Common Social Issues for Autistic Adults: Underlying the need for Autistic Appreciation

That’s right you read that title correctly we need to appreciate autistic people, not just have autism awareness or acceptance. Autistic adults still face many social issues.

Where we are now with autism (As of 2025)

The neurodiversity movement has become much more prevalent in the past decade or so. We are seeing many more autistic self-advocates who are out here advocating the value of autistic people and sharing their experiences of being autistic. Through this neurodiversity movement, the public is slowly start to become more aware of the challenges that autistic people tend to go through in our lives.

However, there is still work to be done to truly appreciate autistic people for who they are. This article today I will be breaking down some of the common social issues autistic people still face. The first step is awareness in being able to appreciate the autistic community.

Common Social Issues faced by Autistic Adults

I want to emphasize that these five social issues I am going to share in this article are often interconnected. So one social issue often has links to another social issue that autistic adults tend to face.

1. Social Isolation/Bullying in the Schooling Years

To be frank, autistic people can face bullying and social exclusion during their entire lives. However, it especially tends to be prevalent during our schooling years. Almost every autistic person and friend I have met over the years has had this experience during the schooling years.

Autistic people tend to be easy targets for bullies due to our social differences. For example, since we can struggle to get sarcasm we might not even know the people around us are mocking us or bullying us. We could also be mocked for our special interests. For example, let’s say you are interested in trains and you share that with your high school peers and they mock you and say trains are such little kids' interest. Autistic people might also be socially excluded by people for these differences.

Overtime, exposure to bullying and social exclusion can damage our own self-worth and self-esteem. This can lead to a diminished sense of self-confidence. These autistic children/teenagers can also then grow into autistic adults who mask and become afraid to be vulnerable. This can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms such as perfectionism, people-pleasing, and obsessive thoughts.

In adulthood, it’s common for many autistic adults to still find unwritten social rules confusing. Such as small talk and understanding sarcasm. Even low-support needs autistic adults can find these social rules perplexing.

2. Many autistic children being exposed to ABA Therapy

Experts consider ABA Therapy to be the gold standard of therapy for autistic children. The intent behind ABA is to teach autistic children to help reduce harmful behaviors like temper tantrums, reducing self-harm behaviors, and improve communication skills. Unfortunately though, many autistic adults have beef and a strong dislike for Applied Behavior Analysis (that’s the full name of ABA).

With the growing neurodiversity movement, there have been many autistic self-advocates that have spoken out about the harm Applied Behavior Analysis inflicts on autistic people. There’s many claims that these programs focus on converting autistic people to be neurotypical. In other words, these treatment programs don’t truly take into account the needs of autistic people. These ABA programs are more focused on the comfort of the therapists than they are on truly helping the autistic person become comfortable with their authentic selves. ABA program utilizes punishments and rewards very much like Pavolv’s operant condition program. Some examples include punishing autistics for stimming and/or punishing autistic for having meltdowns/self-harming behaviors. All in all, many autistic people feel like ABA is traumatizing and teach them how to mask.

I agree with many of these autistic self-advocates. I don’t think an effective therapy for autistic adults is one that focuses on autistic deficits and in taking away what’s perceived as undesirable behavior by neurotypicals. I think ABA therapy takes in focus the outward behaviors that autistic people display. ABA therapy doesn’t consider the possibility that there could be more than meets than eye with this outward behavior. At the end of the day, most human behavior can’t be simply reduced down to simplicities and this is true regardless of your neurotype.

How ABA can improve in my opinion by focusing on the why behind the child’s behavior, being genuinely curious about the child’s behavior, and accepting the individual and often beautiful differences that come with being autistic. For example, exploring why someone has a temper tantrum or a meltdown instead of punishing the autistic person for this behavior. You can ask questions and become genuinely curious as to why the autistic person is behaving in this way. Then you can teach them more healthy coping mechanisms based on the feedback the autistic person gives you. This can empower the autistic person to choose a healthier way of expressing themselves.

3. Unemployment and/or difficulties navigating the workplace

It's so common for autistic people to struggle with getting and keeping a job. According to the disability studies website, 85% of autistic adults with a college degree are unemployed. This is so sad; many autistic adults can be capable employees but many of us struggle to even get a job. This also hurts the workplace due to miss opportunities for talented workers in corporate America.

