Distinguishing introversion from autism is easy in real life. It only sounds difficult if you're reading things extroverts have written about people who were born with either trait. Or, as I did immediately before writing this post, listening impatiently to amateur video presentations on the subject.
In real life, distinguishing introversion from autism starts with understanding that one trait is a gift and the other is a disability.
The position of this web site is that we were closer to understanding autism when we recognized it as an effect of the "ballooning brain" that develops after some brain injuries early in life, before certain interested parties clouded the issue by insisting on dragging in different patterns of behavior as "forms of autism."
The position of this web site is that, further, cerebral palsy is a more interesting and apparently less disabling condition than autism and deserves more of the attention, special funding, etc.This web site reached this position by observing young people who unmistakably showed empathy but also showed neurological damage, including but not limited to cerebral palsy, who had been taught to identify themselves as autistic. This could only help them because autism is getting an unjust share of benefits. I think cerebral palsy cases deserve benefits.
But let's consider the descriptions of autistic adults and introverts given in those home videos YouTube is promoting.
1. Autistic people often feel uncomfortable about new people and places because their brains react unpleasantly to the absence of familiar visual cues that make situations "feel safe."
Introverts may or may not feel uncomfortable with new people orplaces at all. If they do, it's because they worry about how others may react to them.
2. Autistic adults often learn to rely on "scripts" in order to make "small talk." Their brains don't process new ideas fast enough to make conversation so they become especially adept at idle chatter.
Introverts may specialize in "small talk," too, or they may avoid it, but for cognitive reasons. Many introverts dislike, resent, ridicule, or refuse to participate in "small talk" because they find it boring.
3/Autistic people may have strong unexplained aversions to touching others and being touched. They may feel this aversion even in intimate relationships.
Some introverts are touchers and some are not, but when introverts feel aversion to touching or being touched it's because they think the particular kind of touching in question is inappropriate to a situation or to their relationship with an individual.
4. Some autistic adults like to wear "noise-cancelling headphones" when they have to go into public places.
While many introverts dislike noise, few if any dislike noise enough to want to shut out pleasant or informative sounds.
5. To autistic people, noise seems louder when they're stressed.
Some introverts suffer from headaches or earaches and complain that noise aggravates the pain, but introverts don't often complain of things sounding louder at some times than others.
6. Some autistic people are "disproportionately startled" by unexpected sounds or by certain kinds of sounds. They don't just "startle," twitch, or flinch in a normal way. They may lose balance and fall over, or start screaming or hand-flapping in an effort to restore a sense of equilibrium. Not all, but many, autistic people experience some noise as a painful disruption of all perception.
Most introverts are not more easily or noticeably startled than the average person. Some introverts become "nervous" under stress and show more reactions to things they don't normally react to,, but their reactions are still neurotypical reactions.
7. Many autistic people "can't tolerate" certain fabrics or textures. It's not a matter of feeling sweaty in petrochemical fabrics or itchy in wool. Again, it's the magnitude of their reactions that shows they're "wired" very differently from the majority of people who feel more comfortable in cotton.
Introverts don't enjoy wearing clothes that are too tight, that don't "breathe," that prickle, that bind, or that slide up or down, but they don't become unable to do what they'd planned to do because they're completely overwhelmed by uncomfortable clothes.
8. Some autistic people compulsive cut all the tags out of their clothes because they find the tags so distracting.
Introverts may cut out tags that are stiff or that tend to flip upward and stick out over a collar, but again, introverts can focus on what they're doing until they find a convenient time to remove an annoying tag.
9. Some autistic people "just can't" wear certain clothing because it's overwhelmingly distracting to them.
Introverts have been known to choose clothes they did not enjoy wearing, but they don't claim that the clothes made it impossible ot finish a job or focus on a task.
10. The speaker in the home video said that autistic people are typically (diagnostically) "utterly repulsed" by certain food textures.
Because joking about bad food is a traditional source of laughter-as-a-way-to-bond in U.S. culture, people who aren't even introverts have built comedy routines about the idea of being "utterly repulsed" by certain food. It's the magnitude of the reaction that's different between autistic and neurotypical people. Anybody can find food unappetizing but a person who looks at a dish on the table, shudders, and keeps staring at the food and not participating in the conversation for the next half hour, is either autistic or physically sick.
