Cognitively mediated functioning
… much of their social functioning is achieved through conscious effort, learned scripts, and ongoing monitoring of verbal and nonverbal behaviour rather than intuitive social understanding… Andrea’s social interaction is cognitively mediated… They reported that social interactions are effortful and mentally exhausting, explaining that they have a social "time limit" and will often withdraw once this has been reached... (My diagnostic report.)
What does that even mean? I had no idea about learned scripts and cognitively mediated interactions. I was just doing what I'd always done, and what I thought everybody had to do to get by!
My partner reminds me that whenever I'm talking with people, I go back to previous situations I've been in. I operate from learned experience, maybe adding in clues from other situations. But I lack intuitive social understanding of what is happening. I always have to think about how to relate.
There are two things to say about this. One is that it is very fast. Much of the time, especially if we are talking in an area where I have intellectual expertise, the other person won't notice how hard my brain is working, and often, neither will I. As stated above, it's just how things have been forever, and seemed natural. This is often also true even in more "social" situations where I have "muscle memory" from similar interactions in the past. Indeed, I think I've learned enough that some things are almost intuitive, especially in interactions I initiate. They are even enjoyable! But even then, inside that computer-ish thing called Andrea's brain, the CPU is ramping up to maximum cycles while yours, I suspect, is just idling along in the same conversation.
This is where the tiredness that can eventually lead to burn-out comes from, and it's why you might sometimes see an autistic person "vaguing out." In safe and enjoyable situations, I can sometimes see and hear the overload come down like a white hiss or buzz. Things have gone on just a bit too long, and I need to go off and do something else. After conducting funerals, I would try to look relaxed and approachable, but stand off to one side with a cup of coffee while I recovered a little. I could talk to anyone who came over to me, because those conversations usually involved them coming with a direct question. Or they were needing to tell me things, which I would encourage so that I didn't have to do small talk, which remains a mystery to me. After a while I could go and do the more high processing conversations with family. And then go home and have a sleep.
The other thing to say is that sometimes cognitive mediation does not work well, or at all. It might be that I have no direct experience to recall, no brain "muscle memory." So then I'm extrapolating from other adjacent experience, which is harder and noticeably slower. I may compensate and camouflage by looking like I'm thinking carefully and taking you very seriously, maybe asking you questions. I am taking you seriously, but it's also a strategy to buy processing time.
It might be that the situation is not safe, and the extra processing involved overloads me and sends me in the direction of a melt down. For me, the sense that something is not safe comes from at least two directions.
One is that things are actually physically unsafe. We occasionally have people come in at the church, high as a kite, or in the really aggressive stages of needing the next hit. If they also get into emotional manipulation I cannot process it adequately or quickly enough; I've had too much of that in the past, and it was devastating. So I have two options, step way back and be the one who pushes the duress button if needed, or go ballistic.
If the level of your distress is too much for me to process, it can be like "maxing out the CPU," and then even though you are my friend and mean me no harm, it can trigger an unsafe response. My early experience of not being able to support people who were in acute need was devastating. So, again, I overload very quickly, because when I go back to previous experience to find how to help you, what I find is that I didn't learn anything useful. Rather I learned I could not cope, and was inadequate, or bad. In such an overloaded situation, it is sadly likely that the more important you are to me, the less I might be able to function.
I think everyone gets overloaded at some point. Too tired, too much incoming data, too unsafe, and we all get crushed by the moment. It seems that as autistic person, I can get there a lot quicker!
Andrea (August 2026)
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