The unpredictability of 'events' is bad enough, but the problem of sensory mixing and overload sets challenges in a general. Lacking internal filters, editors, brakes, and boundaries, an autistic person has to set them for himself or herself, or have others set them. Autistic people flourish best in a structured environment with repeated encounter with the same, select people. The key is to reduce lines of communication by keeping relations to others close and tight. If 'events' are hard to cope with, people can be the very worst, with their fleeting connection and ambiguous communication, their lack of stability and regularity, their 'in and out' approach to encounter, achieving the feat of being both ubiquitous and never-present at the same time - a provocative pervasive non-presence.
'Ordinary' life comes with a lot of unwritten and unseen rules which neurotypical people pick up in the natural course of socialisation. These internal rules built into the social and relational fabric have to take external form for autistic people, which they then attempt to internalize by way of a conscious learning process. Autistic people need to see the rules. The problem is that the world of social action and interaction is incredibly complex and seeing it in its operation is overwhelming and exhausting. The things that many people find simple can be mountainishly difficult for an autistic person, many of whom, and probably most, prefer to find alternate ways of doing things, ways which they can bring under their control and render familiar. Always, there is the quest for familiarity - for predictability, regularity, and order in the midst of chaos. People who don't understand this are a menace to the health and well-being of autistic people. Most people, in my experience, leave you with incomplete and ambiguous information and leave you having to work out intentions as a result of random encounter. People will message, initiate contact, and then not follow up for a long time afterwards, leaving you having to work out the meaning and intention. That's why it is best to cut relations to people to the bare minimum, ideally to those who are regular and routine as against being random.
