Definitions:
Aspie – Someone with high functioning autism (short for Asperger’s)
Neurotypical – Everyone without abnormalities in their brain structure
For aspies like myself, the act of socializing is much more an intellectual effort than an intuitive one. Learning about tones, body language, and various phrases as well as learning how to identify them takes a consistent, focused effort. The extent of this effort can be felt if you’ve been around an aspie who is stuck in a social situation for too long.
In a nutshell, aspies put about as much effort into socializing as others do during focused studying for a test or the like. It’s a lot of work and usually requires rest afterward.
What is the “Aspie Social Switch”
As stated above, when aspies are in social situations for a long time they tend to get tired before the social event is over. At such a point, the paths for said aspie become very limited.
First off, the aspie could simply leave the social event and call it a day.
Secondly, the aspie might be forced into sensory overload, meltdown, or shutdown.
And lastly, the aspie might take the path that countless adult aspies have latched onto by flipping the social switch.
Keep in mind what I said earlier about aspies approaching social situations like an intellectual work rather than an intuitive one when I’m describing the “social switch”.
When an aspie hits his or her “social switch”, all they are doing is deciding to stop thinking about socializing. For most, the process of socializing cannot be so easily shut off and requires physical isolation via headphones or the like for a social break. In stark contrast to that, aspies can just decide to ignore any and all social rules they’ve picked up over the years, most often in an effort to keep it together enough to make it through the rest of the social event.
Over time, adult aspies often find ways to be slightly less rude when they decide to start ignoring the majority of social rules (or at least the most confusing ones) by using headphones or making excuses on why he or she needs to leave the social event. Keep in mind, aspies tend to be much less tactful than a neurotypical might when they make excuses to leave a social event (if he or she makes an excuse to leave at all).
During the process of getting my diagnosis, my parents brought up a fairly amusing way that this “social switch” appeared early in my life. During those earlier days, I very often encountered situations in which someone would want to talk to me by engaging in small talk or by asking me a question. Can anyone guess what I would so often do in response? I walked away. And how did I do that? I already had my social switch turned to the off position as I’d already had my fill of social interaction for the day and was busy thinking about other things.
I sincerely hope you are more amused by that story than horrified by my occasionally atrocious social skills, but in either case, it strongly illustrates my point about the social switch. It’s a matter of avoiding something worse than atrocious social skills (meltdowns and the like).
With that in mind…
Now, normally I would take this time to explain what you should do when you encounter an aspie who has turned their social switch off, but I’m not going to do that this time. The reason for my not doing so lies in the fact that no matter what you do it probably won’t lead to much. If an aspie has decided to not care about social interactions, it’s not really going to matter what you try to say.
In addition to the unlikelihood of saying something that will help this particular situation, there is yet another problem. Aspies typically only ignore social rules completely when they do not have the option to simply exit the situation. With this in mind, if you can find a way to help the aspie escape the social situation, by all means, go for it! Otherwise, the best course of action will likely lie in letting the aspie keep his or her social switch off.