An excerpt from Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults: A Guide for the Anxious, Uniquely Wired, and Easily Distracted.
Your neurology, your experiences, your strengths, and your weaknesses affect how you see the world. Understanding your brain helps you understand your life, your mindset, and the science behind your behavior, so that is exactly where we will begin. By understanding your neurotype, you can better understand your brain and create neurodivergent-friendly strategies that empower you. Similarly, understanding the science behind human connection can help you build friendships and a social life that will work for you. Connection is the key to lasting health, well-being, and happiness, but the roadmap is not linear, especially for neurodivergent people. Most of us grew up without the support we needed to understand and accommodate our unique brains, and there were no neurodivergent-friendly social behaviors we could look to for guidance. Lacking this guidance has shaped our perspective, and it is your perspective that impacts how you view friendship and how you approach making friends.
The unique perspectives of neurodivergent brains
Perspectives are unique to everyone. How we see determines what we see. For example, years ago a boss told me that I see “the trees through the forest,” meaning that I focus on details rather than the broader picture. When I reported this story to one of my favorite autism experts, Dr. Raffael Boccamazzo (known online as Dr. B), he shared that he sees “the bark on the trees, and would love to talk about it,” meaning that to him, the “forest” is less interesting than the intricate details or trees that make it up. And Dr. B goes further to see not just the trees but the bark on the trees. The way we see the world affects our communication, and our communication affects our connection. Some of us like to talk about bark, some of us like to talk about forests, and some of us would rather listen than do either.
Practicing the skills and strategies in this book does not mean you are going to become a different person. You will not stop being neurodivergent. Your view of the world, how you process information, and how you connect and interact with others is driven by your brain. We all process the world differently. By learning about your own brain, and about the science of connection, you can make choices about your friendship journey. This chapter will explain the science of connection: How do people build close bonds? What happens when people connect? Why is making friends and connecting with people associated with long-term happiness and well-being? Understanding how connection affects your brain, and vice versa, highlights the impact of loneliness and shows us why connection actually matters.
The science behind why friendship can be hard for neurodiverse adults
There are brain-based reasons why neurodivergent adults struggle with friendship. Making friends requires several mental processes known as executive function skills. Executive function is the brain’s management system, the center of brain-based skills responsible for organizing information, regulating emotion, focusing, adapting to new situations, initiating and managing tasks, and remembering past experiences. People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, learning disabilities, or autism often have underdeveloped social executive functioning abilities. In neurodivergent adults, strategies can be used to self-accommodate, compensate for areas of weakness, and sometimes even strengthen these skills.
For example, many of us have trouble retaining the bits of information that make up social interaction, including people’s names, where we need to meet someone, who is dating whom, and so on. These lapses in memory can lead to awkward situations, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. For example, you may have been introduced to a new coworker and then a day later asked to interact with that person in a meeting, but you cannot remember their name. The combined pressure of being put on the spot in a work setting when you cannot recall someone’s name can feel like immense pressure, increase your anxiety, and hurt your confidence. Working memory and memory encoding are executive functions that can be particularly challenging to neurodivergent brains, and research has shown that these difficulties can be associated with social problems.
How you perform socially and how you learn social skills depends on the executive function systems in your brain. That means that how a neurodivergent person performs social skills is a direct reflection of how the executive function part of your brain has developed. Paraphrasing the words of esteemed ADHD researcher Dr. Russell Barkley, “It is not that we do not know what to do, it is that we do what we know.” We approach social situations with good intentions, but making those intentions come to fruition can be challenging. It is these brain-based differences that cause the kerfuffle when you go forward trying to carry out your best-laid plans, showing up, being present in the conversation, or saying the right thing at the right time.
Caroline Maguire is a social-emotional learning expert.
