“Over-Sensitivity”
October 4th, 2007One thing autistics are often accused of is being “over-sensitive” or of “overreacting”. Someone will say something, and we’ll react – sometimes strongly – only to be told, “You’re wrong. This is no big deal.”
I have news for those people: it is a big deal.
When you’ve been mistreated and abused, as too many autistics have been, it’s very natural to worry and even react in defense when it looks like that abuse may happen again.
Nobody criticizes the air crash survivor who won’t fly on commercial airplanes since the crash. It’s understandable that someone who’s been through tremendous trauma wouldn’t want to be reminded of that, and would react badly to the suggestion that air travel is “safe”. Yet, the facts are clear: air travel is safe! But for someone who has, first hand, experienced that trauma, that’s not enough.
An autistic who isn’t hired for a job might assume that he wasn’t hired because of his autism. Yet, it might not have anything to do with autism, but rather simply be that someone else was better qualified – technically, not socially – for the job. But, if that person has faced a lot of employment related prejudice, that’s going to be hard to believe. It’s going to look a lot like the other employment prejudice they have faced, and it’s going to be treated the same way.
This happens in a lot of other areas. For instance, if I talk about employment around someone who has faced a lot of employment prejudice, and say, “A lot of people aren’t hired because they simply aren’t qualified for the job,” I’m stating the truth. But because I didn’t say, “That said, a lot of autistic people aren’t hired because of prejudice,” it leaves my belief on prejudice towards autistic people open to interpretation. And someone who faced employment prejudice will very likely speak up and maybe even very much disagree with me, until I do state what I think about prejudice and explain my views a bit more. This isn’t an overreaction, nor is it being over-sensitive. It’s a way of avoiding the situations that lead to abuse.
Yet, a lot of times this type of thing isn’t seen as a result of abuse, a natural reaction to defend ourselves. Instead, it’s seen as part of autism. In fact, in many places, the view of autism is that not of autism, but rather of “autistic traumatized by abuse”. This is unfortunate, and is a real issue in science, albeit one that is ignored. How much of “autism research” has spent time to figure out what is an effect of abuse instead of an effect of autism?
So, be careful the next time you think another autistic is being over-sensitive or is overreacting. They may simply be seeking confirmation that they are not headed towards danger again.
Thank’s, Joel. This is an important message. I find my automatic reaction to most anything negative is “This is going to be just like the last time –or worst case scenario”. It’s caused me to pull away from many a (probably) safe situation, just in case.
And then if we do make the other choice, the choice to trust, what then? We are seen as naive, incapable of learning from experience.
I remember job-hunting back in the days when affirmative action was applied to women, who were then considered to be largely unqualified for a large number of jobs, and running into the same dilemmas. The constant work to discover what was real, what was a chip on my shoulder, and what was willful blindness to prejudice, was a balancing act like Martin Luther’s metaphor about the drunken peasant trying to ride a horse. “First he falls off on one side, and then on the other.” (Except the Renaissance-era drunk could at least trust the horse to know the way home and get him there!)
Now add “Or is it me? Why don’t people like/accept/understand me…why are they so strange and why do they think I’m so strange….? (Favorite T-shirt “Diagonally parked in a parallel universe”)
Damn straight I’m not overreacting.
Pat, aging female Aspie
Joel, I’m feeling a little shaky reading this. For the past few weeks I’ve been raising red flags about the para who works with my son, and the teacher and administrator keep telling me no, I’m wrong, she’s wonderful, etc. Finally they decided to switch paras because “Peter’s developing some negative behavior patterns around her.” On Mon., my son who has never bitten anyone in his 6.5 years, not even during his toddler years, went up to this woman, yanked her hair and bit her repeatedly. The autism specialist said some kids just develop strong aversions to some people for no reason, and I thought–and said–”No, this is a pretty strong statement from Peter. We need to pay attention to it.”
I guess I’m veering slightly off topic, but it’s sobering how quickly abuse was sloughed off by the staff.
I think the connection between Anne’s comment and Joel’s post is that no one ever wants to admit that they could be discriminating/abusing someone else. Because that would make them a bad person, and they’re not bad people.
And so everyone justifies their own actions. Sometimes those self justifications are right, and sometimes they’re not.
Joe
You touch on a couple of things that interest me here…
Firstly, i don’t think every time an NT person accuses an autistic person of “over-reacting” or “over-sensitivity” is because of abuse or discrimination. In many cases it simply is that autistic people *are* more sensitive to something than neurotypicals are – e.g., when i was a child and other children touched me (not necessarily hitting me or anything, altho they soon started it when they saw what an amusing-to-them reaction they could get from me, but just stuff like brushing past me due to clumsiness) and i would freak out or burst into tears, and be accused of “overreacting”, “exaggerating” or (worst of all) “attention seeking” (when attention of any kind was the last thing in the world i wanted at that age) – but the reason for that reaction was because it caused sensory overload in me…
Secondly, the whole idea of what people presume to be simply “autism” being “autistic person’s learnt reaction to abuse and discrimination”. I have spent a lot of time trying to work out which bits of my “weirdness” are actually AS/any other neurological differences i might have been born with, and which bits are from the long-term reactive depression and PTSD caused by having lived for 20+ years undiagnosed in a society which did not understand or accommodate me…
I don’t really know quite what “just autism” would look like, since i strongly suspect that all or nearly all autistic people have similar stuff resulting from living in an NT-centric world… however, i can’t help thinking that a PTSD-free autistic person could be someone with an incredible revolutionary potential in this world…
(personally, Tom Baker era Dr Who comes to mind as what someone like me might be like, minus all the paranoia, self-hatred, flashbacks to past shames and embarrassments, and other crap
)
Who knows what possibilities could be opened up for and by a new generation of autistic people raised with full acceptance of who and what they are? O brave new world, that has such people in it…
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