Communication Methods: An Autistic Comparison

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I had the misfortune recently of being trapped handling a complex socio-emotional problem via phone.  That single conversation drained my entire store of energy for the entire weekend, which was, needless to say, not ideal.  Once I\’d recovered, I got to thinking about the various kinds of communication methods we have available to us in the modern day, and decided I might as well compare and contrast them.

We\’ll tackle these from most intensive to least intensive, for ease of understanding.

Face-to-face communication

This is the obvious and most socially-approved form of communication.  It can be as quick or as slow as either party wants it to be, though it\’s usually on the quicker side, as a response from one side usually demands a near-immediate response from the other side.  
It is also the form of communcation that\’s least convenient for the schedule and most effortful in terms of information processing.  Autistic people often stick rigorously to our schedules, so having an interaction like this can range between being tolerable (because it was planned) or completely intolerable (because it wasn\’t).  
There are many forms of unplanned face-to-face interactions in life.  Nobody that I know of goes to a grocery store with the intent to make small talk with people in line.  That just sort of happens.  You can try to avoid chatting with the employee at the checkout line by using the self-checkout machines, but you may not escape being mistaken for an employee while in the store, and thus being asked for the location of some product.  
These unplanned interactions can be very upsetting and anxiety-inducing.  I sometimes have to pull out my little container of solid perfume and take a good whiff to temporarily banish the effects of such interactions.  However, short of hiding in a private space all day, every day, they are inevitable.  Alas for our sanity.  
When spending time with a person directly, you deal with the full range of information they present in real time.  This includes things like:
  • the set of their shoulders and overall posture
  • their facial expression (there are 43 muscles in the face, and minute changes in a few of them make the difference between anger and surprise, or concentration and frustration)
  • what they\’re doing with their hands, arms, and legs (crossed arms- angry or chilly? fidgeting with their fingers- nervous, also autistic, or bored with the conversation?)
  • the amount of eye contact they give you
These are in addition to factors that other forms of communication make you process as well, such as word choice and tone of voice.  All of these pieces of information must be juggled in real time, even as you attempt to project the correct combinations of all those things back to the other person and choose appropriate verbal responses.  Most neurotypical people handle all these factors without having to think about them.  That must be nice.  
The thing that really sets face-to-face interaction apart from every other type I\’ll talk about here, though, is the fact that, at any point, your sense of smell or touch can disrupt your concentration.  At a whim, your personal space can be invaded, and your senses overwhelmed by a single touch of the arm, or a light hug.  The person may be wearing perfume, possess bad breath, or you may be walking by a scented candle store.  
While some autistic people crave sensations like these, others experience them so strongly that their concentration is destroyed.  Even assuming the autistic person was handling the high demands of the in-person interaction, adding in even a faint odor or an unexpected touch can cause the whole thing to become impossible to handle.  Environmental noise, such as small children crying, can have this effect on me.  As I\’ve aged, I\’ve mostly become more graceful about handling it.  Mostly.

Skype/Facetime/video phone calls

We have now entered the realm of not-quite-immediate communication.  Unless both of your devices have excellent connections, any electronic communication involves a certain amount of micro-delay.  This can be confusing and cause miscommunications, such as two people starting to talk at the same time even though they\’ve both learned how to take turns speaking.  This can be anxiety-provoking for autistic people.
Video phone calls still involve analyzing and projecting all the visual and audio data that in-person interactions do, but with the added complication that you may not be able to see the whole of the person and their environment.  But they also allow you to set your own environment, such as \”from the comfort of your living room\” or \”in the smaller, quieter conference room at work.\”  This can go a long way toward making an autistic person more comfortable, but many people will still struggle with the demands of processing and projecting so much visual information.  
Autistic people may have trouble projecting appropriate facial expressions, for example.  I tended to be rather stonefaced, into young adulthood.  If I wasn\’t looking stonefaced, I was probably looking angry, because I was also a rather angry child (with good reason, mind).  As such, people tended to have difficulty reading me, and came to conclusions that were often erroneous.  This included my own father, which did not help our relationship at all during those years.