11. Or autistic people can be overwhelmed by the revulsion they feel at the mere thought of some odors or flavors. It's the overwhelming quality of disgust that distinguishes autistics from the rest of humankind. Most people have "least favorite" foods, and anybody can react to food poisoning, but some autistics may gag or show other abnormal reactions to the mere thought of some ordinary, uncontaminated, wholesome food.
Yet again, all members of the animal kingdom are wired to avoid swallowing food or sniffing at the sources of odors that we classify as disgusting. The black rot produced by Aspergillus flavus mold in peanuts is an example. HSP introverts do recognize more different flavors, and usually dislike more flavors, than the average human.
12, After going out and behaving more or less normally, some autistic people feel totally exhausted when they come in, and have to lie down in a dark room.
After being around other people some introverts may seem "keyed up" for a short time, then feel tired and want to be alone, but once again, this is a neurotypical kind of tiredness, not the autistic's very neurodivergent need for special physical sensations to rest, decompress, or restore equilibrium.
13. Some autistic people spend a lot of time in the bathroom, savoring their privacy.
Some introverts do this, too, but only under abnormal stress. When living in a dormitory I remember indulging myself in a half hour of "distraction" inspecting myself in the mirror, or taking hour-long showers, just to get some personal space. This behavior faded when I found a healthier alternative--walking or jogging a few miles!
14. Some autistic people will go to parties but prefer to be alone, or stick to one person all evening, at a party. At a certain level of functionality they may enjoy watching other people's behavior without even trying to join in.
Shyness may cause neurotypical people, introverts or extroverts, to feel unable to mingle at a party, but they're likely to feel embarrassed if being alone or clinging to one person makes them conspicuous. As people mature, neurotypical people usually find their own preferred ways to mingle at a party or to avoid going to parties.
15. Some autistic people like being in crowded places and "people-watching."
Neurotypical people, whether introverts or extroverts, can "people-watch" too, during periods of unavoidable delay such as being on a stalled train--but they don't make a hobby of it.
16. Some autistic adults will shop in only one place. Again, this is a manifestation of the general principle that autistic people's perceptions are skewed in painful, confusing, or overwhelming ways by brain injury. It's not just that the restaurant of choice does a "house specialty" meal the person particularly likes or the supermarket of choice is closest to home. Neurotypical people have preferences based on reasons like those, but autistic people feel disoriented by looking at a different building while shopping for a familiar item.
Introverts are more likely to be choosy about prices (even when we're rich, many of us feel that it's wrong to support price gougers), quality of merchandise, and quality of service. Some extroverts are finicky and difficult shoppers too. Neurotypical people also take more time to find what they want in an unfamiliar store, or a familiar store that has rearranged its merchandise. (This can, however, add to the "fun" of shopping. While some very big or small stores find it profitable to keep things in the same place over the years because people run in, grab the basic item they're looking for, and run out, many retailers find it drives sales to change their displays every week.) Neurotypical people certainly make value judgments about their shopping experiences, good and bad, but again, they're not overwhelmed by the shocking or painful sensation of not finding Brands X, Y, and Z sandwich bread on aisle five.
17. High-functioning autistic adults who were not identified as autistic in childhood mght notice that other people seem to find it difficult to connect or relate to them.
How easily introverts and extroverts relate to each other's temperaments may reflect their parents' personalities and their family life, since we all learn patterns of social behavior at home. However, once again, the difference is an order of magnitude. Satisfactory introvert/extrovert relationships may be shallow by introvert standards. Some of us remember having tried very hard to bond with an extrovert relative (or student, or baby-sitting charge) and never succeeded. Still, a certain baseline of neurotypical agreement on the nature of external reality is present among neurotypical adults, and that baseline falls out from under the participants in a conversation between neurotypical and neurodivergent people.
18. People who aren't hostile tend to laugh at things autistic people say seriously because they hear those things as jokes. (E.g. things like "Just looking at those peas made me feel faint," or "On the weekend I went to the park and watched people pass by for a few hours, and then I went home and lay down and screamed for half an hour.")
Neurotypical people generally share a consensus as to what describes an experience in the real world and what is obviously an exaggeration meant to be funny.
