The title of this blog post is a reference to the 1960s play The Increased Difficulty of Concentration by Václav Havel.

My autistic brain has a few patterns that, when I interact with neurotypical people, make it difficult to communicate.

  1. Extremely high level of detail in any one idea.
  2. Extremely high numbers of connections between ideas.
  3. Tendency to seek out academic research on topics of interest.
  4. Info dumping.

This essentially means that my brain, when asked about a topic, wants to act like an academic review article.

In an ideal world, here is how a conversation between me and an interlocutor would go.

Interlocutor: Did you know that your surname means “fish” in Russian?

Me: Haha, yes. I deliberately chose my surname because it means “fish” in Slovak, though this also works in related languages like Czech, Polish, and Russian. This is to honour my commitment to fish welfare as well as my Slovak and Czech heritage. Fish and Czechoslovak history are both special interests of mine. To illustrate my interest in fish, see these tattoos covering my arm. Here, you will see all of the main species that I encounter in my professional fish welfare work on a day-to-day basis: Nile tilapia, gilthead sea bream, European seabass, rainbow trout, Atlantic salmon, carp, and Peruvian anchoveta. I also have a shrimp tattoo to reflect my work in shrimp welfare also. For further information, I can direct you to my publications on this topic and the website I made that provides key industry figures by species and country […]. To illustrate my interest in Czechoslovak history, consider one of my favourite people in history: Václav Havel. I think Havel is criminally underappreciated in English-speaking countries as both an artist and a political figure. Havel began life as a playwright and gained fame due to his resistance against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. This was well-illustrated in the 2020 biopic film [… and so on].

That is how my brain works. That’s essentially the way my train of thought goes when I think about any topic. This isn’t because I like talking - in fact, I don’t like talking. This is just the information that my brain naturally provides when I think about a topic. Most people would, understandably, get fed up somewhere in the second sentence.

In contrast, a conversation between two neurotypicals is more likely to go something like this. This is an AI-generated example, because I have a hard time imagining how a conversation like this would go!

Person 1: Did you know that your surname means “fish” in Russian?

Person 2: Wait, seriously? My surname? What, like, all fish?

Person 1: Yeah, basically. “Ryba,” right? That’s, like, the word for fish.

Person 2: (Shouting over the music) No way! I had no clue! My grandma’s side is Russian, but I’ve never picked up any of it. That’s actually kinda cool.

Person 1: (Nods, holding up a half-empty plastic cup) Yeah, it’s a weird one. I was talking to this girl earlier, she was doing linguistics, and she just dropped it on me.

Person 2: (Laughs) Linguistics, at this party? That’s a new one. I’m just trying to figure out where the bathroom is, honestly.

Person 1: (Points vaguely behind them) Back that way, I think. Past the kitchen, if you can fight your way through.

Person 2: Cheers. (Gestures with their hand) So, you know, what do you do? Apart from, like, surprising people with their surname meanings.

Person 1: (Chuckles) I’m doing a postgrad in… uh… environmental science. It’s super boring to talk about, though.

Person 2: Nah, it’s alright. I’m in graphic design. Trying to freelance, which is a total nightmare.

Person 1: Oh, cool! Freelancing is tough, I hear. You got any, like, portfolio stuff online?

Person 2: Yeah, I’ve got a website, but it’s pretty basic. (Pauses, shouting over the music again) What was that environmental science thing again?

Person 1: (Shouting back) Environmental science! Like, climate stuff, you know?

Person 2: Oh, right, yeah. That’s… important, I guess. (Smiles awkwardly) Look, I’m gonna try and find that bathroom before I spontaneously combust. It was good talking to you!

Person 1: Yeah, you too! Good luck with the fish thing!

Here’s the kicker - if I were a participant in that conversation, as soon as somebody mentions linguistics, or freelancing, or postgraduate study, or website design, or environmental science, or the psychological effects of the position of bathrooms in buildings, my brain would automatically generate a long essay going into immense detail about each of those topics too.

I have developed the skill of consciously suppressing my tendency to provide information in a specific way, and I have learned to instead provide information in a way that is more acceptable to most neurotypical people in day-to-day conversations. This takes me a large amount of mental energy, and neurotypical people are typically unaware of this constant, moderate-level mental effort that is required whenever I am engaged in conversation.

Good grief! You can understand why I get along so well with animals.