Hello,
Let us talk about the spaces between people. The silent territories of friendship and belonging that are not marked on any map, but that we are all expected to navigate instinctively. For a mind that processes the world differently, these spaces can feel like a foreign country where you do not speak the language, where the social customs are unspoken yet binding, and where everyone else seems to have been given a guidebook at birth that you never received.
This is about more than making friends. It is about the deep, sometimes lonely, realisation that the very architecture of social interaction is built on a set of assumptions. Assumptions about memory, about processing speed, about the effortless flow of conversation. When those foundations do not match your neurology, you can find yourself perpetually out of step, smiling at the wrong moment, grasping for a thread of dialogue that has already vanished, feeling the familiar hot wash of anxiety that you have, once again, missed something vital.
I remember standing in a busy school corridor, a knot of laughter and talk swirling around me. The sound was a solid wall. I could see mouths moving, see the shapes of jokes and plans forming, but the words themselves arrived in my mind like scattered leaves, impossible to catch and assemble in the right order. I would smile, hoping my face matched the emotion in the room. I would nod, a silent pantomime of understanding. Inside, I was a cartographer trying to draw a map in the dark. The loneliness was not about being alone, it was about being surrounded by people and feeling fundamentally separate from the current that connected them.
This is the hidden curriculum of learning differences. We speak of reading and writing, of numbers and memory. We rarely speak of the way dyslexia, or other neurodivergent ways of being, can shape your entire social universe. The challenges are often invisible, masked by a sharp wit or a quiet demeanour, but they are woven into the fabric of daily life.
The challenge is not a lack of desire for connection. It is a mismatch in the medium of exchange.
Think of social interaction as a kind of rapid, multi-layered broadcast. There is the spoken word. The tone of voice. The body language. The unspoken context. The recall of shared history. For many, this is a symphony. For a neurodivergent mind, it can be a cacophony where the instruments are all playing different sheets of music at once. You are not hearing the same song.
This shows up in tangible ways. You might need a few extra seconds to process a question before you can answer. In the flow of banter, those seconds are a canyon. The conversation has moved on. Your thoughtful response, arriving late, lands with a thud, marking you as "slow" or "off topic."
You might forget the specific details of a story someone told you last week. In a culture that often equates remembering details with caring, this can be misread as indifference, when in truth you remember the feeling of the conversation, the essence of the person, but the chronological file has been misfiled.
Group chats can be a special kind of torture. A cascade of texts, emojis, and side threads that requires executive functioning you have already spent on getting through the workday. The pressure to respond quickly, to track the splintering conversations, can be so overwhelming that you simply disengage, which is then read as aloofness.
The mental fatigue is real. After a day of compensating, of translating the neurotypical world into a language your brain can use, the energy required for casual socialising can simply be gone. You cancel plans not because you do not care, but because the thought of performing one more act of translation feels like trying to run a marathon on a broken ankle.
But here is the truth that took me decades to understand. This different way of processing is not a deficit in connection. It is a different dialect of relationship. And it comes with its own profound strengths, once you learn to recognise them.
Your mind, which may struggle with rapid surface chatter, is often exceptional at deep, thematic thinking. You might see the underlying pattern in a friend's series of life choices where others see only disparate events. You might be the person who asks the one question that gets to the heart of the matter, because you are not distracted by the social performance.
Your memory, while it may not hold onto trivial details, might be exceptional at retaining the emotional core of an experience. You feel the weight of a past hurt or the warmth of a kindness with a vivid intensity that others have forgotten.
Because you have spent a lifetime observing to compensate, you may be a masterful reader of authentic emotion, seeing the flicker of anxiety behind a smile or the genuine warmth in a quiet gesture that louder expressions miss.
The task, then, is not to learn how to pretend to be a native speaker in a land where you are not. It is to become a translator and a bridge builder, and to find the other people who speak your dialect.
This requires a shift from shame to strategy. From apology to advocacy.
Start internally. Challenge the narrative that you are "bad at people." You are not. You are navigating a complex system without the standard issue manual. Your difficulty is with the interface, not with the core function of care and connection.
Then, begin to build your own guidebook. Identify the specific friction points.
Is it following fast group conversations? Give yourself permission to ask for a pause. A simple, "Wait, can you back up a second? I want to make sure I got that," is not a social failure. It is a request for clarity that benefits everyone.
Is it remembering verbal plans? Normalise the use of tools. "That sounds great. Let me put it in my calendar right now, or I'll forget. Can you text me the address?" This is not rudeness. It is respect for the plan and for your own mind.
Is it the exhaustion of open-ended socialising? Redefine what connection looks like. Suggest a walk instead of a noisy meal. Propose watching a film together where the shared focus is on the screen, not on maintaining dialogue. Offer to help a friend with a task, like cooking or organising. Shared, side-by-side activity can foster deeper connection than forced face-to-face conversation.
Most importantly, practice explaining your world. This is the ultimate act of building a bridge. You do not need a clinical diagnosis to do this. You can speak from your experience.
You can say, "My brain works better one-on-one than in a big group. Can we have a proper catch-up over coffee soon?"
You can say, "I am a visual person. Could you show me what you mean, or draw a quick diagram?"
You can say, "I need a minute to think about that. Let me get back to you."
This does not push people away. It filters for the right people. It invites in the people who are curious, who are kind, who value authenticity over effortless performance. It repels the people who are invested in social superficiality, and that is not a loss.
There are people waiting for the kind of friendship you offer. The deep, loyal, observant, and genuine connection that comes from a mind that experiences the world in high definition, even if the subtitles are sometimes out of sync. Your friendship is not less than. It is different. And in its depth, its empathy born of struggle, and its fierce loyalty, it can be more.
This week, do not try to be better at their game. Observe your own strengths as a friend. Are you a good listener when the pace is right? Are you insightful? Are you passionately loyal? Do you remember birthdays not because of the date, but because of the person?
Carry that knowledge like a compass. It will point you toward your true north, toward the relationships that do not require you to leave any part of yourself at the door.
You belong. Not despite the way your mind works, but in a space that can be shaped by it. Start shaping it.
With respect,