To say the last few weeks have been intense, demanding, absorbing and utterly full-on is an understatement. Moving house is always a big project but when you’ve been in the process of moving for nigh on a year, when most of your stuff has been in storage for months and arrives in anonymous looking boxes labeled obscurely by well-meaning packers and piled one on top of the other so you can’t actually read the labels anyway and when the excitable project inside your head that has been years in the making suddenly explodes into reality, that’s a lot going on for even the average person, let alone someone with a neurodivergent brain like mine.

With single-focused determination, I’ve arisen each new day to a mental task list as long as my arm and, with an equal-parts mixture of thrill and stern resolve to “get things done”, beavered away until I’ve dropped onto the sofa with eyes too tired to keep open beyond 8 o clock, and then done it all again the next day. To say I am risking burnout is another understatement but I don’t think you could stop me if you tried and at least I’m getting there or, should I say, we’re getting there because there’s two of us doing this.

Or is there because, let’s be honest, most of it is me, not just because my husband is back at his desk five days a week, nor because he’s unwilling to do more but because, as with every “shared” project in our lives, I’m the grand mastermind, the ringleader, the holder of the blueprint and I won’t let go of control. It always has to be this way because that’s the way my brain works, like some vast operations room inside my head, thus I won’t, ever, share my schemes fully with any other person alive…it would be too inefficient, too complicated, to explain or to delegate what I am already decided on. I’m a solo player to the nth, someone who knows how I like things done and I just happen to work better when I can do this with single-minded absorption; that’s just my way and anyone who knows me well will just get out of my way and let me get on with it if they know what’s good for them. I used to allow them to call this trait control-freakishness, something I should probably apologise for or fix, but now I see it all clearly as “just” another part of my autism, hardwired into my system and non-negotiable because its how I tick; I’m simply not able to be any other way.

Of course, this doesn’t make for the highest quality human interactions; because, when I’m most absorbed, communication goes to the wall and becomes perfunctory, brief and decidedly unflowery. So, whilst I’m not exactly “in trouble” right now (per my title), my extreme bluntness, even snappishness or waspishness (two words recently applied by my other half) has got me into a bit of friction lately and has certainly made waves for me in the past…so it seems like a good time to jot down a few words on the topic in case anyone else out there relates.

So what I am talking about here is autistic rudeness, bluntness and lack of filters combined, in this case, with runaway perfectionism and externalised hyperfocus (which is the most precarious kind since my areas of hyperfocus are usually more intellectual than practical, thus they don’t usually risk so many dealings, thus friction, with other people). Being an outwardly directed “special interest”, this house-project-thing is inevitably forcing me into more zones of human interaction than normal and herein lies much higher than average risk of rubbing people up the wrong way!

It’s not that I’m not in a bad mood as such, I’m just preoccupied…but, combined with blankness of facial expression, lack of eye contact, abruptness of speech (all prime autistic traits which tend to surface most when I am deeply absorbed), I can see how this could all be so easily misconstrued by anyone who is not also autistic and this, as ever, seems to be what keeps getting me into hot water. Offending people or having all the subtley of a sledgehammer are long-running pitfalls I’ve fallen into in the past and I can tell I am right on the brink of tumbling again if I don’t keep my level of self-awareness well-honed.

Also because this is all combined with intense tiredness…because lack of spoons always means my social abilities get pared right back to the bone, making for a white-knuckle kind of experience of my delivery style for those that have to live with me (the word “punchy” springs to mind). I’m also suffering a severe social hangover from the last few, unusually (for me) people-demanding, weeks while we were renting in the city and, for months prior to that, squished into one small room in a tiny cottage so, to be honest, I’m long overdue for, and desperately craving, a lot of alone time now, which is making me extra snappish when my solitude gets interrupted. In brief, I’m worn out and I just want to get this mammoth job done the most efficient way so I can quickly settle into our house. There are no frills to my social abilities when I become quite as single-minded or fixated (you could equally insert “obsessed”) like this. I have all my objectives clearly in my sights, which takes a lot of concentration for me, and heaven help anything or anyone that gets in my way. Sheer determination can be one of my main assets in life but is also one of my bulldozer traits, mowing down anyone that gets in my way.

Familiarity makes this even more perilous for those I live with and with whom I don’t feel I have to mask. It also makes family members the most likely casualties. I’ve been at the blunt end of this with various other neurodivergent family members in the past…and then some…but I certainly know how to dole it out myself and I still have to remind myself that not everyone in my domain, husband included, is autistic. It’s all too easy to assume family will keep taking these behaviours and bouncing back, however increased awareness of my autism is making me, at least a little more (if belatedly), aware of the perils of giving these particular autistic traits too much free rein. I’ve got no doubt in my mind that I’ve alienated people, even lost friendships, to my bluntness or lack of filters in the past; my challenge now being to curb it, as best I can, before I become a lonely old woman!

