“Fear not…”

Different is scary. A person who is different to you may react differently, do odd things, make you feel uncomfortable. That person you’re sitting next to who starts arranging the cutlery at dinner, or rocking forward and backwards, or making strange noises. Those are all deeply off-putting things aren’t they? You feel a bit scared of the person and even more scared of saying the wrong thing yourself. The best thing to do is ignore them, right? Different is just too scary.

But that person is also a human being. Maybe they don’t communicate very well, or have some other problem, or maybe even they’re just being weird to freak you out. But whichever it is, surely it has to be better to try to see them as a human being and an equal than just metaphorically running away?

Christmas Eve can be a deeply scary time – is everything ready? Have you forgotten to wrap (or buy!) any of the presents? Will the turkey cook properly? Will that dodgy uncle you prefer not to think about turn up? Will there be a family row? How bad will the inevitable family row be? For autistic people the sheer difference of Christmas Day to normal days of the year can be intimidating enough before you add in the large quantities of extra people, strange rituals and requirements to produce the right social reactions. So if you’re an adult you may well be feeling a bit worried about Christmas coming tomorrow, and if you’re an autistic adult or child, you may well be anxious to the point of being overwhelmed. If there are autistic people in your life, please cut them some slack tomorrow.

When I talk about fear, though, the fear of autistic people is more what’s in my mind. A colleague of mine was telling me about a local awards dinner she’d been to with her husband – he’d been nominated for something, I forget what. My colleague was sat on a table with a group of people she didn’t know from a local charity group. It became clear that at least one of their group had a different sort of brain in some way. This person started fidgeting with and arranging the things on the table. They made some strange movements and were generally a bit odd to be around. They also didn’t seem to make the usual sort of small talk; the rest of their group ignored them, or else patronised them and treated them as a child.

I mention this situation because of what my colleague said about it afterwards. She realised that this “odd” person might well be autistic or have some other form of brain difference. Vitally, though, she wasn’t intimidated by that difference (partly because she knows me!) She saw the person sat next to her as a fellow human being and attempted to bring them into conversation. She asked literal factual questions (such as “would you like me to pass the salt?”) and made comments about the meal that didn’t really need answers, so this person was included in conversation in a non-pressured way. Gradually they felt more able to speak and made some small amount of conversation over dinner. At the end of the dinner, this person – who’d been completely left out by their own group – turned to my colleague and said “I’ve really enjoyed sitting next to you – you’ve made my evening really nice” or words to that effect.

My colleague saw someone different to her but because she knew a bit about neurodifferences and disabilities she wasn’t intimidated or afraid she would do the wrong thing. She made attempts to reach out to the person on a human level and while she may not have got everything right (I don’t know – I wasn’t there) she clearly made that person’s evening. That’s the power of not being afraid.

I know we autistics can be off-putting – we might be fidgeting, blunt, picky, or deep in some obsession that appears to make no sense. If you have an autistic person in your family, you might be rightly nervous that they are going to become overwhelmed and have an emotional meltdown. Or spend the entire day telling you endless pointless facts about trains, dinosaurs, a TV show you’ve never seen or a video game you’ve never played. Yes, that may happen. Sorry. But while we may be irritating, please don’t be afraid of us. We autistics are people too. Reach out and you might find that we’re actually easier to get along with than you thought. Perhaps you could ask us what we want to do and not insist on the “traditional” rituals of Christmas. Or perhaps just sit with us in silence while we both indulge some interest online or reading? Christmas Eve should be the time to put away fear…