Today,
I'd like to take a break from the political and activist sides of
this blog and focus on something more practical. I'm sure we are all
quite familiar right now with the stereotype that autistic
individuals lack empathy and appear detached from their environment
in any but the most specific (and often ritualized) ways. While there
is no denying that this may appear to and even be true for some, I
would like to share today my own personal experience in this regard.
You see, far from lacking empathy and attachment, I have found that
quite the opposite is true. In fact, I would argue that those of us
on the spectrum feel and sense others and the environment TOO MUCH.
I'm
going to tell you a story that will hopefully explain this a little
better. I've said it before, but I'm a manager at a small Canadian
telecom company who works in a retail kiosk environment during my day
job. We happen to be the busiest and most profitable store in the
company, so naturally such an environment is often stressful and
busy. I won't say I have an easy time with that normally as an aspie;
the amount of people, the multitasking and constant demands on my
attention tend to get to me fairly easily, but after long enough
working in people-oriented jobs, I've developed coping mechanisms for
it. The other day, however, pushed the limits of my tolerance. We
were crazy non-stop busy, the customers were getting grumpy from
waiting in line, we were short staffed and I had to accommodate
breaks for my team, and to make matters worse, we had received a
massive product shipment that I had to work through receiving! My
coping mechanisms were pushed to the breaking point and I could feel
the spectre of sensory overload setting in. My anxiety was building,
and all I wanted to do was turn inward and curl up in a quiet ball
with not a sound to be heard. Were it not for the fact that I had to
make frequent trips to our back room to sort and put away the already
received equipment, I don't know how I would have done it. My stress
and anxiety was that crippling.
Now,
imagine that level of stress. That “go away world and leave me
alone!” level of overwhelming anxiety developing over something as
simple as caring too greatly for someone, or being unsure how to
respond to the affection of other people, and you start to have a
rough idea of what it must be like for those autistics and aspies who
are more severely on the spectrum. Simply put, the appearance of
emotional detachment doesn't necessarily mean these individuals are
emotionally detached; it can be representative of feeling and
perceiving the environment in too much detail, and needing to take a
step back from it to process things. As another example of this, my
sister loves blasting music loudly in the car while either one of us
is driving. When it's in my car, however, I find it so grating when
she does it! While she may enthusiastically hear her favourite song
drowning out her other senses and wrapping her in a familiar melody,
I hear each note as a punctured audio nail being driven into my
conscious mind with the stabbing and piercing clarity interfering
with my thought processes and cognitive ability. It is simply too
much!
I'm
not going to say that there isn't a certain amount of difficulty
understanding emotion inherent in ASD; far from it. I myself have
difficulty reading the subtle differences in facial expression
between, for example, angry and serious, and it usually takes my
brain a split second to register sarcasm, sudden emotional changes,
or big, tragic events. Even so, however, I wouldn't call this a lack
of empathy. In fact, I can assure you that my empathy for others and
capacity for love each run quite deep. If anything, my emotions run
hot and strong right beneath the surface of my being. What
Neurotypical society interprets as a lack of empathy is really just
the obliviousness towards emotional nuance in others' outward
reactions that comes with a place on the Autism Spectrum, while the
environmental detachment is simply a coping mechanism for the taxing
sensory experiences overwhelming our highly attuned nervous systems.
In either case, it isn't due to a lack of ability to feel; its that
those of us with ASD are so acutely aware and sensitive that even a
minor sensory experience such as a scratchy shirt can be pure and
utter hell.
All
of us, whether Neurotypical or otherwise, experience sensory and
emotional overload, and none of us are good at reading every
situation perfectly. The key isn't dismissing anyone as being
incapable of something because of it; rather, we should be
encouraging and teaching methods of coping with the crazy realities
of the world. Next time you meet someone who seems to be hiding in
their own mental world, remember; it probably isn't because they
don't want to come out and talk, they just find every day life
overwhelming and need to recharge and re-center themselves. This is
all part of learning how to speak the languages of other neurotribes,
and it is something which must happen if we are to move forward as a
species.
As
always, yours in diversity,
Adam
Michael
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