I Can't Do Sarcasm

Sarcasm is more like scarcasm to me - it leaves me wounded every time! (That was probably really bad, lets move on shall we!)

Generally speaking many people with autism have issues with sarcasm. Please be aware this is not everyone’s experience. I, myself sit fair and square in the middle. Possibly leaning a little amor to the ‘ I don’t do sarcasm well’. Let me explain.

I am a very literal person. If you say ‘lets go do’ I am going to go and do it there and then. I can’t help myself. If someone says we should, then we are gonna do it, there is no option, we should do it and therefore we will. I do not understand that someone could say something and either not fully intend to do it or say something just because they can. Why would they?

Its the same when people act with alternative intentions but that is a conversation for another time. 

I do basic sarcasm, if thats what it can be called. Its the overt sarcasm. You know, like when you are digging into your favourite bowl of ice cream and someone says ‘you really love that don’t you” and they reply ‘nah, tastes horrible’, I get that. I can use that type of sarcasm really easily myself. 

Where is starts to get murky is with sayings. Recently I was walking through the corridor at work and ran into a colleague. I did the usual, ‘Hi, how are you?’ And the response was ‘living the dream’. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! And how on earth do I respond to something like this (social situations, not my friend). I think I just laughed and smiled and kept going (good fall back, when in doubt smile and laugh) but this is not an isolated incident. It happens more than I would like to admit and I can never tell if these people are serious (9 times out of 10, I doubt it) or if they are being sarcastic. And if being sarcastic, what do I say to that? (Please feel free to comment any ideas here people). 

This is the time where I be completely open and say, yes, I did google what ‘living the dream’ means to try and figure out how to respond. I often do this. Thank you to the internet gods who now allow us to google things, it was a lot tougher as a kid. When I was younger I just used to brush it off that I was a bit ditzy, to the point when I first dyed my hair blonde my Father commented my hair now matches my personality. There were so many things in life I just did not understand. My coping mechanism was to undervalue and undersell myself. I still think I do this a bit. 

The other side of sarcasm is those moments when I have tried to be witty and smart. These situations often end up falling very flat and me looking very very strange. I am a volunteer firefighter and I was up the forestation one day doing training. I was with a group of other members talking about god knows what. Somehow my brain connected what ever was being said to my cat being recently on pain killers after an operation. From the response I got, it was the wrong thing to say. I knew it in an instant. It was a ‘ground open up and swallow me whole’ type of scenario. 

Unfortunately these situations still follow me around. I think I have spoken about them in other blogs. I over share, over explain and talk about stuff that is unrelated because my brain thinks it is for some reason. With my journey, I think this has been one of the hardest things for me to accept.  Its great because I have a reason for it now and can go look, I’m autistic, I do this sometimes. But other times, the ones when you are really trying hard, there is still the shame after and the second guessing, ‘that wasn’t the right answer’. 

I know there is support out there through speech therapy and occupational therapy to help with these things however that folds back on the same that I need help with sarcasm and social situations and I’m 40. With time, I am sure I will figure this one out as I have so many other things. 

Please comment if you resonate with anything I have said. It can be really tough. 

xx