A language people can understand

On 31 December one is inevitably going to take stock of the year just past. As regards current events in 2022, there’s no way I’m going to attempt to summarise them here. Many things appear to have happened. A very small thing that’s happened this year is that this blog started in August. My idea was to write about my experiences as an autistic professional to spread the message that autistic professionals exist, to demystify autism, hopefully taking some of the fear and stigma out of its image, and to share the things I’ve picked up in my working life that may be helpful to other autistics. It’s been really nice that a lot of people have read these posts and some people have found them useful.

I’m clearly not the first person to write about autism – there are a great many excellent authors out there. I don’t know many who write about management and leadership from the perspective of being autistic, though. The different perspective that gives me is that my whole working life is built around interacting with neurotypical people but from a position of influence. If I’m to be an effective manager I need to be able to adapt to the people I’m trying to lead, as much as expecting them to adapt to me. That means I’ve put a particular amount of emphasis on trying to communicate my autistic experiences in language that will make sense to non-autistic people.

The analogy I use that seems to be most effective is that of the autistic experience being like speaking a foreign language. If I was dropped into a job in (say) Paris, eventually my French would get good enough that I could function. I might become fluent in French and be able to use it effectively every day of my working life. But in the evenings I’d be exhausted from the struggle of speaking my second language all day. I’d long just to use English, and not to have to concentrate so much. I’d also make mistakes in French – not being a native speaker. Some of those mistakes might be embarrassing and I might be mocked for them. Others might be dangerous if I couldn’t communicate effectively with (say) doctors. It could all get extremely stressful and (I suspect) the more stressed I was, the worse my French would become. For me as an autistic person, communicating with neurotypical people is like speaking in a second language. I’ve practised a lot and I’m pretty good at it, but I still make mistakes, it takes a lot of concentration, and I’m very tired when I’ve been doing it all day.

In the days before Christmas, I wrote posts based on the seven O Antiphons which gave a nice structure, and it so happens that the days after Christmas are mostly Saints’ Days so I am bouncing off them as well. John Wycliffe is commemorated on 31 December, the anniversary of his death in 1384. Wycliffe was an English theologian and church reformer who promoted the Bible being available in English (as opposed to Latin, the language used by the Church then). He also opposed the wealth and power of the church and his thinking was an early example of the sort of thing that would lead to the Reformation. There’s any amount more to be said about Wycliffe from history, but the point I’d like to focus on is that he believed important messages (=the Bible) should be in a language ordinary people could understand, and he blundered into the power politics of his day in a not-very-calculated way. In due course he was condemned as a heretic and burned but luckily for him that happened some years after he’d already died of natural causes.

Wycliffe is chiefly remembered today for his message about the importance of translation and a language people could understand. That really resonates with my autistic experience both as an autistic person trying to understand the world around her, and as an autistic person trying to communicate her experiences outside the autistic community. No matter how wonderful and precious a message is if it’s in a language the hearers don’t understand it won’t do them much good.

I like the other facet of Wycliffe that I’ve drawn out as well though. My little bit of reading about him as prep for writing this has told me that his opposition to the power of the church was used by contemporary politicians and turned against him. Wycliffe clearly wasn’t a very sophisticated player of the political game; that may have been because he couldn’t do it, or he didn’t see the point of it. Both of those things feel familiar to my autistic brain. If a thing is true, it makes sense to say it, and expect others to hear it in the literal sense intended. That didn’t work for Wycliffe, and it doesn’t work for autistics today. We need to adapt ourselves to the world around us to get a hearing, and not all of us can do that. I hope that by using skills I happen to have to communicate I can help build understanding for the benefit of all autistic people.

This post was brought to you by a prayer of John Wycliffe:

Lord, give me grace to hold righteousness in all things
that I may lead a clean and blessed life
and prudently flee evil
and that I may understand
the treacherous and deceitful falseness of the devil.

Make me mild, peaceable,
courteous, and temperate.
And make me steadfast and strong.

Also, Lord, give Thou to me that I be quiet in words
and that I speak what is appropriate.

Amen.