Sometime around the beginning of December my colleagues start to speak a foreign language – Christmasese. I can’t help thinking that for those of us who are autistic it should come with a phrase book of ready-made questions and answers. But it doesn’t, so we get through as best we can.

At work it’s the social side of Christmas that proves most challenging; the “let’s all have a merry little Christmas time”. While I’m reasonably tolerant of the additional noise, sparkly lights and overload of red and white these days, there are questions I’ve learned to dread. Top of the list is “Have you got all your presents yet?” I find it hard to explain to people whose Christmas budget may run into thousands that my list looks like this:

1 Turnip (horse)

2 Pig’s Ear (dog)

3 Catnip (neighbour’s cat)

I’ve opted out of the Secret Santa this year for everyone’s benefit.

Ditto the office party – I’m done with skulking in a corner with a glass of wine and a book while others are snogging under the mistletoe. As I don’t do relationships, understand the urge to snog, or particularly care who cops off with whom in the cleaning cupboard, the event tends to be wasted on me. It isn’t so much a case of bah humbug as bald incomprehension.

Another question that requires a cognitive shift from the autistic world to the neurotypical world is: “Will you be spending time with family?” I usually manage an airy “I’ll probably pop over to mum’s for lunch” but the question brings me up short. Family is a double-edged sword, a tricky tightrope walk between social overload and social inclusion. Facing them en masse for Christmas dinner does not fill me with good tidings. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve felt able to cope with a family do at all. This year I will time my stay to two and a half hours precisely before I grab the turkey remnants for the dog and run. Pulling the turkey wishbone with myself back home seems to sum it up.

I know that for the isolated Christmas can be hell – the Samaritans responded to nearly 200,000 calls over the festive period last year – and I’ve been there too. I’ve done stints on stomach pumps in A&E surrounded by narked-off nurses bristling with tinsel and unspoken annoyance that I was coming between them and their Christmas pudding. On one occasion, a sister breathed sherry fumes all over me and repeatedly misfired getting a drip in my arm, slurring out words of wisdom to the effect of: don’t worry, you’ll probably make some friends next year.

But this year I won’t be ringing the Samaritans or heading to a hospital emergency unit – I haven’t needed to since I came to see Christmas for the massive, in-yer-face social construct it is. When I finally saw the absurdity of feeling that I should be at the party while never quite seeing what the party had to do with me, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The fact is I’m not unhappy at Christmas these days – just with having to field the implied social expectations that go with it.

Back in the safe isolation that is home, holed up with a decent book and a concessionary mince pie, it ceases to be problematic. I’ve come to see that closing the door on the world in all its festive fuss is an opportunity to go on a retreat. It is space to heal the fragmentation from the sensory and social battering that being in the world causes me. Home alone at Christmas equates to time out. For people with autism, being allowed some time out this Christmas might be the greatest gift of all.

Susan Dunne has Asperger Syndrome. She writes and talks widely about autism and is the author of A Pony in the Bedroom. You can follow her on twitter @sueandspot.

If you need help this Christmas, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 in the UK. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.