Autism’s Barriers to Friendship

Recently, I found myself in a new stage of life: college. As an autistic, college is challenging for far too many reasons to discuss here, but I do want to focus on one. Before I moved to college, I had been doing really, really well with my autism and other related challenges. My mental health was in a good place and I was functioning highly, rarely having meltdowns or emotional episodes, or any other of what I call “autistic challenges.” I felt like I had conquered autism. With this mindset, I was looking forward to college, for I was going to conquer that too. I was going to establish new routines, try to be more spontaneous, study hard, and most importantly meet and befriend new people from all walks of life. Unfortunately, making friends has not come easily. Had you asked me back this summer: “Kloey, does your autism affect your ability to make friends?” I would have said no. I had lots of friends and established relationships at home which had been nurtured from a young age. As a child and teen, involvement in my church youth group and extracurricular activities like sports, academic team, and musicals, helped me to establish lasting friendships. As did my parents who were very involved in my social life, encouraging me to go out, invite people over, and suggesting and planning activities for me to do with peers. 

Now, as a 19-year-old autistic college student, I have hit a wall. (Idioms…conquered!). Since moving to college, I have been utterly alone. Autistics experience much higher rates of mental illness than the neurotypical population, and without going into private details, I will say that I have experienced and been treated for depression before; however, college was going to teach me a whole new reality as to what depression is. At school, I struggled with loneliness immensely. What’s the cure for loneliness? Companionship. 

As an autistic, you live every waking moment with autism, but there are still times where you have to confront reality. I thought I had done this before college. I told myself, “Kloey, finding friends is going to be hard for you.” But, remember, at that time, I thought I had “conquered” my autism, so I said back to myself, “Klo, you’ve got this. You’re funny. You have a ton of friends here in Ashland. How hard can it be?” 

Let me tell you, I was wrong. As an individual with a disability, but also as parents or caregivers, we are constantly hit waves of grief which remind us that, no, we are still not normal. And no, we have not conquered our autism or escaped our “support needs” as the clinicians like to say. That said, I realized that what I am going through is every autistic’s experience to some extent or at some point in life. To quote the Diagnostic Statistics Manual, 5th edition: I have “Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships,” as do all autistics. This directly affects my ability to form bonds with peers. I grieve over this. In my lowest moments, I think how: “How can these other 19-year-olds socialize, make funny jokes, tell seamless stories, show the right facial expressions, keep eye contact, and not get worn down?” “How can they attend concerts and have fun in the noise and bright lights?” Second, I think why: “Why can’t that be me?” “Why can’t I understand teenage humor?” “Why don’t they like me?” “Why don’t they invite me?” It is a vicious cycle, but thankfully, hope is not lost. I have to remind myself that though I feel alone now, I have had successful, fun friendships in the past. And those friends are still my friends! But, since we are apart for college, that can be hard to remember.

All that to say, my purpose today is not for pity but for education and awareness. As I work through my own loneliness and search for companionship, I have been de-coding the ways that autism has impacted my ability to make friends compared to my typical peers. In a way, breaking down the hows and whys has helped me to grieve over the challenges my autism presents to friendship. Furthermore, I meet and advocate for many lovely families. When I meet with the parents of autistic children, the number one concern I hear is about social connection: “Will my child have friends?” “Should I force my child to connect socially?” “Should I let them withdraw?” and “How do I help my child connect with people?”

There are many angles to take for these questions, and the answer depends greatly on the individual child. To answer these questions, first, we must investigate the barriers autism presents to social connection. As many of you know, these barriers are great, for deficits in “developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships” is the foundation of an autism diagnosis. I admit when I originally sat down to write this blog, I intended to list five key factors, thinking that would make for a good length; however, after experiencing difficulty forming friendships the last three months, (and spending ample time contemplating), I realized that ten major factors must be discussed as autistic barriers to friendship. Let us begin.

Barrier 1: Communication Deficits

To be autistic, you have to show difficulty (before the age of 6) with communicating. This includes verbal communication, non-verbal communication (hand gestures, posture, facial expressions), and para-verbal communication (tone, pitch, and inflections as used in emotional responses, sarcasm, and jokes). The foundation of any relationship between human beings is communication, so you can imagine how an inability to communicate, or communicate “well” makes it difficult to establish and maintain relationships. People with autism struggle to relate their thoughts, feelings, and needs in words. On top of that, they miss essential non-verbal cues,  facial expressions, and body language. When you miss the “unspoken language” of a conversation, the two parties do not see eye to eye. Combine misunderstanding verbal and non-verbal language, and your interaction just got really uncomfortable. You feel it, and so does the autistic. Remember that. They know they are different, and they are uncomfortable trying to work through their communication barriers with you, but they cannot escape their autism.