To make things more confusing, an autistic person may focus so hard on projecting one facet, like facial expression, that the others fall by the wayside.  So their face might be set in the almost-smile that\’s correct for a casual friendly conversation, but their posture might scream \”discomfort.\”  Or their tone of voice and word choice might say, \”I am cautiously positive about this idea\” in a business meeting, but their arms are crossed and their face is blank, which conveys the opposite.

The only innately positive thing that comes to mind when considering these intensive forms of communication is this: there are so many social cues involved, that even if you miss more than half of them, you might still get the gist.

Phone calls/voice services

Buckle up, this is my very least favorite form of communication.  Generally if I have to be on the phone, I am wishing myself dead when I\’m not immediately handling the conversation at hand.  Sometimes I can even multitask and wish myself dead while handling the conversation at hand.

Why?  Well, for me, phone calls straddle the line between face-to-face communication (too much info, but at least I can miss some things and still get the gist) and text messages (where all you have to deal with are the words).  And they do so in the worst way.

You have the person\’s tone of voice, which you need to process, but you do so without the benefit of seeing their face.  Is that a bored tone of voice, or are they simply tired?  You don\’t know for sure.  Maybe you would if you could see their face (also bored, or perhaps puffy-eyed from lack of sleep), or see their posture (rubbing their eyes, or crossed arms because of annoyance?).  I spend a lot of time trying to process that information, guessing and second-guessing, while trying to relay whatever opinions, directions, or information the other person needs.

Their environment is even more of a mystery to you than with video calls.  Beyond audio cues (crying children, raucous music, or perhaps road sounds like car horns), you really have no idea what\’s going on with the person and their life during this conversation.  If that information is needed, it must be either intuited via those cues or communicated verbally.  This can lead to having a sensitive conversation in the middle of a public hallway, with no easy way to escape somewhere safer, which is really not ideal.  And even worse, the other party may have literally no idea that is the case, and thus unknowingly subject you to a great deal of stress and embarrassment.

The other main reason I think I hate phone calls so much, though, is that they\’re extremely disruptive.  Unless I set it to Do Not Disturb (which is not a good idea in case of emergencies), I can expect my phone to go off with no thought for my concentration, the importance of what I\’m doing, or the difficulty of my day.  The person (if it\’s not a robo-caller) on the other end usually has no idea how I\’m doing, or what I\’m doing.  And they may not care, either.

I deeply resent things that demand my entire attention, regardless of my current circumstances.  I dislike being linked to online videos and being expected to watch them immediately for the same reason.

The last reason I hate phone calls and other voice services, I suppose, is the context in which I\’ve most often had to use them: calling on health insurance issues, contacting doctor\’s offices, setting car repair appointments, rescheduling a disrupted day as quickly as possible with the other affected parties, and managing money-related issues.  I dislike doing literally everything on that list.  All of it is necessary, but none of it is enjoyable.

So basically, please never call me unless you literally have no other option.  See below for better options.  Thank you.

Text messages/Instant messaging

We are now entering more friendly territory for many autistic people, especially me.  This is the best method to use when contacting me.  Examples of this type of communication include text messages on your phone, Gtalk, Facebook Messenger, iMessage (iOS), WhatsApp, and Discord.  There are many more.

Text messages and other forms of instant messaging require careful word choice to get your point across, but are very forgiving in terms of information processing.  As the receiver, you are required to read the words, and consider the context in which those words came to you.  Perhaps the sender will also have helped you out by providing emojis/emoticons to set a particular mood associated with their words.

The environment that each participant experiences is still a mystery, but because there is no plain way the participants could know each others\’ environments, any reasonable communicator assumes the other doesn\’t know that information, and acts accordingly.  If it\’s relevant, it must be communicated.  If it\’s not, the conversation excludes any assumption of that knowledge.  For example, if you\’re aware of the fatality rate for texting and driving, and someone texts you, you might text them back: \”Driving, gimme 5 min.\”  That person will then know it is unsafe to continue the conversation, and await your response that it\’s safe.

