Autism and the Cost of Being Misread
How Shared Words Hide Different Cognitive Meanings
Part II of V: We’re Using the Same Words — But Not the Same Language
This essay is Part II of a multi-part series on autism and lived experience. Each installment explores a different way in which autistic ways of perceiving and relating are often misunderstood in everyday life. (If you’d like more context, Part I is here)
For context: I’m autistic, diagnosed with Asperger’s—hence the name of this blog.
Introduction
When I refer to “autistic people” in this essay, I’m not describing a single type of person or a fixed set of traits. I’m describing tendencies — patterns that appear often enough to shape experience, but never in exactly the same way. What follows is grounded primarily in my own lived experience.
Too often, when autistic people describe their own experience, it is treated as an argument, an excuse, or a position that needs to be debated. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been corrected about what I “really meant,” or told that my explanation couldn’t be accurate because it didn’t align with someone else’s expectations.
This essay is not an attempt to universalize autism or prescribe how anyone should think or behave. It is descriptive, not defensive — an account of how certain cognitive tendencies operate from the inside, and what tends to go wrong when those explanations are not heard on their own terms.
One of the hardest things to convey is that these differences are not deficits waiting to be corrected. They are orientations — ways attention organizes itself, ways meaning is assigned, ways energy is allocated.
When I describe autistic experiences here, I’m not arguing that one way of processing is better than another. I’m saying that it is different in structure, not simply degree. When those differences are flattened or ignored, misunderstandings pile up quickly — especially in relationships, work, and social settings.
Language as Precision vs. Language as Navigation
One of the most persistent misunderstandings between autistic and neurotypical people is the belief that miscommunication happens because someone isn’t listening carefully enough. Usually, both people are listening. The problem is not attention. The problem is that we often operate under different assumptions about what language is for.
For many autistic people, language is primarily a tool for precision.
Words are expected to mean what they say. Questions are meant to gather information. Statements are meant to describe reality as accurately as possible. When something is unclear, the natural response is to ask follow-up questions — not to challenge, but to understand.
Clarity is not optional. It is respectful. For many neurotypical people, language often serves as a navigational tool.
Words are used to manage relationships, signal alignment, soften conflict, preserve harmony, or move a conversation forward without fully resolving it. Meaning is frequently carried not by the words themselves, but by tone, timing, shared context, and what is not said.
In this mode, ambiguity is not a flaw. It is sometimes a feature. Neither approach is wrong. But they are not the same system.
Trouble begins when each side assumes the other is playing by the same rules.
Why Autistic Questions Are Often Misread
One of the most common points of friction is the autistic tendency to ask many questions.
From an autistic perspective, questions are a sign of engagement. They mean:
I’m taking this seriously.
I want to understand how this actually works.
From a neurotypical perspective, repeated questions can feel like:
Doubt
Resistance
Criticism
Interrogation
Even when none of those are intended.
For example, I might ask a practical question about timing or logistics — something like how long a task is expected to take, or what order things need to happen in. From my perspective, I’m trying to build an accurate mental model so I can participate effectively.
What I’ve learned, however, is that the question is often received as skepticism, resistance, or a challenge to authority. The response I get is not an answer but reassurance—or irritation. The mismatch isn’t about attitude. It’s about the fact that my question is oriented toward clarity, while the response assumes an emotional subtext that was never there.
When I describe autistic experiences here, I’m not arguing that one way of processing is better than another. I’m saying that it is different in structure, not simply degree. When those differences are flattened or ignored, misunderstandings pile up quickly — especially in relationships, work, and social settings.
Consider a simple example: A plan is proposed. Details are vague. An autistic person asks for clarification — timelines, expectations, contingencies. To them, this is responsible participation. To the other person, it may feel like the plan itself is being challenged.
This mismatch creates a painful dynamic:
The more an autistic person tries to understand,
The more they are perceived as difficult or oppositional.
Over time, many autistic people learn to suppress their questions — not because the questions disappear, but because asking them carries social risk.
The result is not harmony. It is silence layered over confusion.
Context Gaps and “Obvious” Meaning
Another frequent breakdown occurs around what is considered obvious.
Neurotypical communication relies heavily on shared, implicit context. Much of the meaning in a conversation is assumed rather than stated. When someone says, “You know what I mean,” they often genuinely expect that you do.