Barrier 2: Humor  

Humor is a foundation in many social relationships. Everyone seeks a friend who makes them dash for the restroom and laugh until their stomach hurts, but when you have autism, it is hard to understand your peers’ humor. Autistic brains are literal, but most jokes, to be funny, cannot be taken literally. This, as well as misunderstanding para-verbal communication, presents a barrier. Para-verbal communication tells us if someone is making a joke or using sarcasm because of their tone, pitch, inflection, and rate of speech. When people with autism miss these para-verbal cues, (which is characteristic of their disability and not their fault), they also misinterpret humor. They may get offended or sad, or perhaps they missed the humor altogether and are staring back at their peers with a blank, confused expression.

Barrier 3: Bluntness

Related to communication, people with autism tend to be blunt. And I mean, they’ll tell you what you really, really do not want to hear, kind of blunt. I tend to be this way myself, but my parents and I, (with a lot of grace), have worked on this. I once (or maybe multiple times), told my older sister that her eyebrows do not match her face. Sorry about that… 

Anyway, you may ask: “Kloey, with your understanding and intelligence, how could you say something like that?” Well, I was a bit younger then, but I can still explain what goes through my head. I see everything precisely as it is logically. I do not have a lot of empathy (read Level 1 Autism & Empathy: Destined to Fail?), therefore, my emotions do not taint my thinking very much. When my brain produces a thought it is logical and truthful. And then I think: how could the world work without truth? And why do people let their emotions get in the way of everything when the solutions are simple?! Now, when those blunt thoughts are paired with a lack of impulse control, (another trait of autism), you get a no-nonsense and harshly true response. It does not take much imagination to think about how bluntness like this may scare off potential friends, co-workers, or other peers. I have learned that the world often loves to hear what is not true, at least not entirely true. My autistic brain cannot understand this.

Barrier 4: Black-and-White Thinking

Black-and-white thinking is what causes my brain to think literally and logically as I described above. It is what causes my thoughts to be literal and my responses blunt. It is unknown why autistic brains are seemingly incapable of having “gray” thoughts; however, it could have something to do with the abnormal wiring of our brain’s neural connections [1]. Regardless, our literal thinking can be a barrier to friendship because it prevents us from understanding humor, responding considerately, having empathy, and understanding conversational points.

Barrier 5: Anxiety & Other Mental Disorders

There is a term called the “autism umbrella” that represents the multitude of mental disorders commonly found alongside autism. As if having autism wasn’t enough, most autistics have anxiety disorders, attention disorders, OCD, insomnia, or depression. In fact, people with autism experience mental illness at higher rates than most other populations worldwide. Once again, this is due to the abnormal development of our brains, specifically our increased, yet shortened neural connections. Our brains contain an excess of neural pathways, but this negatively impacts cognition and regulation [2]. This excess of connections causes neural traffic jams, confusion, and overall chaos, leading to increased mental discomfort and disorder. The heightened anxiety and mental turmoil we experience wears us down and influences our willingness to make friends, the effort we can give, and our level of engagement in conversation. 

Barrier 6: Social battery

Because of Barrier 1 (communication deficits) and Barrier 5 (mental disorders), our social batteries are very short. Every time we engage with peers, our brains are working as hard as a college student works on their final examination. We have to pull our attention to our peer, sustain that attention, allow our brains to process what we hear, and then try to correctly interpret all their non-verbal cues, para-verbal cues, and any tricky verbal communication like figurative language, plus read their facial expressions correctly, all before we can even think about what to say back and how to execute that. None of this comes naturally to us, so our brain churns like the wheels on a steam engine (another idiom, hoorah!). Once we do figure out what we heard and saw, we then have to respond appropriately: What words should I use? What pitch? Will this offend them? Will it make them sad? Remember Kloey, make eye contact. Eye contact. Eye contact! All this, for one response…and think about how many times people go back and forth in a five-minute conversation. Social interaction is draining and we don’t last long. This is a major reason why autistics withdraw. Socializing is just too much work to add to an already chaotic brain.

