“What Did I Do Wrong?” - A Book That Breaks the Traumatic Cycle of Communication Misunderstandings Between Autistic and Neurotypical People

As a late-diagnosed autistic/ADHD (AuDHD) person who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I must have asked, “What did I do wrong?” or some variation thereof at least a thousand times.

Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, in family situations, friendships, jobs, romantic relationships, and even some quick conversations with strangers, the mood would shift suddenly, and my communication partner(s) would look and behave as though I had slapped them.

From my perspective, everything was fine, and the conversation was perfectly ordinary, even pleasant. From their perspective, however, I had said or done something that was so socially inappropriate that it warranted a shocked, angry, or hurt response. Or, if I hadn’t actually said or done anything they found offensive, there was something about my tone of voice, facial expression, or inability to pick up and respond to a hidden social cue that completely derailed the interaction while I stood there stunned, unable to connect my behavior to their sudden (and often traumatizing) emotional response.

Before I discovered I was neurodivergent, I truly believed everyone around me was either emotionally unstable or purposefully cruel and simply ‘putting on’ these reactions out of nowhere to mess with me. (This was especially true when I was in my teens and early twenties).

However, once I got out into the world and joined the workforce, the same strange reactions I’d received from teachers and family members extended to co-workers and supervisors, and I was forced to try to figure out what it was about me that was so incredibly off-putting.

Unfortunately, even with therapy and doing my own personal research, it wasn’t until I stumbled upon neurodivergence from doing an irritated Google search of “Why do I take everything so literally??” that I finally took the first step in my journey of discovering just how differently my brain works in comparison to everyone around me.

And what a journey it was! Once I figured out I was autistic, I suddenly had an answer for everything, and I excitedly tried to share that answer far and wide, so happy to finally know that I was different, not broken, and that I actually could explain my way of thinking.

But, alas, as has happened to many a late-diagnosed person, many of the neurotypical people around simply refused to believe it, even when I eventually received a professional diagnosis.

As crestfallen as I was and as emotionally betrayed as I felt by these responses, I didn’t spend too long curled in a ball crying. I picked myself up, dusted myself off (as I had so many times in my past before I even knew who I was), and started talking about my experiences online.

I started a short-lived YouTube series called, “Why Autistic People Do That”, and then I started writing discussion questions on social media for autistic people to feel heard and validated and for the neurotypical people in their lives to understand their way of thinking, and, more important to me than anything else, believe them.

I wrote, “What Did I Do Wrong?” : An Accessible Guide to Preventing Traumatic Misunderstandings Between You and Your Autistic Loved One as a guidebook for parents, partners, and friends of autistic individuals who want to move past all the clinical explanations and definitions other books provide and simply learn, by literal example, the most common words, deeds, and actions neurotypical people find offensive when interacting with autistic individuals, and the true and unoffensive intentions behind them.

The book is also for autistic people to use as a communication tool to explain their words, actions, behavior, and intentions to a neurotypical person who may be continually misunderstanding them.

My sincere hope is that this book can help break the unique and cyclic trauma caused by this largely-invisible neurological language barrier. If it can do that (and I’m already getting positive feedback that it has), then every social misunderstanding, every job loss, every breakup, every sudden friendship loss, every experience of being yelled at or verbally abused “out of nowhere” that I have endured as a result of these misunderstandings will have been worth it just to see this book into the world.

Click here to buy your copy on Amazon.com.