Autistic communication tends to privilege explicitness. If something matters, it should be said. If something is implied, it may not register as meaningful at all.
When autistic people miss an implication, they are often told they are overthinking — or paradoxically, not thinking enough.
Both judgments miss the point.
The issue is not intelligence or attention. It is that different cues are being treated as primary.
One system privileges implication. The other privileges articulation. Miscommunication is not a failure of effort. It is a mismatch of signal.
Much of that mismatch comes from differences in how implication works. In many social environments, meaning is carried implicitly — through tone, timing, shared assumptions, or what goes unsaid.
Autistic people are often expected to intuit which of those cues matter most, without being told explicitly.
When we miss them, the response is frequently, “You should have known.” What gets overlooked is that missing an implication does not mean missing care, intelligence, or engagement. It means the signal was encoded in a channel we were never reliably taught how to read.
When Directness Is Mistaken for Coldness
Autistic communication is often more direct, less ornamented, and less performative.
This can be misread as blunt, detached, or uncaring — especially in emotionally charged situations. But directness is not the absence of feeling. In many cases, it is an attempt to respect reality rather than manage perception.
Autistic people may prioritize accuracy over reassurance, clarity over comfort, truth over social smoothing — not because they don’t care, but because caring is expressed through honesty.
When this is misunderstood, autistic people are frequently asked to soften, reframe, or repackage their words — while their underlying meaning remains unheard. The emotional labor here is not neutral. It accumulates.
Good Faith Is Not Enough
What makes these communication failures especially painful is that they often occur between people who genuinely care about each other.
Both sides may be acting in good faith.
Both may feel unheard.
Both may walk away confused, hurt, or frustrated.
But good faith alone does not prevent harm. Because adaptation is rarely symmetrical.
Autistic people are far more often asked to translate, soften, intuit, and accommodate — while neurotypical communication norms remain invisible, unnamed, and unquestioned.
Without recognizing that two different communication systems are in play, the conflict becomes personalized.
Instead of “we’re using language differently,” the conclusion becomes:
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You’re too rigid.”
“You’re not trying.”
None of these is true.
They are shortcuts that protect the dominant system from examination.
What Understanding Actually Requires
Bridging autistic and neurotypical communication does not require one side to fully convert to the other.
It requires something more difficult: the willingness to treat difference as real, not as error.
That means accepting that:
Questions may be invitations, not challenges
Silence may be processing, not withdrawal
Directness may be care, not coldness
Understanding begins when we stop assuming that shared words guarantee shared meaning.
And it deepens when we acknowledge how much effort some people have been expending, quietly, for years — just to be understood at all.
Over time, these repeated mismatches carry a cost.
Many autistic adults learn to speak less precisely, to ask fewer questions, or to soften their language until it no longer reflects what they actually mean. There is an exhaustion that comes from constantly translating — from monitoring every sentence for how it might be misread rather than whether it is accurate.
Perhaps most painful is the experience of being misunderstood in good faith, again and again, and slowly internalizing the idea that clarity itself is the problem. The burden here does not rest solely on the individual; it lies with systems that reward implication while punishing explicitness.
This is one reason I’m taking this slowly, piece by piece.
These misunderstandings don’t arise from malice, and they aren’t solved by goodwill alone. They sit at the intersection of expectation, language, and unspoken social rules.
In the next essay, I want to look more closely at how those rules operate — and why autistic people are so often expected to adapt to systems that were never designed with us in mind.
Coming Next: Part III — Living Inside Misrecognition
Series Framing
This essay is the second in a series about autism, misrecognition, and the cost of being consistently misunderstood in subtle ways. Each piece will focus on a familiar phrase, assumption, or social reflex — not to assign blame, but to examine how ordinary language can quietly erase real difference.
Understanding autism does not require agreement. It requires the willingness to let someone else’s experience remain intact, even when it does not resemble your own.
Jeff Brackett
Artist • Writer • Educator
Exploring the intersections of art, autism, and human connection through the ongoing creative project Lines on the Spectrum — an illustrated memoir in progress.
https://www.jeffreymbrackett.com
Aspie Art Journey — reflections on art, perception, and creative process.
Dating App Diaries — essays on vulnerability, connection, and rediscovery
Thanks for reading Aspie Art Journey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.