Ageing

3. Friendship and socialisation

3.4. Friends similar to ourselves

People who have the opportunity to choose friends will choose people with something in common. Age and background may not have the most important role in a good friendship. Both Torill and I have friends who are either 25 years younger and 30 years older than we are. It is more important how we take care of each other and who we are. 

The general lack of independence that most people with ID experience makes it difficult to find what others discover as their ‘niche’ influence, their identity. Self-expectations and self-identifications among people with ID, are often influenced by the expectations others have of them as a passive recipients or a person like others. The role they take, influence how they are categorised as prodigals or winners (9). 

_{Photo: Lars Aage Hynne}

The basic understanding of motivated action and understanding is referred to in the empirical literature as the theory of mind. At the age of three and four the ability to interpret the actions of others and yourself starts. This skill is basic for an effective social interaction (11-13). Some people with ID have problems with interpreting social actions, and some of them learn this much later than at the age of three or four. Some people might never learn it. Especially people with autism finds mind reading difficult. The lack of understanding applies to the self as well and results in a disturbing dysfunction to formulate and convey sensible narratives of the self (12, 14).  

Understanding differences and similarities are useful when we try to find a good friend or when we spend time together with them. Variability in human responses make us different and similar to each other. By looking at peoples’ traits, we find a number of similarities, influenced by people’s biology, genes and environment. Human responses and traits can be analysed from the following three perspectives (10): 

1. like all others,  
2. like some other persons and  
3. like no other person.

'1' Applies to some common features of humans and category '2' and '3' contain the differences between people.  

Studies shows that there is a cortical explanation of differences in arousal levels between the extrovert and introvert types of personality. Introverts are more sensitive to any kind of stimulation: they tolerate relatively little social stimulation before they get an optimal level of arousal. Beyond this level, they start to withdraw to reduce the arousal (15). 

In contrast, an extrovert person is ‘stimulus hungry’. An extrovert person will seek social stimuli and may have a huge social network. An introvert person may seek loneliness and prefer places with peace (home), while an extrovert person would prefer to visit places and people around the world.  

If you are an introvert person, it may be stressful to have an extrovert person as you closest friend. You may be friends, but the time you spend together may be limited. Especially for people with ID, with serious communication difficulties, it can be difficult to avoid situations and people that do not fit them. Over time, this tendency may lead people to develop self-harming strategies as a way to get out of situations when ‘it all gets too much’. When introvert persons are together with friends, they do not need much action.