Tone of voice, posture, circumstances, are all irrelevant unless communicated within the conversation.  This, to me, is freeing.  If the person wants me to understand a thing, they have to say it.  They can\’t just rely on the use of magical mind-reading abilities (social intuition) that neurotypical people develop and use in the previous forms of communication.  Text messages level that playing field and make it so you have to mean what you say and say what you mean.  If you don\’t, that\’s on you, and you\’re being a poor communicator.

The other nice thing about this form of communication is that you can look back at what was said.  In verbal, video, and in-person forms of communication, there is the frequent tendency to fall into \”he said, she said\” interpretations of what was said.  No one save some very gifted people can remember every word that\’s said in a conversation.  Instead, most people remember how they felt about what was said, how they interpreted what was said, and perhaps the precise wording for something particularly important or interesting.

But when it comes to, say, a task list, an important discussion with your spouse about the relationship, or important insurance information, having the possibility for fuzziness and \”he said, she said\” is disastrous.  You may lose essential information, and both parties may think they got their points across, but neither side understood the other.  With the ability to look back at the chat log, you can reference what was said, and ask for clarification as needed.  This is great for assuaging anxiety and ensuring correctness of action and understanding.

Also great for assuaging anxiety, the conversation can be a quick back and forth affair, like an in person conversation, or a more relaxed \”1 message every hour when you\’re available\” interaction, for conversations that aren\’t time-sensitive.  Or anything in between.  Instant messages let you find a stopping point in what you\’re doing, and then give the other person your full attention, rather than demanding you drop everything the instant the person rings and then suffer being distracted through the entire conversation.

Email

We now reach the slowest of modern forms of communication.  While emails can be relayed near-instantly, there is much less of an expectation of an immediate response.  This can be a great kindness to autistic people and people with high anxiety, because it gives you even more leeway about when and where you respond.  
You have time to research a topic if you don\’t feel sufficiently knowledgeable.  You have time to consider your own response and word choice more than once or twice, and come up with multiple plans of action.  You even have time to ask someone else\’s advice on a subject if you don\’t like the responses you\’ve come up with.  
Like text messages, email is referenceable.  This is particularly good because email conversations may span hours, days, or even weeks.  Email is also nice because it\’s all containable boxes.  You can have a single email address to handle all your communication needs, or you can have several, one for business things, one for personal emails, one for spam and stuff you don\’t actually want to look at, etc.

Also like text messages, your ability to read posture, facial expression, and tone of voice is entirely irrelevant.  You do still have to read the tone of the email, which is kind of like tone of voice.  But I personally find it much easier to handle.  Your experience may vary. 

Snail Mail/ the postal service

Notable mention goes to Snail Mail, or the postal service.  While it\’s rare to have actual meaningful correspondences in this day and age, I\’m old enough to remember when that people routinely sent each other handwritten letters.  (Note to anyone younger than 25 reading: Yes, this was a thing.  Yes, I am ancient.  Get off my lawn. 😛 )  
Usually snail mail these days is merely junk mail, bills, form letters, and possibly the occasional newsletter.  Actual personalized communication is rare in snail mail these days.  You might still see greeting cards around Christmas or your birthday, or perhaps post cards from traveling relatives or friends.  The vast majority of this form of communication, however, is not personalized and meaningful. 
I believe some people still have pen pals, or people they write to on a regular basis using physical sheets of paper, envelopes, and stamps.  In some cases, those people are from other countries, or live in remote areas.  It\’s kind of a cool thing, putting that much effort into communicating with someone, but something I never really got into.  In part, this is because my handwriting is atrocious.  
I was taught cursive in elementary school, and even learned a bit of calligraphy in middle school.  However, my hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills aren\’t amazing, and handwriting isn\’t really a skill that has much use in modern life.  It\’s so much faster and easier for me to put my words through a keyboard, rather than struggle to express them via pen or pencil.  Between those factors, my handwriting will likely never improve, and so, at least for me, this style of communication will continue to be almost entirely ignored.  

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