As Admiral Pike was dying, I joined with his consciousness and experienced what he felt at the moment of his passing. Anger, confusion, loneliness, fear. I have experienced those feelings before, multiplied exponentially on the day my planet was destroyed. Such a feeling is something I choose never to experience again... you mistake my choice not to feel as a reflection of my not caring. Well, I assure you, the truth is precisely the opposite.
When I found out that Mr. A. had passed away, and Mrs. A. had insisted to see me, I wanted to say, "No! No! Don't come! I cannot bear the pain you will pass onto me 5-fold." A younger me would have gone silent, said nothing and avoided Mrs. A. I did that once to a man who tried to tell me how sad he was that his father had passed on. I told him curtly on the phone, "That is not my business."
Now, at my age, I know that I must stay to help Mrs. A.
Autistic empathy is a strange thing. We have no defences against emotional contagion. We catch other people's emotions, and feel them (amplified). Yet, we cannot predict how what we say and do will make another feel. I once talked for 30 minutes on the parallels between the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, and Black people enslaved in the southern states of the USA, to a very polite and restrained black Colonel in the US Armed Forces. It took me one month to figure out why he left our dinner early. As a child, I returned a storybook slightly damaged to someone, not realising that the other might feel heartache. As a young adult, I placed my handbag on the table between my colleague and myself, not understanding that she might feel slighted, or rejected.
Often, I try really hard to be nice, only to come across as odd, weird, not friendly, too direct, very offensive, and callous.
Yet, I cannot watch C-drama by looking at the TV screen. In actual fact, I don't watch C-drama. I listen to it, and refer to the visuals once in a while when I need to figure out which character is talking. I fast forward when the crying and the drama gets too dramatic. I often need to stop watching, and come back another day when the drama gets too much.
I watched White Fang, the cartoon movie and had to leave the room when I thought White Fang would be torn to shreds by a pack. I could not sit through some children's movies because the children characters were in danger. I also dreaded facing Mrs. A. because it felt like I had myself lost my own husband.
It is not that autistic people do not care. It is that we care many times more intensely (or thoroughly). Again, we have 2 coping strategies:
(1) Shutdown (avoid, escape, walk away) or lock in the emotions.
(2) Explode (give vent to the feelings in an explosion that even frightens ourselves)
I spent my whole life training myself to shutdown because giving vent brought along all sorts of negative consequences from bullying to scoldings to beatings. It is better to turn inwards and implode, rather than explode. It is better to manage my emotions within a bomb containment chamber, because, if the bomb explodes outside the chamber, other people get hurt, and I would suffer negative consequences afterwards.
When I shutdown, it looks like I don't care or I don't feel. Most normal folks cannot take the full force of an autistic person's feelings. They think we are out of control. So, in some sense, I can relate to Elsa in the movie Frozen.
Don't let them in, don't let them see.
Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.
I am only able to express very strong emotions months or years after feeling them. In the heat of the moment, I must shutdown and activate the bomb containment chamber, or simply walk away, because I know that I will regret the aftermath of an explosion. It does not matter if it is a positive or a negative emotion. One can just as well embarrass oneself with intense liking for someone, or intense joy at something.
If there is danger of a strong emotion, shutdown. That is the safest.
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