problem was on the sales call? You felt like you were told on the sales call, you could be a NY Times bestseller with your platform, topic and writing experience? 

“Well no, but it was on my application.” 

“So wait, are you saying because that was on your application we shouldn’t have done a sales call with you at all?”

She was done with my questions and things got heated! “I AM NOT HERE TO BE INTERROGATED!”

“I’m not trying to interrogate you, I’m trying to understand what I did wrong so that I can make it right with you and not do it again,” I explained. 

“Well, I’m not going to stay here and be attacked. We can just say it’s me! I did everything wrong. I’m just stupid.”

Oh jeez. That is not what I was going for! I tried a different approach. 

“What do you want?” 

She wanted an apology.

I apologized but I did not apologize well. I have trouble making clear apologies when I don’t understand what I’m apologizing for.

I have gotten this feedback loudly before.

I was definitely clear she felt shitty about the experience and I was definitely sorry about that, but I could not take full responsibility for something that wasn’t adding up. 

My autistic brain was stunned. You have a complaint. I want to fix the complaint. To fix it I need to understand it. Who did what wrong when? 

That’s when it clicked for me. I was having an Autistic-Allistic communication breakdown. I was trapped in the double empathy problem again. 

Allistics are top-down processors. She started with a feeling that she was disappointed in the status of her book project. She had the idea that a full apology from me or maybe even a refund would make that feeling go away, so she wanted that and asked for it. 

Instead of just giving it to her, I went into bottom up (Autistic) processing. I wanted to build the link chart to find and correct the error which, if the evidence indicated culpability, would include the outcome she wanted. I was very open to that outcome, but I needed to understand what went wrong to do that. 

She didn’t want to get into the details. I didn’t want to stay on the surface. To her I looked like an arrogant asshole. To me she looked like she didn’t have receipts for her claim. Both of us lacked empathy for the other's perspective about how to solve the problem. That is a classic double empathy problem. 

As an Autistic person I have often been accused of being manipulative and looking at this situation I can see how my many questions could have made a top-down processor feel like I was trying to get my way by asking questions that proved my point. That was not what I was trying to do. I was trying to build a link chart. I was asking questions to get clarity.

I didn’t understand and I assumed there must be information I was missing.
But there was no missing information. Just a feeling and a desire.
This top-down approach didn’t click in my brain as just or logical—because it isn’t about justice, logic, or facts. It’s just about feelings and social connection.

When people say Autistics have social communication problems, this is what they mean. We miss the forest—everyone should be nice to each other and make everyone feel good even if it’s not logical—through the trees—the actual facts and evidence. 

Autistics ask a lot of questions because we want the answers. We aren’t trying to trick you, or manipulate you, or get our way. We are trying to get information for our link charts. That’s how our hyper-connected brains process information. Not in vague feelings but in specific facts and details. 

By the end of the call I did catch on to what was happening and realized there actually were no receipts. No more questions were going to get me a logical answer because this wasn’t about logic. I created a make-good olive branch which seemed to satisfy her desire to feel a little better about the situation, but which was also rooted in integrity with my truth that no wrong was done. It wasn’t perfect but it was neurodiversity-affirming. 

Neurodiversity means we all have different brains and styles of thinking and they are all valid. I decided to just affirm top-down thinking in that spirit, but, if I’m being honest, I still personally prefer facts and evidence to ungrounded theories which makes it hard when most brains don’t share that value. 

***

The Dear Diary Project is a public journaling project where I’m publicly sharing my diary entries as part of my annual goals. No harm is intended by these posts. My goal is to gain clarity for myself and hopefully help others, especially autistic adults, who are trying to make sense of the communications challenges we face.

“Masking is a common coping mechanism in which Autistic people hide their identifiably Autistic traits in order to fit in with societal norms, adopting a superficial personality at the expense of their mental health. This can include suppressing harmless stims, papering over communication challenges by presenting as unassuming and mild-mannered, and forcing themselves into situations that cause severe anxiety, all so they aren’t seen as needy or “odd.”
—Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price

*Background note: Most people only have a vague (often, highly stereotyped) version of autism in their minds and believe that autistic children need ABA therapy to "overcome" their disability and appear "normal."  After receiving an autism diagnosis in her thirties, Dr. Angela Lauria realized that she too had been mostly unaware of what it means to be Autistic.  Like so many people, she started her journey by first gathering information and resources from the omnipresent (and problematic) Autism Speaks, but eventually moved away from the 'autism community' in favor of the 'Autistic community,' where she found kinship with other Autistic individuals and learned to let go of pathologizing language like 'Autism Spectrum Disorder' and 'Asperger's Syndrome.'  This autism blog (and her autism podcast, "The Autistic Culture Podcast") is meant to share her lived-experience insights to support others on a similar journey of diagnosis, understanding, and community. Embrace Autism--differences are not deficits.