Compliments and Autism

Compliments are such a tricky autism problem. I know what I’m supposed to do, say thank you. When I was a kid, I was always being prompted to say thank you to people who gave me compliments. It was hard to figure out how to explain to other people that I had multiple problems with compliments, but maybe I can explain them here.

Problem 1: It’s hard for me to recognize compliments sometimes because they are complimenting things that don’t make any difference to me. Like, someone will say, “you look pretty in that shirt” and especially as a child, I didn’t understand why looking pretty was supposed to be a nice thing to say to me. Why should I say thank you when someone said I looked pretty? Why was that a good thing? Being told that I look one way or another isn’t about ME. It’s about something outside of me that doesn’t have anything to do with me.

I had the same problem when I was told as a young teen that I was supposed to look at myself in the mirror every morning to check to see if my eyebrows were wonky and to see if I had something on my teeth. Why do those things matter? They don’t feel like they have anything to do with me. They are social graces, though. They show that you are always looking at yourself to see if something about you will please or bother other people. This is very not-autistic.