Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets to Human Behavior, by Beverly D. Flaxington, is a short (less than 100 pages!) guidebook to five basic tenets of interacting with other people in a business environment. This is the sort of information most people could do better in life by internalizing, but especially autistic people, since we often struggle with communication. Unfortunately, the scope of the information is somewhat limited... but it's still a good start.
Part of that communication struggle is simply being different than most people, mind you. For example, the first section deals with how people like to get stuck in their own heads. This is true of every human I've ever met, including myself. But part of the solution- "become an interested observer in human nature" - is something I literally started doing in high school, on the advice of my mother. It's why I've gotten as far in life as I have.
So it makes me shake my head a little to find this recommended... but mainly because the rule is true. I simply assumed other people knew to do this, and if they weren't doing it at the time I interacted with them, it's because, like me, they sometimes get stuck in their heads.
So this rule is quite true, and a valuable one to learn or be reminded of.
I had significantly more trouble with the next two rules, as they're based in systems I see flaws in. There was a system for behavioral styles which seemed like it was a bit limited (exactly four styles to summarize humanity? hmm...) and a system for values. The latter was developed by observing businessmen, which is to say it's maybe accurate for white cis middle aged US businessmen. Such a system has limited use for the general public, especially when it comes to dealing with gender, racial, and religious minorities.
Rule number four was in the "much easier said than done" category. Assumptions (and stereotypes, not covered in this book) are something people do on a regular basis. That's because the brain is all about saving effort and energy whenever possible. It's faster and easier and to put people into boxes than it is to recognize each one as a person that may be different than you expect. It's also easier to phrase things in ways that make sense to you and expect others to automatically understand, rather than taking the extra time to phrase your ideas so that they're approachable and understandable to everyone.
I've spent a significant amount of time studying communication and trying to express my ideas, and I still sometimes struggle when playing the "translate this jargon into plainspeak" game. Or just in expressing my thoughts and feelings in a way my spouse can understand. It's not an easy thing to demand. It's just incredibly important.
The last rule I just laughed at. Not because it's wrong, or anything. Just because it presupposes the reader thinks they're okay, and everyone else isn't. I'm not "okay." I've had it rubbed in my face for my whole life that I'm not normal. That other people are always right and I'm always wrong.
This ties into a fact I learned after I grew up, which is repeated here in the book as well. Adults do not "have it together." There is no age you reach, after which you have everything figured out. You simply find out, at some point, that all the adults were faking that they had everything under control.
There's a whole word in millennial culture for this concept. "Adulting." It's something we're collectively learning to do as we get older, and sharing with other generations as we do it.
At any rate. For less than a hundred pages, this book was a journey. Some of it was into good and valuable ideas, some of it was significantly less so. I'd caution any autistic person reading this book that the ideas in question aren't cut and dried. You can't just map people on the behaviors and values scale and know who they are. Both systems are imperfect, and one of them may be flat out useless in a broader sense.
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