Why the Low Self Esteem Thing is not Universal

Here I’m following up my yesterday’s post.

It occurred to me that some people may be thinking “not every autistic has low self esteem, so it can’t be an autistic thing, it’s just you, Kay.”

Nope, it’s not just me, it’s very common. I agree it’s not universal though, so perhaps I can give some examples to explain why. Or give you my personal take on the reasons, anyway.

Example 1. Let’s take for example a real person you may have heard of: Stephen Wiltshire. He is an amazingly talented artist who can draw entire cityscapes from memory. It’s absolutely mind-blowing, please check out his work. I hope Stephen will forgive me if I get this wrong, but I understand he is semi-verbal and obviously autistic, so he couldn’t hide that even if he wanted to. But does it matter? Because of his talent, he is still able to contribute greatly to society and nobody expects him to be anyone other than who he is.

[Though I’m going to add here, I can understand he might get incredibly frustrated with people who dismiss his worth on the basis that he is a savant with this god-given ability which comes to him like magic (without years of dedicated practice). Idiots.]

Example 2. I’m thinking here of some young autistics (usually men) I’ve seen on TV on shows such as “Love On The Spectrum”. They’ve grown up having therapy or coaching in speech and/or behaviour and have absorbed the concept that their autism is a disability not a personal flaw. Based on their experiences as a child, it may seem that there will be help and opportunities in life despite or because of ASD.

Example 3. Imagine a person, it could be anyone, your neighbour or colleague or cousin. This person has no special abilities and might be considered a little odd. You may see them as awkward, or abrasive, or aloof, or self-absorbed. They may or may not have been formally diagnosed autistic. Regardless, what you don’t see is the effort they are putting in to stay afloat in a world based on neurotypical expectations, where (for them) everything is just that little bit more uncomfortable or overwhelming or simply, in various ways, difficult than you might think.

I put it to you that, regardless of their individual personalities, levels of optimism or resilience or whatever else, some of the autistics in these examples are more likely to have self-esteem issues than others. It depends on their accumulated life experiences, situation, and whether they are able to meet their own and others’ expectations.

Unpacking the Low Self-Esteem Thing

I’ve been on holiday, it was fun. Will post pics at some point, honest. Just haven’t uploaded them yet.

Anyhow, I was just thinking about why I have issues with low self-esteem and wondering if it was an autistic thing and why and whether I could explain it. Because I haven’t seen anybody do that. Maybe that’s why autistic burnout is only recognised amongst autistics – because we know how our lives are difficult but we never properly explain it to anyone else?

Well, it’s late and I should be going to bed… so instead I’m going to give this a crack. Might be a bit rough and ready, OK?

Obviously I can only speak for my own experience here, and I’m kind of assuming other autistics may have similar, but it’s hard to tell. (See above, we rarely try to openly explain this).

And a lot of non-autistics are going to recognise these thoughts/experiences also but I have to ask you kindly to accept that although these may be common to humanity in general, the degree and impact on autistics is somehow worse. I can’t always explain why these things are more difficult for us, but have been forced to conclude that they truly are.

So… I guess the day starts with a little bit of conditioned anxiety. Because I know what I’m like and all the things I’m going to struggle with and all the things I’m going to get wrong and I don’t really want to face it. But I can get past that because I have a mental schedule – I need to get up when the alarm rings, eat breakfast, get dressed, get in the car, etc etc. I just follow the routine. (Is this why schedules are important for autistics? I don’t know).

Now if I’m going out, the main problem is that there are people. Don’t get me wrong, I love people. All of you! (OK, nearly all of you). And I actually have something I would like to talk about with someone. But wow, people-land is so confusing. Even now, after more than 50 years on Earth, I really don’t get it.

See, there are all these faces and some of them I’ve seen before and I kind of know roughly who they are but I can never remember their name in the moment. I don’t know why or even if that’s an autism thing or just a me thing. So if they speak to me I’m embarrassed from the get-go, trying to remember their name or where I met them before or whatever.

