My Lived Experiences with Black-and-White Thinking

Alt text: A black and white image shows an image of Mike and a brain overlaying a chessboard with contrasting words (like yes and no, right and wrong) scattered across the an old newspaper.

As a man living on the autism spectrum, the social communication challenges, unexpected behaviors, and learning to self-advocate were and continue to be difficult. Between the barriers to recognizing non-verbal social cues and holding reciprocal conversations, especially as a child and teenager, to the challenges with the unwritten social rules that exist in various situations, living with an autism spectrum disorder can be complicated.

An instance in which the unwritten social rules presented a harder challenge was throughout my very young to teenage years when I misinterpreted the difference between making appropriate and respectful eye contact in a conversation with staring at people. I was both chastised and yelled at many times, especially in junior high, for staring at people uncomfortably due to being deep in thought. 

My peers and teachers, unfortunately, did not recognize that I was deep in thought while looking at them and thought I was staring to be uncomfortable or atypical. My self-advocacy skills were not there in junior high, so it was a combination of my lack of situational awareness and the others’ lack of understanding. Fortunately, after many instances of reprimand, I learned not to stare and those criticisms decreased.  

This is particularly true with the black-and-white thinking that many people with autism operate with daily and throughout their lives. Black-and-white logic entails that most things in life are one way or the other in a very rigid way. 

The autism community has trouble understanding the various shades of gray that are realistically present in everyday life, the black-and-white logic dominates the thought process of most on the autism spectrum. 

I am not an exception to that notion, my thoughts and reactions were very black-and-white growing up. Due to this, there were many miscommunications I dealt with that went unresolved due to my lack of self-advocating skills in those periods. 

There were instances in school where certain social situations were bewildering to me when a teacher or staff member mistreated a peer. That peer was expected to respect their elders even in the face of disrespect. 

Those types of situations can occur in school but as a black-and-white thinker, my logic was, “How can this teacher be so mean, and yet the student is expected to be respectful anyway?” In some instances, I was the student being mistreated, so that logic was even harder to understand. 

The shade of gray there is that, yes, students are expected to be respectful even in scenarios where a teacher or staff member mistreats the students. 

As the cliche goes, two wrongs don’t make a right, but even still, seeing the adults be unkind to students who couldn’t do anything about it and take it due to social expectations was a hard reality to reconcile.

Another instance of my black-and-white thinking being harder in social situations was learning the unwritten rules of how to behave appropriately in select situations, such as how a peer can utilize sarcasm to be impolite to a person with autism, where people with autism do not innately understand sarcasm and humor. 

If I tried to utilize my version of sarcasm, it would be misinterpreted in the conversation and I would get scolded twice in a row.

An example of my sarcasm being misunderstood was as a junior high school student when I was conversing with a classmate and after my classmate said a sentence, I replied with, “Yeah, right,” or something to that effect. My intention there was to be humorous, but my classmate’s irritated facial expression and retort of, “Smart-mouth comments aren’t going to get you anywhere, my friend,” showed me where my comment did not get received with the intended response. 

I firmly believe, upon reflection, that my lack of vocal inflection at the time caused my intended funny answer to be received as a “wise guy.” There were other examples of that same miscommunication, but the one I described is the most notable. That is a good lesson for the autism community to develop their ability to inflect their voices to have their facetious humor be interpreted more effectively. 

Another aspect of the black-and-white logic is that everything should be completely fair and balanced in any given situation, whereas the realistic answer is that life is unfair and imbalanced in several ways.

As a man living on the autism spectrum, whenever I watch a movie, television show, or real-life story that entails that a certain person was mistreated due to being who they are, I get uncomfortable on behalf of the mistreated person and feel triggered enough to change the channel.

That is the black-and-white logic, everyone should be treated reasonably and justly in every single way, albeit, that is not the reality most of the time. 

The two examples of mistreatment, the sarcasm in conversations and movie and television characters, are just the tip of the iceberg as far as black-and-white thinking is concerned.

The black-and-white rationale can be very detrimental to a person with autism as they progress through life, since in my situation, I know those shades of gray are all over the place. It is a process of learning those gray areas from scratch that poses a barrier since the neurotypical population does not possess that deficit to have that disadvantage to navigate. 

It is highly frustrating to recognize that I live with a mentality that many others do not. Unless I can articulately clarify in a self-advocating manner to others how that black-and-white logic works, it is a disadvantage and a cross I bear daily. 

Fortunately, with a lot of self-awareness, motivation to learn, and support, my gray area knowledge has progressed since my childhood and early adult years. That is not to suggest that black-and-white thinking is all bad, there are situations where thinking rigidly leads to a unique perspective that a neurotypical may not consider.

Some ways in which my gray area knowledge has progressed include the overall notion that the gray areas exist at all since my rationale was as black-and-white as can be growing up. I have learned that you can be liked by someone, but that person will not treat you kindly if your behavior is being received in an unkind way. 

That gray area was explained by a junior high school teacher whom I asked if he liked me. He replied, “Yeah, I like you, even though you play these games sometimes.” The “games” that the teacher was referring to were a habit I had as a kid that I have progressed out of as an adult, and that has been beneficial to my maturity.

Another gray area I have progressed about is that certain people are treated better than others in certain situations, and some people are mistreated for unreasonable purposes in certain situations due to biases and life can be unfair that way. To complement that, I have learned that you cannot control every situation, but you can control your reaction and take action to minimize how much unfairness impacts you and improve your well-being and self-esteem in other ways.

As far as the autism spectrum-oriented rigid thought process being an advantage in some situations, black-and-white thinking allows a person with autism to recognize details that a neurotypical may not recognize, which I was able to elaborate on as a college student. I befriended some men in my junior year of college who are neurotypical and had limited exposure to autism when it came to being a good, true friend.

That difference came to light when I was given a pointer about not asking those friends about their days, which is considered proper social behavior by neurotypicals. My rigid thinking allowed me to clarify to those friends since I felt remorse about my habit related to autism, that I wasn’t refraining from asking about their days to be “selfish,” as one friend described it, I thought about how their days were going would weave into the conversation naturally.

Following my clarification about my behavior, those friends responded positively, they were impressed that I self-advocated and helped them understand my unique perspective better. One friend said, “I gotcha,” because after I explained, that friend smiled and understood what I meant. After that, my conversations with those good friends of mine to this day improved by leaps and bounds.     

Overall, now that I have learned the shades of gray, I have progressed and matured to a large degree. I am more flexible as a result and my relationships have strengthened in a more relatable way due to that progress. With more knowledge to be learned, that progress should develop and I will benefit from that as time goes on.

As far as the autism community in general, working on recognizing the gray areas through life experience and trial and error is essential, Since the world and life are gray, the autism population can research how the gray areas operate in most situations and practice their flexibility, as I did, in adapting their expectations to benefit from the gray areas. 

On the other hand, I think that neurotypicals, who recognize those gray areas more organically, can be mentors to the autism community in teaching the autism population how to navigate the gray areas that confuse the autism-oriented way of thinking and guide the autism community through improved opportunities for more social relationships and life success.

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