 Good afternoon, Aspie Legion. Welcome back to the Asperger's Grove channel. My name is Thomas Henley and today we're going to be talking about autism again. Haha, who knows? It's called Asperger's Grove. Deal with it. Autistic people, I believe, have so much to offer their friends. So much to offer people who are in their life, people that they care about. They have honesty, they're trustworthy, and they appreciate people in their life. Especially since we tend to be a lot more socially isolated, a lot more bullied. Because of this, in adulthood or even in teenagehood, autistic people can make amazing friends. Whether you know it or not, autistic people in your social circles around you, if you're friends with one, they spend so much time, so much time trying to understand you, your brain, how you work, how to interact with you. But the thing is is that not many people understand how to interact with us. And you could say, yes, we are, you know, one or two percent of the population, but we need some love too. So today I'm going to give you five ways, five really great tips on how to make friends with autistic people. Now this can be applied to dating or friendships or anything. So if you're interested in any of those types of things, make sure to stay tuned for the video. It's gonna, it's gonna come soon. The neurotypical brain is a very interesting one. It's very complex and perhaps not many people understand how it works. If you don't know what a neurotypical is, you are probably a neurotypical. Neurotypicals are anybody who isn't autistic, anybody who doesn't have ADHD or autism. That's basically the general term for those people. Autistic people generally have a hard time interacting with others. We have difficulties in a lot of different key areas that come more naturally to people who aren't on the autistic spectrum. Because of this, and because of the way that our brain is, we have a different style of communication. Meaning the things that you guys, you neurotypicals communicate with your body language and your tone of voice, we don't really understand that. So in order to really connect with us, to empathize with us, to make friends with us, you need to take into account these five things. Number one, autistic people need verbal affirmation. It's so difficult for us to understand where we are in a relationship with someone else. Meaning that we don't take things for granted. We don't really assume things in general. Meaning that even if you want to spend time with us or you invite us to things, we're never really sure where we stand with you until you tell us. Because we don't assume any of these things, telling us things, communicating with your voice, what we are to you, how much you appreciate something that we do, is really important for us. You could probably get away with it in most cases, but if you really want to develop a strong connection with someone on the spectrum, you need to verbalize things. A lot. We do it all the time. You may think that we're being a bit overboard when we express how we feel in long paragraphs or we go into complex sort of explanations for our actions and our behaviors. This is because this is what we want you to do as well. Because this is how our brain works. We need to verbalize how we feel through our words rather than through our actions alone. So giving us verbal affirmations can be a great thing to get you started on that autism neurotypical friendship. Number two, emotional explanations. Emotions for autistic people are really difficult. We struggle to perceive our own emotions and we struggle to perceive emotions in other people as well. Because of this lack of perception, because of our difficulty grasping the very abstract and difficult and complex concepts of emotion, it's really hard for us to understand someone's emotional reasoning. So in a lot of situations, if you have a conflict of ideas with an autistic person or you're struggling to get across something, you're struggling to help them understand what state you're in, use your words, explain why you feel something and how it affects you. And once you do that, most autistic people granted that they understand will want to help you out. This sort of goes hand in hand with the first one, which is explanations. But when it comes to emotions, that is a really important thing to explain with your words. It helps a lot. It's hard for us to understand, so just try and make it a little bit more easy for us. Number three, one of the aspects of being autistic is that we do not like lying in general. I know some people on the spectrum who do lie, do tell white lies and all of those kind of things, but for a lot of autistic people, we like to live life through sort of a black and white lens, either something is bad or it's good. And if we are brought up correctly and we take on board what people teach us about the world and how to act, there is a high likelihood that we are very truthful, we are very blunt, we are very honest, and sometimes that can be misconstrued as being rude, which is one of the difficulties of being autistic and people not knowing about it. You'll find that if you are brutally honest, if you are honest and truthful and to the point with an autistic person, they will, even if they dislike what you say, it's likely that they will appreciate that a lot. It will do a lot for the relationship you have with an autistic person because they know where you stand. If you bluntly explain something or you say the truth and give your opinion, we love it. It helps us understand who you are as a person. Honestly, we find social interaction very difficult, so even if you're trying to sort of manipulate and sort of not manipulate, but if you're trying to get across something through