Barrier 7: Emotional Regulation

Another factor that greatly influences our ability to make friends is emotional regulation. This is the ability to respond appropriately to adverse emotional situations. An adverse emotional situation can be as little as someone touching your pencil or as big as tragically losing a loved one. Within autism, emotional regulation is like the flip of a coin. We don’t have proper wiring or inherent coping skills and instincts to calm and regulate our minds when something goes awry. The reaction you may receive if someone touches their pencil can be equal to what you would expect to see when someone loses a loved one. Our brains cannot regulate emotions, especially not alongside the other daily chaos that resides in our brains. Emotional regulation presents a barrier to friendship because we “overreact” to little things. People are not particularly fond of friends who lose their cool on a whim.

Barrier 8: Sensory Sensitivities 

In addition to being unable to regulate our emotions, we cannot regulate our nervous system either. Our nervous system, alongside many other tasks, is responsible for detecting, relaying, and interpreting information from our senses, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, as well as lesser-known senses like vestibular (movement), and proprioception (distance, balance, and gauge of force). When our brains receive sensory stimuli, they interpret them incorrectly. This occurs at different levels for each autistic. Sometimes every sense is affected and sometimes only one sense is. Sensory sensitivities also include increased (hyper) sensitivity and decreased (hypo) sensitivity. Hypersensitivity is our brain interpreting something as too much. One popular example is sound. I cannot attend live concerts because my brain amplifies the sound stimuli my ears pick up, so a concert, while loud for others, is physically painful for me. Contrastingly, hyposensitivity presents as discomfort and sensory seeking. Instead of amplifying sensation, the nervous system interprets the stimuli as less than it actually is. For example, people with autism cannot sit in a chair for long periods of time because our brains under-interpret the amount of vestibular sensation one receives from sitting. Our brains beg us to receive more stimuli so we rock, tap our legs, get up and pace, jump, or spin to receive the movement our brain is telling us it needs. Both hyper and hyposensitivity affect friendship because we cannot tolerate all the places our peers enjoy. We may not be able to sit in a gym to watch a basketball game with friends. It is too loud and bright, and on top of that, we cannot sit still for two hours. Lots of locations of social connection are too overwhelming for people with autism.

Barrier 9: Rigidity

One of the “Big 3,” (the three most important diagnostic criteria of autism), is rigidity. Rigidity consists of three concepts: an inability to respond to change, unusual fixations and attachments, and rigid speech or movement. It is well-known that people with autism do not respond well to change. A small change can spark a big reaction and meltdown. While the cause of rigidity is technically unknown, from my own experiences on the spectrum, I believe we are inflexible because of the brain chaos I so often mention. Brain chaos is the confusion we feel from constantly misunderstanding communication, dealing with anxiety and other mental disorders, guessing how our brains will react to the sensory stimuli around us, and trying to regulate our emotions. Brain chaos stems from a lack of control. We cannot control our inability to understand communication, we cannot control our anxiety, we cannot correctly interpret sensations, and we cannot control our emotions. Having autism is a constant, draining, and uncomfortable state of lacking control. So, we grasp any control we can to calm our minds. Having a routine is having control. We know what comes next and we can plan for it. When something changes, we lose control and the brain chaos gets the best of us. I’ve been there, and I can tell you it is the most uncomfortable feeling. Because of impaired emotional regulation, I often cannot control my reaction to changes. All I feel is panic, panic, panic! I cannot form a coherent thought, nonetheless, a word or a sentence when something changes around me. When plans change, which happens quite often, I may not be able to process that change or attend the event anymore. Even worse, what if the change happens when I am already with someone and I lose my cool in front of them?! This presents a barrier to friendship.

Rigidity also means rigid interests and rigid movement. Many people with autism hyper fixation on one interest. That interest is all they want to, or can, talk about. Unfortunately, their peers may not share this interest or want to learn about it over and over again. As far as rigid movement is concerned, society places a lot of pressure on “looks.” Many autistics go friendless because they appear “different” or look (society’s term, not mine) “weird”. They may move differently or stim often. For school-aged peers, (even high school and college), stimming is “weird” and “uncool,” turning peers away from any interest in friendship.

Barrier 10: Physiological Conditions

Lastly, autism comes with a myriad of physiological conditions. Around 50% of autistics have epilepsy and 85% experience gastrointestinal disorder. Meanwhile, 35.8% to 56.6% also have eating disorders (ARFID or PICA). People with autism also may be more susceptible to illness due to altered immune cell functioning and increased antibody production [3]. All this to say, it is hard to be available and reliable as an autistic because we are constantly handling so much. At any given moment we may not be emotionally, mentally, or socially regulated, not to mention physically well enough to attend events or show up consistently. As it so happens, consistency and reliability are an important part of friendship and another barrier autism presents.