Some are strangers and that’s just freakin scary, right, because how are you supposed to behave around people you’ve never met before? So I avert my eyes and don’t look at them so there’s no chance of having to interact. And sometimes it turns out to be someone I know and I just walked right past and ignored them so I’ve been rude. Damn it.

But never mind, I navigate to the person who I know best and whose name I (usually) remember and if I’m on the ball I might say good morning or whatever greeting is appropriate. Then if I’m feeling brave I might decide to broach the thing I wanted to talk about.

But this is actually really tricky. Because you see, there are all these rules around the topics you are allowed to talk about and the appropriate way to talk about them, depending on your relationship to the other person. So I have to decide whether this person fits best in the box of a colleague or an acquaintance or a friend, and how close a friend they are, and whether they are senior or junior to me, or in a position of authority and expecting a certain level of deference, and on top of that, whether they are likely to be receptive, or uninterested, or too busy, or dealing with their own issues, or whatever. It’s a minefield, honestly. So I’m probably a tad hesitant, while I try to work all of that out and figure out the appropriate mode of saying the thing I wanted to say.

Yeah no, I have no idea why I can’t just learn how to interact with people and then remember it automatically. It’s just an autistic thing, OK? It seems like every time I end up trying to work it out all over.

In the meantime, my very good colleague/acquaintance/friend/person who I dearly like has decided to make conversation and is telling me something about their weekend/daughter/dog. This throws me for a loop because I have this sticky brain issue that makes it hard to switch track from thinking-about-what-I-was-going-to-say to listening-to-what-other-person-is-saying-and-reacting-appropriately. But I do my best and maybe some of their words get past the auditory processing block and I get the gist of it and realise it is quite amusing and manage to smile to show I got it. Maybe I succeed in an appropriate response also. Go me!

But here’s the thing about conversation, it’s not just one comment on one topic that you can think about for a while and come back later with a response. No! Now the person is saying something else to me and the topic has shifted slightly and it’s not amusing anymore but getting a bit deeper and don’t get me wrong I love deep conversation, I crave that sort of connection with people I really do. But for some reason my brain has decided nope, this is too much input too fast and is imploding. Like just kerblam! Overwhelm central, sirens going off, emergency shutdown imminent, got to get out of this situation NOW.

At this point I have most likely just turned away from the person and got intently absorbed in something else, like whatever is in reach that I can play with or whatever pretty object happens to be in sight. (Come to think, I sometimes have coffee with friends and do fairly decent conversation as long as I have in my hands a well-constructed coffee cup that takes a while to pull apart). But that’s not the norm, usually the implosion is more complete and spells the end of any attempts at conversation, plus leaves me feeling like I’ve been really rude, and not being able to apologise for being rude on account of no longer being capable of speech.

By now I might be a quarter through my day and already feeling stupid, embarrassed, tired, and generally upset with myself. And this kind of situation happens every day in every situation with people in it, in people-land. To state the obvious, those feelings are not conducive to generating a healthy level of self-esteem.

There’s another option, which is staying at home. A lot of autistics go with this one, but nope, not for me. I think too much. No, that’s not quite right. I obsess. Like something comes into my head and I start thinking about it and I try to work out every angle and every “what if…” and I turn it over in my mind over and over and over on constant repeat and I can’t seem to stop. OMG it’s exhausting. And in someone whose thoughts tend to gravitate towards all the things I am failing at, extremely unhealthy. Hello, anxiety and depression.

No, I’ll take people-land, thank you. Even if I get stuck with the whole interaction bit, at least I can sort of hang around and listen to other people and get out of my head for a while. You guys make me feel better, you really do.

But yeah, I get tired and after a while I sort of burn out in some way. I might go sort of quiet and stop trying to interact with people for days at a time. Or if it’s worse than that I might have to stay home for a while and not go out. And when it gets really bad I can’t even do stuff at home and am limited to lying around for 3 days watching Netflix. Or I might get frustrated with myself and force myself to get up and do something and then I will actually get ill.

In case you were wondering, burnout is also great for self-esteem. For destroying it, that is.

So yeah, there you have it, welcome to the joys of being autistic.