Autism and Feedback

I really don't watch much TV. In particular I tend to shy away from dramas and I've had mostly negative experiences with attorneys (and doctors) so I would tend not to watch shows like Boston Legal. It's not that they're bad shows, they're just not my thing.

Anyway someone just told me that they only know of Asperger Syndrome from a character on Boston Legal. So of course I immediately started google searching for information about the character. Although that was also partly because he asked about how accurate the character is and whether other "aspies" as we're called are offended by the way his character is written.

I haven't found any information about how the character has been received in the autism community yet. I did find this article that mentions the character and thought this snippet was particularly poignant:

However, the trait that causes Aspies the most difficulty in life is their inability to pick up other people's social cues and to respond appropriately. Unlike autistic people, Aspies often are interested in other people and want to make and keep friends. However, they have to learn social interactions on an intellectual level instead of just picking them up naturally the way others do. For example, when a friend is wearing an ugly new shirt but seems very happy about it, most people will lie and say how nice the shirt looks. An Aspie may believe that the friend wants an honest answer to: "How do you like my shirt?" One six-year-old Aspie got in trouble when she told her grandmother that she was too fat to ride a bicycle.

For this reason, Aspies may constantly want feedback from the people in their lives. They may ask, "Did I say something rude?" because they really do not know if they did or not. There is a very endearing character on the television series, "Boston Legal", who is a brilliant lawyer with Asperger Syndrome. He carries around a little notebook with reminders like "Shake hands with your client after the trial," or "Thank the jury if our side wins." He always keeps his hands clasped in front of his body so he does not flap them around.

The wording at the top is a little unfortunate because the author said "unlike autistics". People with asperger syndrome (aspies) are autistic. People who present themselves with symptoms like Rain Man have a different form of autism called Kanner's Syndrome.

However, despite that clarification I think this is important information. This problem of having difficulty reading people and responding "appropriately" has been my biggest challenge in the workplace. In the last week there were three separate occasions on which my girlfriend Tiffany shared something with me and then said "it's funny damnit" because although I appreciated what she was sharing (even thought it was funny), I apparently hadn't outwardly responded the way she hoped or expected. And I hadn't noticed that I hadn't outwardly responded either.

And this problem was also described in two of my recent blog posts where I've been trying to do two things. First I've been trying to make a point of thanking people for feedback, because I'm not sure if I've developed an effective habit of doing that yet. And secondly asking for more feedback (positive or negative) to help me dial-in my communication. :)