For a lot of adults on the autism spectrum, navigating everyday life can feel like stepping into a movie where everyone else got the script ahead of time and you didn’t. People seem to know how to move, what to say, and how to react. There are rules, cues, gestures, and tones, most of them unspoken, and yet somehow understood by everyone else. If you’re autistic, it can feel like everyone’s fluent in a social language you were never taught.

This is about how the brain processes social information. Most people naturally “read” others, their tone, body language, and facial expressions, and can guess what someone might be thinking or feeling without even trying. This skill is sometimes called “theory of mind.” But for people with autism, it’s not automatic. It's like trying to follow a conversation when half the words are whispered and the other half are in code (Baron-Cohen, 1995). In this post, I will briefly discuss six social/cognitive areas in which autistic adults often struggle.

If you can’t pick up on what someone’s thinking or feeling beneath the surface, it’s easy for conversations to go sideways. And when the other person expects you to just “get it” without explaining, misunderstandings pile up. That’s not a moral failing. It’s a difference. But once we understand that this kind of mind-reading doesn’t come naturally to everyone, we can start creating ways to make social interaction less confusing and more doable—and maybe even enjoyable.

Another common challenge? Recognizing emotions and showing them. Most people react emotionally in real time. Someone looks sad, and you instinctively offer support. Someone shares exciting news, and you match their energy. For autistic adults, this emotional exchange might not come so easily. They feel emotions. It’s that translating those feelings into expressions, or noticing them in others, can be........

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