19. Some autistic people "always seem to wind up in disagreements and don't know how [they] get there."
Again, this is not to be confused with the perceptions of either introverts or extroverts who are in some sense comfortable with disagreement. Some neurotypical people have contrarian brains that process information by looking at "all the sides" of a topic. Some people feel that the best way to reach a true understanding of a topic of controversy is a hammer-and-tongs debate. Then there are people who are somewhat hostile, slightly sadistic, and apt to enjoy "needling" real-life friends or "trolling" in online discussions. (A contrarian of good will might go to a web site identified as a forum for a certain school of thought/belief--religion, politics, approach to scientific research, interpretation of data on a confusing topic--and post comments like "I don't belong to this group/party/school; I'm here to learn about what youall believe." A troll would go to the same site and post comments like "Youall are idiots if you actually believe any of this stuff.") But those people know very well how they get into disagreements; or, if they didn't intend to get into a particular disagreement, they at least have an idea what they said or did to get into it. Neurotypical people who didn't intend their disagreement to offend or upset the other person may not have recognized unfamiliar nonverbal cues that they were having that effect, but they'd recognize most or all of those cues another time. Autistic people, on the other hand, might have no idea what the general consensus of belief is, or what the nonverbal signs of an undesired reaction may be.
20. Autistic people who are employable are frequently told, by supervisors and co-workers, that they are "too blunt," "too honest," "not team players," or "using inappropriate tones of voice." Again, the difference is an order of magnitude beyond what neurotypical people go through. For the autistic person it may seem like a self-evident truth that tomatoes are nauseous, yet seem inexplicable and hard to remember that, for most people, it's a self-evident truth that tomatoes are delicious and talking about nausea is nauseous.
Subjective, weaselly accusations like "using inappropriate tones of voice" function mainly as dominance displays.
When I've asked a person making this accusation to demonstrate what the person considers an "appropriate tone of voice," in nearly all cases the accuser either had nothing to say, or said something that was easily identifiable as a parody. There are things people say--not actually tones of voice, but intonation of sentences and/or choices of words--that can be identified as inappropriate to the speaker's intentions; there are people--I learned the skill from Suzette Haden Elgin's writing--who can identify those bits of speech and suggest appropriate alternatives. An inexperienced teacher, for example, or a brilliant programmer or surgeon or business owner whose manners nobody's dared to challenge, might say "WHY did you do THAT?" when the appropriate thing to say to communicate what person meant would have been "What you did worked (or didn't work) but I'm wondering why you chose to do it when it's not the approach/technique/reasoning I've been trying to teach you." Person didn't think about the reality that "WHY did you do THAT?" is more often a short way of saying "What you did was wrong, and whatever your reason for doing it may have been it's not good enough, and I'm angry at you!" This kind of "inappropriate tone" complaint is valid and fixable. But it's not often encountered outside of a therapy context. Much more often a complaint about someone's "inappropriate tone" really means "Person clearly thinks person is no less important and valuable than I am, and I resent that bitterly!" The person making this complaint is suffering from an inflated ego but not to the point where person would feel free to say what person means. So the invitation to demonstrate the "appropriate tone of voice" almost always gets no answer, or else a sarcastic, spiteful parody of an answer.
Because introverts (if mentally healthy) are more attuned to our internal sense of right and wrong than we are to other people's self-esteem problems, introverts on the TJ side of the Myers-Briggs spectrum (or functioning in T or J modes) do hear a lot about being "too blunt" and "not team players" and "using inappropriate tones." If we're also female, it's likely to be worse than that. Some introverts mind this hostile feedback very much, and avoid talking to people who seem likely to supply it. Some introverts recognize it as an expression of weakness and an invitation to close in for the verbal "kill." Some extroverts functioning in T or J modes show those reactions too. In any case, neurotypical people nearly always get the "too blunt," "not team players," "inappropriate tones" feedback when there's honest disagreement between neurotypical points of view.
Neurotypical people may disagree about how sarcastic, condescending, or judgmental teachers' responses to students' wrong answers ought to be, but they're disagreeing on a common ground of agreement that a certain utterance will be generally recognized as expressing those qualities. When they come to the autistic person's tone-deaf (sometimes literally hearing-impaired), completely atypical speech patterns--perhaps "WHY. DID. YOU. DO. THAT." or "w'y do tha'?"--neurotypical people tend to feel sure that this speech pattern was chosen to express some sort of emotion, but they can't imagine what that emotion might be, so whatever comments they make on the neurodivergent person's speech patterns are going to reflect their extreme confusion.