Now, back to our tough questions: “Will my child have friends?” “Should I force my child to connect socially?” “Should I let them withdraw?” and “How do I help my child connect with people?” In tackling these questions, I aim to be as honest as I can. 

Onto our first question: “Will my child have friends?” Yes, your child can have friends, they may just need some assistance, prompting, and planning from you with other loving parents to make it happen. But remember, you cannot hold your autistic child’s friendships to typical standards. They may look different and that is okay! If your child is in a room with a peer but is not actively talking to them, this does not mean they are not bonding or that it was a failure. They will bond and learn about others in their own ways. It is important to celebrate the small wins and keep going as long as your child is handling the situations and interactions without intense discomfort or intense anxiety. (Some anxiety is normal!)

That said, they may not have consistent friendships. They may have a friend or friends from say ages 8-10, but then go without friends for a year or so, and so on. Friendship ebbs and flows for autistics. There are times when the brain chaos is too strong that we cannot handle friendship but need to go through a phase of withdrawal. Troubles with puberty and burnout also may affect our ability to hold onto friendships at certain stages of life.

One last comment, each autistic person handles loneliness differently. I spoke on this in another blog (Read: Loneliness), but some autistics do not need as many friends or social interactions as others. Some autistics prefer solitude. That said, I don’t know that any autistic could handle solitude for long periods of time. After all, we are still human and all humans were made to form connections with others, but, I have seen some intense withdrawals in level 3 autistics, who despite their limited social interactions, are content and happy.

Next up: “Should I force my child to connect socially?”  or “Should I let them withdraw?” This is a balancing act. All autistics, as you can see from my personal testimony at the beginning of this blog, may not be able to form friendships on their own. They will need your help and prompting. You should aim to make sure that there are specific times each week when your child is exposed to peers, developing social skills, and forming bonds. As an autistic parent, you will be more involved in your child’s social life than parents of neurotypical children. You will have to prompt your child to socialize and help plan opportunities to socialize. Your role is vital. When you encourage social interaction, despite initial resistance, you are helping them! So much of what autistics learn socially is from what they see other people do, so being around peers consistently is the best way to mimic, and then learn, new skills. But you must balance their social time with downtime, time when they can withdraw. If you force too much socialization without enough breaks, their brains go into overdrive. Remember that autistics have brain chaos, so they need extra time to regulate their nervous system and emotions; plus, their social batteries are short. If you exhaust their social battery, they will not benefit from social interaction because their brains are overwhelmed and uncomfortable.

Lastly, “How do I help my child connect with people?” Keeping in mind what I said about encouraging socialization but also withdrawal, the best way to help an autistic child connect socially is to build social opportunities into their weekly routine. Here is an example: I have a child who is on the spectrum, speaks in short, fragmented phrases, stims heavily, and cannot sit still. To encourage friendship, I would make sure my child attends specials like gym and music classes at school with their typical peers, even if they can only last for 10-minute intervals. I would also join, if possible, a weekly playground group. Say, from 4:00-5:00 PM every Tuesday, a group of moms gets their children together for a playground date. Thirdly, I would register my child to join a weekly creative movement or music therapy class around other peers with special needs. Inclusive specials and playground groups provide socialization with “typical” peers in short, consistent spurts which are part of my child’s weekly schedule. The creative movement class and playground group provide vestibular input in an environment where sensory seeking is normal, i.e. children are playgrounds are very active. The creative movement class also provides socialization and consistency in my child’s schedule, but I encourage this class with special needs peers because it is important that my child understands that he/she has a community of others like him/her. Special needs children learn a lot from each other; they form bonds and empathize with each other in a unique way. I do not want to put my child only around “typical” children because that indicates that there is something wrong with their special needs peers. 

In conclusion, autism presents many challenges. Friendship is just one of them. Because of the ten barriers mentioned above, people with autism struggle to make and keep friends; however, every child can connect with their peers. Every child, every bond, every friendship, whether it looks different from the “norm” or not, is meaningful and valuable. Autistics will encounter more trouble with friendship, but we will persevere. What we need to do so, is your help, support, and encouragement. Take a minute to pat yourself on the back, because we autistics would not be where we are today without you, our wonderful and loving support systems.

Started on November 3rd, 2024, and finished on January 9th, 2025.

1. Keown et al. (2013). Cell reports [Image]. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.10.003

2. Bhandari, Tamara. (2017). In Autism, Too Many Brain Connections May Be at Root of Condition. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

3.  Onore, C., Careaga, M., & Ashwood, P. (2012). The role of immune dysfunction in the pathophysiology of autism. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 26(3), 383–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2011.08.007