I've heard the idea that autistic people hate small talk,  repeated countless times by both autistic and non-autistic people.

However in settings such AutAngel's peer support groups as and Autscape which are wholly or predominantly autistic you’ll see lots of people chatting away (as well as people standing awkwardly in corners). I've long puzzled over seeing autistic people who swear they hate small talk having conversations that sound to me like small talk in autistic settings.
Looking up small talk on the internet I find it defined as “polite conversation about unimportant or uncontroversial matters, especially as engaged in on social occasions” and “an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed.” Wikipdedia's article on Small Talk explains that “In spite of seeming to have little useful purpose, small talk is a bonding ritual and a strategy for managing interpersonal distance. It serves many functions in helping to define the relationships between friends, colleagues, and new acquaintances..” 

These definitions make clear in different ways that the content of small talk is not the point.  The point is a desire to connect.  For most autistic people however, the point of a conversation is the content.  If the content is engaging they will connect, content leads to connection. It seems that for many NT’s (neuro-typical or non-autistic people) connection comes before content, so they connect with contentless conversation and if that works they will move on to sharing meaningful content.

As well as establishing connection in contrasting ways it seems that the average NT probably wants more superficial connection with other humans than the average autistic person, and they signal the desire to connect by sharing inconsequential information. 

Most of us autistics want language to be used to mean what it says not as a backdrop to an invisible social signal. So when NT’s use random thoughts to try connect with another person it can work well with fellow NT’s but tends to fail with autistics as we need meaningful content and can get stressed by a feeling that we are expected to share meaningless trivialities (added to which we have no idea what is acceptable to say and what could trigger an adverse reaction, we feel that we’re being invited into a minefield). Before we speak we need to either be interested in the subject we are speaking about or the person we are talking to. 

So while in an autistic setting (or any setting where they feel safe) many autistic people will ask after someone else’s family or discuss how travel arrangements, because they are genuinely interested and connected. This can give the impression of being small talk, but in fact its meaningful because of the prior connection of the participants. The conversation does not create the connection it happens because of it.

My contention is that NTs will talk about inconsequential matters to create connection while autistics will only do so when they already feel connected.  Social skills courses which teach people that should talk about the weather are teaching masking not connection.

If we repeat stock phrases because we've been taught that's what you're supposed to do it’s likely to feel unnatural, appear stilted and require lots of effort and energy leaving us feeling depleted and unable to actually listen and respond to the other person’s reply. Masking causes disconnection rather than connection so shouldn’t really be considered a social skill. (There is currently a social media campaign urging people to #TaketheMaskOff)

Discovering that I am autistic led me to better understand what was going on socially for me and for others and enabled me to make choices based on this.  I now find it much easier to engage in casual conversation because I’ve found a compromise.  I do it my way, I don’t as I used to try and immediately dive into deep discussions, but I do often manage to connect by talking lightly about everyday matters that interest me but are unlikely to evoke deep feelings.

My last blog post outlined some things which I think are unhelpful in relation to autism and social skills. I will now take the glass half full approach, and discuss what I think is helpful.
For me the single most helpful thing was going to Autscape where autistic people are in the majority. It was the first time I was in a situation with a level playing field socially.  I am not the only one who has felt transformed by this experience.  The confidence I gained at Autscape has enabled me to deal with a much wider variety of social situations and to build connections within the larger community.  I found that understanding how and why I am atypical made it much easier to accept myself as I am and to address my various challenges.  This understanding also enabled me to feel comfortable explaining my differences to others.  

Interestingly the book I think best addresses difficulties talking with others was not written specifically for autistics.  It is entitled “How you can talk to anyone in every situation” by Emma Sargent and Tim Fearon.  Of course there are very few people, autistic or otherwise, who could achieve this – but this is as good a guide as I’ve seen in terms of helping people improve their ability to connect socially.  The fact that is written for a general audience is a plus, as it doesn’t condescend or assume that there is an inherent deficit that needs addressing.

I think the point here is that the social differences and difficulties experienced by autistic people are not only about specific social skills, they are also about contextualising complex communications in real time.  This is why a lot of autistic people with first class degrees in psychology are hopeless in social situations.  Expecting theoretical training to enable people to perform socially is like expecting a male obstetrician to give birth.

Social skills training and social stories (which like ABA are touted everywhere as a brilliant thing for autism, without this being verified by rigorous research) assume that there will be a predictable context in which to use those skills.  This is manifestly not the case.  In real life the aim of social skill is to facilitate actual connection and connection requires more than one party.  It makes sense if connection is not happening to look at both parties and try and find a compromise.

Exhibiting “social skills” without being honest or true to yourself is not relating to others or learning social skills, rather it is acting.

Social interaction by its nature requires more than one participant This brings me to the radical idea that maybe the non-autistic participants in social interaction with an autistic person should share responsibility for finding a way of relating that works.   Non- autistic people often don’t have to think about their social style they just assume it is neutral, but as Gary Younge says in his book ‘Who we are – and should it matter in the 21st century?’  “Those who feel they are without identity do not see the need to meet people halfway and thereby fail to recognize that everyone else is doing all the travelling”.

Damian Milton calls this the “double empathy problem”  .  He suggests that the social difficulties of autistic people are caused by contrasting ways of relating rather than an autistic deficit.  Whatever the complex mechanisms underlying social intelligence, I think we can safely say that this is something that needs to be further explored and that non- autistic people training autistic people to pretend to be non-autistic is unlikely to be the best solution we can come up with.

If you are autistic or think you might be and  would like to explore this territory in more detail you might be interested in my “Exploring Being Autistic” programme which aims to help people accept themselves and communicate authentically.

I’ll finish with some lovely lines from T.S Eliot’s Four Quartets that I think are relevant here.
“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”