Christmas Impending…

Christmas is a wonderful time of year with friends, family, food, presents, lights, music and togetherness. It’s a chance to step outside the normal day to day routine and do something different – from bank holidays when you don’t have to go to work, to special events, to small things like changes to the TV schedules. Sounds great? Yes – obviously. But also it’s worth remembering that a lot of the good things about Christmas can also be autistic nightmares.

Let me unpick that. I listed a bunch of things about Christmas which are what make it great, but they’re also potential autistic issues.

• Friends. I love my friends and I have quite a lot of them (contrary to the autistic stereotype). But my autistic brain handles socialising with friends best on a one to one basis or at most in small groups. Or in musical groups. I’d absolutely love to go out for twenty separate cups of coffee with twenty separate friends, but being in a party with them all twenty at once would by exhausting and potentially overwhelming. Consequently, large-scale Christmas socialising is rather intimdating.
• Family. All the issues about people-in-quantity mentioned above apply to family too, but with the added challenge that people who’ve known you all your life may jog memories of autism-related bad history. Family members may have strong views about who is and who isn’t autistic, they may still blame you for things your autism caused you to do as a child, and they may be unwilling to update their view of you to the person you are now (with diagnosis, mostly functional) and away from the awkward un-diagnosed child you were. I’m writing hypothetically, obviously – my family are lovely (said she hastily in anticipation of Christmas presents).
• Food. I like Christmas food, but I also like having the same meal at the same time every day. Variation is worrying – the tastes may be overwhelming, and I need to be feeling chilled out to enjoy novelty and variety. Food becoming a Big Deal (with capital letters) at Christmas can be intimidating – I’d probably rather just have what I have every other day.
• Presents. Don’t get me wrong, presents are great! But you need to produce an appropriate response when you’re given a present. That’s usually a big smile, eye contact and a warm thanks for the gift. Which may happen naturally if you’re autistic or may not. Specially not the eye contact. Being socially compelled to produce a particular emotional and social response really grates on my nerves so when attempting gracious thanks and a smile it’s more likely to come out as a grimace. Not because I’m not really grateful – I’m just really not good at these social niceties. So even when I’m trying my best, I’m likely to give the impression of being an ungrateful cow.
• Lights. I love sparkly bright lights but excessive bright light can be painful. Autistic people can have a range of issues with bright light.
• Music. Again, I love it, but there can be drawbacks. My autistic brain finds it hard to hear conversation over background music (can’t pick one sound out from amongst others) and loud music can be overwhelming. Lots of lights and music can result in sensory overload and meltdown.
• Togetherness. Like Greta Garbo, pretty much every autistic person needs to be alone some of the time. The more stressed I am, the more alone I need to be. So if Christmas is stressful, I might need to be alone more than usual, which doesn’t really fit with Christmas togetherness.

You can see from that list how taken together, or even individually, the good things about Christmas that we all enjoy can make for an autistic nightmare. As with all such things, what I value is the choice to step in or step away. Just knowing that I can get away from a group of people makes me calm enough to deal with a social group, for example. So as the festive season approaches, please do give the autistic people in your life some control – if something is optional rather than compulsory, it can be a lot easier to enjoy!