The main barrier to autistic adults to being employed is the interview process. The traditional interview process often requires neurotypical social skills and quick thinking. Areas that autistic brains naturally struggle with. This shows the deeper discrimination against autistic people in the hiring process against jobs. This shows that we need more interviews that play to autistic people's strengths. Alternatives such as a test or providing the questions before the interview to autistic people can go a long way to help autistic adults become more successful in job interviews.

Even if we get past this interview process, navigating the workplace can be very difficult for many autistic people. As someone who’s currently in a corporate job, I wholeheartedly relate to this. Like for me, it can be difficult to know how casual or formal I need to be when dealing with superiors, or when I should agree with a superior or push back against them. I also don’t really agree with the point in having a hierarchy at work. I am a much more democratic type of person and don’t really like hierarchies. I know it’s based on tenure, but I would prefer workplaces that treated people equally. Unfortunately, though, that's not the reality of many corporate workplaces. This isn’t even me bagging on my superiors at work, they’ve worked to earn those supervisor or manager type of roles. It’s just hard for my autistic brain to intuitively understand how to address a superior at work.

Alright that’s enough of a personal rant for me about my difficulties navigating the corporate workforce. Hopefully, that helps you feel less alone if you are autistic and are having challenges navigating the corporate workplace. But yeah, between authorities and making yourself more appealing and likeable these two things can be a hindrance for autistics looking for career advancement in their current workplace roles. Especially, if you work in roles that place a high emphasis on people skills. Being passed over for promotion or underemployed can be the result of this.

4. Increased Mental Health Challenges

Many autistics still have challenges for their mental health in navigating an allistic world. Autistics have a higher chance of struggling with anxiety and depression than their allistic peers. Autistics are also at a higher suicide risk than their allistic peers.

So, there’s a stereotype that many autistics are rigid, rule-following, and don’t like to have fun. Here’s a mental health challenge that contradicts this, there are a good deal of autistics out there who struggle with substance abuse of drugs like alcohol or weed. I’ll admit I am one of them that struggles with overuse of weed in particular. There can honestly be benefits of using substances like more social acceptance from your peers and being able to take the lid off at a club or bar. Also, it can be a leeway for unintentional inappropriate social behaviors. Because then, you can blame your autistic social behaviors on the substance. So, to be clear this isn’t to shame anyone who struggles with substance abuse. Substance abuse can be quite difficult to overcome to be honest and even me I’m still struggling with my usage of weed.

Also, excessive masking and camouflaging of our autistic traits can lead to anxiety, depression, and even a loss of identity. That’s worth noting as well as some of our mental health challenges can be linked to too much masking of our autistic traits.

Many autistics also struggle with naming and identifying our emotions. This is a phenomenon known as alexithymia. We can struggle with knowing when we are uncomfortable, distressed, or anger for instance. This can mean it can be hard to know which events lead to these emotions especially if it’s been a while since the event has passed.

5. Difficulty finding community and authentic connection

Lastly, I am going to touch on the challenges many autistics face when it comes to find community and authentic connection. I feel like this builds on a lot of the previous social issues I have discussed in this article. With our social difficulties, it can feel out of reach for many autistics to make and keep friends. Many autistics being exposed to bullying and social isolation can also decrease our social confidence over time. This can make us less likely to go out and find new friends, as these social failures can lead to autistic people feeling hopeless about their abilities to connect with new people. In the long run, social isolation can gradually decrease our quality of life as everyone (autistic or not) needs social connection and to belong to healthy communities.

Takeaways

So yeah, there’s still a long way to go in appreciating autistics. There’s even a long way to go in terms of having accurate awareness of autism. Our current health and human secretary are spreading harmful misinformation about autism. If you want to learn more about that, please click this article here.

Autistic adults still face many issues today such as increased mental health challenges, social isolation/bullying, and difficulty finding community and authentic connection. Unfortunately, it seems like society still has a long way to go towards appreciating autistic people. While I can’t make society appreciate autistic people. I can do my part of being that strong neurodiverse advocate that I am meant to be. I am going to continue spreading awareness and acceptance of autistics and find ways to contribute positively to this movement. It’s also encouraging to see many other neurodiverse advocates who are also advocating the value of autistic people.