21. Introverts tend to make mindful choices to seek or avoid conflict, depending on what they think they can accomplish. There are exceptions. Some of us lock into TJ mode (using Myers-Briggs terms) and compulsively start debates for the satisfaction of "winning." A few lock into FJ mode and compulsively evade conflict.
These are the individuals most likely to torture autistic people, and sneakily bully neurotypical people, with those "too blunt," "inappropriate tone" whines, although again this FJ behavior is more typical of extroverts defending their inflated egos. They don't do it only to autistics, oh goodness no. They have a range of whines for all situations and demographic combinations. A substantial part of Democratic Party rhetoric in the last few years has consisted of these whines. Before "racist" became an all-purpose D insult they hurl at any and all Rs, one of the few White racists I've ever encountered used it of one of the kindest--and least prejudiced--Black men I've ever encountered.
(What she meant was "I resent the freedom your blue-collar background gave you to speak directly and own your opinions. I resent that I'm smaller than you and have also absorbed a set of prejudices that cause me to feel afraid of you. And I don't really enjoy being a woman, nor do I really appreciate Washington although I resented my home town even more, and I resent the expensive schools where everyone else was so much more intelligent than I was, and basically I resent my life, and if I have to talk or think about it I don't know what I might go home and do-hoo-hoo!" You do have to feel sorry for these people.)
22. Many, not all, introverts are anything but quiet people. Many of us are constant verbalizers. However, most of us limit our verbosity to a select audience of people who seem to enjoy it. If we're not writers, we're "private conversationalists" who talk for hours on end with a few close friends and have little to say to anyone else.
Some autistic people are real chatterboxes, too--this type is not usually considered very high-functioning. High-functioning autistic adults who have jobs tend to be quiet because they've noticed that others don't relate easily to what they have to say. However, once autistic people learn a human language--which only the higher-functioning ones do--their personalities may show extroversion, like Donna Williams'. The definitive feature of an introvert personaltiy, the conscience, has seldom been associated with autistic people and, if present, the sense of right and wrong may reflect the overall brain damage.
23. Some introverts are reflective, philosophical, and emotionally detached. Some are intensely emotional, "creative," and histrionic. Both types are highly empathetic, even though the LBS, Phlegmatic, or TJ type helps friends calm down and detach from their feelings, while the HSP, Melancholy, or FP type mirrors and shares friends' feelings.
The definition of autism is a lack of empathy. Autistic perceptions are so different from neurotypical perceptions that it's almost impossible for autistic children to learn anything, even basic language or personal self-care. High-functioning autistic adults who get jobs have obviously learned to talk to other people and have probably learned a few "scripts" that suggest some degree of empathy. Some autistic people learn when to type "sending thoughts and prayers," and some even say prayers. They still have little intuitive sense of what others are feeling. I think we should keep the linguistic definition of the word. If you have empathy, you may have brain damage, and it may overlap with some symptoms of autism, but you're not autistic.
It's important to note, however, that empathy is no substitute for a conscience--and it's possible, though harmful, for introverts to act contrary to their conscience. Empathy without a conscience creates the potential for sadism. Nature predisposes introverts to be much more kind than either extroverts or autistic people can ever be, but unpleasant social experiences can make us cruel.
24. Some introverts are bold individualists, very proud of being "a person you don't meet every day." Others are bland conformists, mirroring the behavior of those around them for the sake of privacy until they can be alone and feel free to be themselves. When introverts who have been painfully shy come out of their shells (after, perhaps, being the sort of bland, shy teenager who has only one friend at school), instead of becoming socially active and popular, they may become more independent and gleefully eccentric.
Autistic people seldom if ever have these choices. Even if high-functioning, they're not able to conform and they're very rarely able to celebrate their individual quirks, which tend to be painful for them.
25. There is no cure for autism. High-functioning autistic people may be competent on their jobs. They can benefit from special coaching and tutoring in basic social skills, but this is a matter of learning how to conceal and compensate rather than actually changing their difference from the rest of humankind.
Introversion is the cure for many things...for one thing, introverts aren't the ones who fight wars.
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