Learning to drive…
Remember your first driving lesson.
“OK, put your hand on the gear stick, press the clutch down with your foot, engage first gear, slowly lift the clutch and release the handbrake and press the accelerator with your other foot all at the same time” – you’re off.
Easy, isn’t it?!
I find that the analogy of learning to drive is useful for describing how social communication frequently feels for me. Most of us who have been driving for years can do it automatically and even hold conversations with passengers and listen to music whilst taking in the road conditions and anticipating any risks or changing road conditions up ahead.
I’m one of those people. I can get in my car or on my motorcycle, intuitively find the controls and I’m off!
In fact, driving – and riding motorbikes and bicycles – are things I find extremely enjoyable. They are in the very small group of physical activities I can do without needing to consciously think about what to do with my body.
Social communication on the other hand is something that has never become automatic, and I assume that after 47 years of trying, it possibly never will. In a conversation I often feel like that learner driver I once was – awkward, painfully self-aware, and a bit clunky on the controls. I might get the order right, and use the controls appropriately, and get from A to B, but my knuckles are white from gripping the mental steering wheel inside my head so hard!
From a communication perspective I can ‘drive’ well enough to pass my test. Like many learners, I possibly have fewer bad habits than some experienced drivers. I probably know the rules of conversation better than many people – I try to be conscientious, thoughtful and considerate. But just like understanding the highway code off by heart – it’s not necessarily the way people “actually” drive. All those rules you’re meant to break – all those things that we know aren’t “real driving”… These things pass me by, and in communication situations, I often feel like a very competent learner who has passed their driving test with no major faults – but is actually not representative of most road users!
Being a mechanic doesn’t help much with driving either. My understanding of people is good, as is my knowledge of vehicles. I know more than the average person about how engines work, the sounds they make when something isn’t quite right, and the way other people drive. I can competently fix someone else’s puncture or service my own bike adequately – much as I have a good understanding of people and can help other people with their communication skills. This doesn’t help me be a better driver though; either in a vehicle or out there socialising.
When I am on familiar social roads I can begin to take in the scenery and enjoy the journey, but if you were to send me across the channel to where they drive on the other side of the road I’d be floundering. Put me in a social situation I’m unsure of and I struggle. I can do what I do, well. A bit like when I moved from Bristol to West Wales – my pulling away from junctions and roundabouts was far faster than needed and fortunately didn’t result in me rear-ending any of the local, laid back drivers that are used to having plenty of time for manoeuvres.
I can navigate the roads of social communication, but the effort is huge because I’m usually having to consciously work out what to do unless the road is one I have travelled down many times before. I prefer to keep my social journeys close to home and not venture out at busy times or in bad weather. We all find it helpful when other road users use their indicators properly – who hasn’t felt frustrated by someone indicating left that then turns right?! Why can’t people communicate accurately too and say what they mean and mean what they say?
I’ve been able to talk for over 4 decades and don’t fancy highlighting my social struggles with the equivalent of L Plates. I’d rather other people were courteous and gave me space and time to work out how to navigate through social situations safely and at my own pace, on my own route and under my own control. I wish that interacting with people was as straightforward as driving and I wonder why I have never got from that learner driver feeling of everything being conscious and clunky, to where I can just jump in and enjoy the ride?
Undercover Autism 