body language or tone of voice or something that we're just not really getting, just say it to us, we can take it and we will appreciate it a lot. Number four. Now, social interaction. Autistic people struggle with it. We do. It's a developmental condition, whether you want to call it a disability or a disability, we do struggle with social interaction. And although it doesn't apply to every single autistic person, for example, myself, I'm very proactive with socialising and very extroverted in comparison to a lot of the autistic people that I've met, but a large majority of us, we aren't. Like, not all of us are that confident in social situations. So if you have a friend who's autistic, one of the best things that you can do for that person is try and facilitate conversation. Can be one of the best things that you can do for them, especially if they have, if they really struggle with confidence, they really struggle with their ability to speak to other people and make friends, maybe they're a bit lonely, facilitating these conversations, helping the conversation flow better, getting them out into the social world and push out, meet new people, make new friends. That's one of the best things that you can offer to an autistic person. Number five, it's the final one, but I've saved the best to last. This is the most important thing. Guys, you do not need to do extensive research into autism to understand autistic people. The only thing that you really need to get along with an autistic person is to have a desire to understand an open mind to how they may be experiencing life, an open mind to the intricacies and complexity of being autistic. If you put effort into trying to understand us, if you ask questions, if you listen intently and try to take it on and remember it, that is one of the most amazing things for us, because not everybody does that, not everybody cares. You know, some people might want to care and they just sort of stare into the space when they're trying to explain something, but we spend so much time trying to understand you, trying to understand how to interact with you, trying to comprehend the reasons for your actions and the things that you do that seem absolutely strange and unusual and weird. We do it. We do it all the time. It's called masking. Masking. We try to fit in. We try to adapt to your communication style and it's very taxing and it's very stressful and it's hard for us. So if you are willing to understand us, you want to understand us and you are willing to put effort into the relationship, you're willing to try and make adjustments, try to think of our behaviors differently, understand us as a person. You don't need all of that autism research, you don't need to research it extensively. To be open-minded, listen to what we say, about our experiences, about our struggles, about the good things about being autistic if you want to and that person will be immensely appreciative of that, like you are not going to find a better way to connect with an autistic person other than just trying to understand who they are and that's the same with everybody else, it's just we're just quite a bit different than most people in defined and structured ways. So thank you very much for watching this video. It's been a different one this time and hey if you're an autistic person and you're just watching this out of interest, share it with your friends, share it with the people around you, post it, fly it, send it by stalk or something, you know, fly it overseas into the depths of the Amazon rainforest or something like that, get it out there, please. Thank you, thank you very much. If you liked the video, make sure to like it and if you want to see some more videos by me, Mr. Thomas Henley, I know I said Mr. Thomas Henley, everyone's gonna think that's my name now, it's not my first name, it's Thomas, okay, I'm sorry, I know you probably know that anyway but I'm just being silly, of course, that's who I am as a person, understand me, I'm joking. Make sure to subscribe, hit that notification bell, give it a little ding and then you'll be notified when my new videos come out which doesn't always happen on a frequent basis and you know, sometimes I make more and sometimes I don't but do it and then my videos won't just be lost in the space of the internet, the network of people talking about cats and funny videos of dogs. Important stuff and if you want to check out some more things that I do in my daily life, some podcasting, maybe a bit of work in schools, maybe a bit of public speaking, go check them out on my social medias, adaspergisgrowth, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, go check it out, please. Do you think these tips are helpful autistic people and if you're not autistic and you are just looking to see how you can improve your relationships with the spectrum, the spectrum, did these help? Do you have a better understanding of how you can improve your relationships? Let me know. I'm very excited to hear what you have to say, not in a sarcastic way because I know some people will think that, I know you will. Stop thinking that. Tom does not be sarcastic, he never, he never uses sarcasm, he never ever uses sarcasm, never ever, never. Thank you very much for watching, most appreciative of you spending just a little bit of time with me on this small little space on the internet. Do you need a positive and truthful and honest and loving friend in your life, someone that you can depend on, someone that will appreciate you for who you are, for the things that you do for them? Why not be friends with an autistic person? Hope you enjoy the video and you have a nice day. Love you guys, love you and I'll see you, might as be Legion, in the next video. See you later.