Which is unfortunate because, when I have the luxury of time, I can be highly empathetic but, when most driven, all that goes to pot and I just don’t stop and think about the cumulative effect of my “waspy” behaviour nor the long term collateral. I’m a big picture thinker (that’s exactly why I’m so obsessed right now…I’m in the sandpit of my greatest pleasures, strategising my new home together from all the fragmented chaos of our old life and more than a spadeful of new ideas) but what I leave out of that picture, first and foremost, when I’m running short of resources is often the human component. I have to remind myself the there’s no point having a ta-da moment when I complete my idea of the perfect house to find there is no one left who actually wants to be in it with me. This might be an exaggeration of what’s happening here but sometimes I have to scare myself with the extreme outcome to get myself to stop and take notice!

A classic sign I’m in runaway autistic behaviour is when I “think” I’ve reviewed a situation but yet done little improve it, consigning my new resolves straight to the back burner. This whole topic (of my “shortness”, my “difficultness” to be around) came up in of conversation with my husband last week (it was me who pointedly asked whether I was to blame for him being rather quiet and withdrawn…and, to be fair, there are other things on his mind right now, not least another family funeral coming up) yet a week later I’m still falling into the exact same pitfalls of ill-considered tone or content like I just can’t help myself..and that’s the whole point, I can’t!

Important to remember that this is my autism playing out, its a deficit (if we must use that word) in my brain, not a choice, to become so single minded that I lose all ability to mask or add frills, which then begs the question “do I even have to apologise for this, should I even have to feel any remorse for showing up the way I happen to be made?”. But, of course, I’m now so over-sensitive that “it’s me” and blaming myself every time my husband wears a glum expression or goes a little bit too quiet around me; so, my rejection sensitivity has inevitably kicked in, just to complicate matters further.

So DO I have to apologise or feel remorse for ceasing to mask how I really am or saying what I think the way it wants to come out? Shouldn’t I be able to drop all the masking behaviours, the acquired social niceties that have bled me dry all these years, especially when at home with family? Isn’t it a sign of finally landing home, kicking off my shoes, in this new place of ours, after years of feeling so misplaced and tangled up in the track record of pretence where we used to live before, that my nervous system is finally allowed to realise it is home and safe enough to just “be”, without all the mental coaching and self-editing? Isn’t it all the other people who have to start accepting me just as I am and work on their own rejection sensitivity, armed with the knowledge that my blunt delivery isn’t loaded with agenda or meanings as it would be if served up by a neurotypical person? Because my words simply aren’t that loaded weapon, they are just passing thoughts that externalise for a brief second, only to move on; no agenda, no politics or convolutions, no passive aggression, no reverse psychology or other strategies at work. I just happen to serve with a straight bat and then the moment is gone because I’ve moved onto the next ball coming over the net (though often left confounded as to why the game seems to have ceased because the other person doesn’t want to play with me any more). It’s a simple case, as far as I concerned, of social styles being at odds, not a reason for anyone to apologise or feel bad about themselves.

After all, what am I apologising for? If I say me piece when something doesn’t get done to plan or in the most logical way then how is it wrong if I point that out? If I’m a control freak, its not because I have a character defect but because I really need things to be a certain way; this isn’t an optional extra for me, so apologising for speaking out when my own needs aren’t being met, or when I see that things can still be improved, shouldn’t be made wrong. These things are important to me and should not to be trivialised, belittled or laughed-off by anyone with a more casual approach to doing things, even if they don’t fully relate. They are as fundamental to me as someone else’s preference for being more laid back or unconcerned about timescales. I find it incredibly hard, even disabling, when either my expectations aren’t met or at least a good attempt made to meet them and this is pretty fundamental to my mental wellbeing, especially if an objective has been previously discussed and agreed to. This is why it absolutely blew my synapses when the previous occupants didn’t move out of our house on moving day, for instance, and then left the house in such a state that I have had to beaver away at clearing-up and putting right what they left behind. This might not bother another person so much but for me it has been a real driver of obsession (and has perhaps made me a little blinkered in my approach) on top of everything else.

