What’s the difference between being austistic and just being socially awkward?
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It depends on what you mean by socially awkward. Autistic brains tend to develop differently from allistic (non autistic/neurotypical) brains. Among other things autistic people process sensory information differentlh, and a lot of typical social conventions don’t make intuitive sense to neurodivergent people . That doesn’t mean autistic people are socially awkward, (and in fact, are very much *not* socially awkward with other autistic people.) but it is often more difficult to fit in socially (edit to clarify, socially *with neurotypicals*) , and many autistic people are very bullied from a young age, for being socially different. Some people may respond to that by learning how to fit in better. That’s called masking. But other people might double down and not let being bullied change who they are
But there are lots of types of socially awkward behavior that may have nothing to do with different neurology, or not a significantly different, I mean all brains are different from each other. But if somebody is socially awkward because of social anxiety, or if somebody just doesn’t care about what other people think, or is very competitive, or tends to dominate conversations, or make inappropriate jokes, that can be a caused by a number of things thay may just be personality differences. May be a matter of choice. Where that comes from is going to be a mix of nature and nurture.
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