Hello, and welcome to Autistic Social Advice!
The goal of this blog is to actually explain social things in a way that autistic people will understand. So much social advice for autistic people boils down to “do X” without a full explanation of why X is important, how people will interpret X if you do it, and how people will interpret not doing X (ie, the social significance of X).
My theory is that allistic (non-autistic) people don’t actually know why they do certain social things - they pick it up naturally and just know how to do it automatically. For them, it’s like learning to talk: something they can’t remember learning, and something picked up intuitively without ever being taught directly. When you ask them to explain why they do something, the general response seems to be to splutter and get defensive because they’ve never had to think about it before.
Autistic people don’t pick up social skills naturally, so for us social skills are more like a second language learned as an adult. We can learn social skills, and become quite fluent with social skills, but it takes focus, dedication, and clear lessons.
I’m here to help with those clear lessons and break down social situations and analyse exactly what’s happening from the perspective of everyone involved.
You don’t need to be autistic to ask a question: allistic folks can find this sort of analysis helpful as well! I’m also happy to try and “translate” behaviour across the autistic/allistic divide.
About Asa
You can call me Asa - it’s not my real name, but if you are very clever you might be able to figure out why I picked it.
I’m an autistic woman who was diagnosed recently, at age 34. Since I was diagnosed so late, I’ve never had access to any kind of accommodations, and I learned to analyse social situations as a coping mechanism. It developed into a bit of a special interest, and I enjoy it now! I love giving advice to friends (and strangers on the internet), and I hope I’m able to reach other autistic people who could benefit from my skills.