However I do relate to a point as I’ve been guilty of taking other autistic “deliveries” all wrong myself in the past, expressly because I’ve run them through the learned neurotypical assumptions I’ve been forced to ingrain all my life. When you are brought up in a neurotypical system, surrounded by neurotypical people, you are pretty-much forced to learn a neurotypical way of interpreting other people’s behaviours and meanings and this has been one of the hardest things for me to unlearn when confronted with people who are, likewise, autistic therefore much more like me in their operating system. Instead of thinking “this person, without any nastiness or agenda, is simply vocalising what they are thinking in this moment and with minimal frills (not because they are in a bad mood with me) but because they lack any additional words to use in this moment and therefore mean no actual harm by it”, I’ve allowed myself to go off down all sorts of convoluted avenues of trying to second guess some other subplot of what they are trying to tell me between the lines; non of which comes naturally to me, so I almost invariably get it wrong. If I can only remind myself that, being autistic too, they are probably communicating in a “style” that is much more akin to mine, thus no over-analysis or relationship devastation necessary, this can put me on much more steady, logical ground and then I don’t have to make communication so personal or fear inducing any more. With such a person, I don’t have to live in constant subliminal terror, based upon a lifetime of traumatic experiences, that what I say to them will potentially lead to abandonment and loss. I can only imagine how much less exhausting and precarious it would feel to be surrounded by mostly, if not all, neurodivergent people, much as was the family I grew up in, because then there would be far less scope for misconstruing behaviours but, of course, life is never that simple.

Also, if I’m honest, neither of us have very much language left in us right now as we are both systemically exhausted so (especially at the end of a busy day), when we do cobble together words, they might not be the most well-oiled phrases of our lives. Whilst not autistic, my husband is also prone to periods of shutdown when things get too much and I can see him ebbing and flowing into such phases quite a lot at the moment. Like me, his face can go completely blank for long periods or we both lose the ability to make eye contact for days on end and this can become another breeding ground for misunderstandings. I need to cut him some slack as well as myself.

As an important footnote, there’s clearly room for some serious self-compassion here. The ever-present perils of being misunderstood when you’re autistic are just wearying to the core. They’re like the elephant in the room that you’ve probably spent your whole life trying to navigate around whilst pretending to yourself there’s no obstacle to you socially engaging “just like everyone else”. You may, at various points, have become more aware of this elephant but tended to self-blame rather than seeing that it’s not so much a flaw as a difference in style creating all your problems. There’s an unspoken assumption, in almost every situation involving other people, that your way is wrong and is therefore the factor that has to change, thus you are always having to chip away at this ingrained agenda of self-modification, even before you do or say anything else. So when do you get to give yourself a break, to stand up for the way you are inherently wired, to go back to what (for you) is more natural and easy on the nerves because you don’t always have to walk on eggshells around other people because they now know you’re going to come across a bit differently?

You can live with a lot of subliminal shame, especially when undiagnosed autistic for a lot of years, so it’s time to let go of feeling so much unnecessary shame for behaviours that are hardwired into your brain and which should therefore be no more vilified than the particular colour of your eyes, being not something that is not “wrong” but just the way you happen to be made.

Resetting other people’s expectations of you can be hard but at least if you can start to work on your inner posse, the people you spend the most time with and lean into, day in and day out, then you at least get to unmask some of the time, without fearing adverse consequences. Tactfully educating them as to what constitutes “autistic traits” in your behaviour or delivery rather than (insert typical interpretation) can be so useful. Usually, my husband is the safest person in the world for me to be the very least filtered version of myself with but I guess everyone has their limits and relocating, plus a few other pressures, including another bereavement plus exhaustion, has made both of our fuses rather shorter than usual lately, plus the move has shown up some of my autistic traits more starkly than ever because I’ve had almost every trigger factor imaginable…tiredness, uncertainty, perfectionism, people-dealing, lack of control, overstimulation etc….stacked up against me. This is where the self-compassion piece comes in, for both of us, as we navigate this highly demanding time.

It can be especially hard when the person you live with isn’t also autistic, even if they are perhaps neurodivergent in other ways. It’s all too easy to assume they will get you, or forgive you anything, just because you are so close in other ways. They might strive really hard to accept your natural delivery mode and make huge exceptions when you’re overstimulated or at the point of burnout, which is the most likely time for all of your abilities to mask or filter to go to pieces, but that’s not quite the same as truly relating because they share the same operating system. They might be able to confidently reel off everything they’ve come to learn about autistic traits, especially yours, but that’s not to say that living with them on a daily basis doesn’t take its toll. To succeed, it has to become a huge exercise in give and take between the two of you (not all one way); like trying to communicate in a foreign land where both you and the other party speak only a few words or phrases in the other person’s native tongue…so you cobble something together and, by taking things slower and using other signs and gestures, you try really hard to bridge that gap together. Kind actions can speak volumes when words fail me and are often my fallback position when I realise it’s time to carve out some peace.