Empathy?

I have read about the apparent lack of empathy that is observed by those who interact with Aspies.  I say "apparent" because when I think about this issue, I believe I have the opposite problem.  I can be empathetic to the point that it is painful for me.  When I see a kid that is upset because his mother won't let him have a toy from the department store, I have a strong urge to just buy the toy for him myself, not only to bring peace to the checkout line, but just to see that kid smile.  If I see a homeless person digging in a dumpster like they are scavenging for food, I will buy them something to eat.  If anyone mentions that they have a problem, I feel compelled to come up with a solution whether they really want me involved or not. 

One time a hitch-hiker I had picked up told me that he was leaving Florida to go home to Ohio because he had been robbed of everything he owned except for the shorts he was wearing.  I literally gave him the shirt off of my back because I knew how cold he would get by the time he got that far north during October.  Then I bought him a sandwich, gave him ten dollars for the road and drove him fifty miles out of my way so that I could drop him off at a point where I felt he would have a better chance to get a ride all the way home.  Even then I felt terribly guilty about having to put him out of my car as it was getting dark, and return to my apartment.  He was so overwhelmed by my concern for his situation that he asked for my address so that he could pay me back when he got on his feet again.  Not wanting him to make a promise that I didn't expect him to actually keep, I told him to just do something comparable for someone else in the future.  Five years later he finished the book that was to become the hit movie "Pay it Forward."  (Okay, okay... I just made up that last part to see if I had your attention)

I think that in my case, the lack of empathy that people think they perceive is actually due to my restricted ability to read what is really going on with the people around me.  I recognize that I have a huge problem with what is called "theory of mind" and the related deficits of an inability to read body language and a limited ability to "read between the lines" when people are trying to communicate something without actually coming out and saying it.  If someone is suffering in silence I probably won't even notice that something is wrong.  Even if they say something like, "My sister is having surgery today to find out why she is having so many headaches" I can proceed to spend thirty minutes telling them about a fascinating article that I read on Latin American politics and not notice that they aren't listening.  Their thoughts are far away and my insight into what kind of man has been running Guatemala is not making them feel any better.  To get me to shut the hell up they would have to say something more literal like, "Guy! I am worried that my sister is dying!"  Most people don't do that though.  I think that most men especially don't feel comfortable confiding in someone about such personal feelings so they are likely to just walk away and never want to have a conversation with me again.  Anyone else within hearing distance of this kind of incident is likely form a negative opinion of me without ever actually talking to me themselves.  I realize that I can be a real jerk sometimes but I would like to think of myself as a kind, caring, considerate, compassionate, and empathetic jerk.        

Assholeperger's Syndrome

Although I don’t take everything that is said to me as literally as Amelia Bedelia does, I do take words at face value and don’t do well at all when it comes to “reading between the lines” in my interactions with other people.  Sometimes this deficit results in a good-natured laugh but more often than not I think it makes me look like an ass.  Here’s an example of how this deficit almost got me fired:

One time I did a small plumbing job in the local hospital that required me to put a pipe through the ceiling above a patient conference room in the oncology department. As was the custom our city building inspector came by at his own convenience to inspect my work.  I had been instructed to work with the head nurse to coordinate our access to that room so I went straight to her and asked if I could set up my ladder to allow the inspector take a look at what I had done.  She said: “You can do your inspection anytime but there is a doctor talking to a family in that room right now.”  So I picked up my ladder, motioned for the inspector to follow me, walked up to the room and knocked on the door.  As I began to explain to the surprised doctor why we were there, the head nurse ran down the hall to apologize for our intrusion.  As soon as the doctor escorted the family to another room the nurse began to scream at me in a very quiet hospital voice saying, “What the hell were you thinking?  I just got through telling you that there was a doctor in this room trying to explain to a family about their loved ones’ cancer diagnosis!  How dare you interrupt them!"  I tried not to look at her but she moved to the right and then to the left to keep her face directly in front of mine as she continued: "This is going to cost you your job!  You will never work in this hospital again!  Get your inspection done then get out of here and NEVER COME BACK!”

I was confused and shaken by this encounter.  I don't handle conflict very well anyway but to find myself being confronted by a very pissed off woman when I could not understand what I had done was quite disturbing.  She had literally said: "You can do your inspection anytime but there is a doctor talking to a family in that room right now."  Where did I go wrong?  "Right now" is "anytime" is it not?  That incident was almost 20 years ago and I never deciphered the meaning behind her words until I learned the concepts of "too literal" thinking and something called "the unspoken part of a conversation."  Experts say that 80% of all communication is actually achieved through unspoken means such as context, body language, intonation of voice and the like.  People with Asperger's Syndrome tend to miss that part.  It may seem ridiculous for me to explain any further but for the benefit of other Aspies I will.  The message that the nurse had intended to convey was: "You can do your inspection anytime except right now because this is the oncology department which means we treat cancer patients and that means that the doctor in that room is talking to a family about someone they love who is very, very sick and may even be dying so just wait a few minutes until they leave and then you can go in there."  I didn't get all that.  I realize now why she treated me with such contempt.  I had an Amelia Bedelia moment and it wasn't funny at all.  I'm sure I came across as a real ass.  This is what I now jokingly call "Assholeperger's Syndrome" but I don't really expect a laugh.  It's only funny in the rarest of situations, like when you ask me to dress a chicken for dinner.                        

How it Started

                           Aspergers in Year 56 and Counting

There is a series of children's books that, many years ago, I read to my young daughter about a woman named Amelia Bedelia.  The central theme is the hilarious way in which Amelia constantly misunderstands the instructions given to her by her employers.  She takes everything so literally that when she is told for example to “dust the furniture” she actually sprinkles dusting powder around the house.  When she is told to “dress the chicken” she proceeds to put clothes on it.  This quirky characteristic is a subtle sign that she may be autistic.  It makes you laugh even though Amelia often gets fired.  She is so good natured about everything that you don’t let yourselves feel too sorry for her.  In real life situations a slightly autistic person like Amelia may not be so easy to sympathize with.  I recently discovered, at fifty-three years old, that I too live with a mild form of autism called “Asperger’s Syndrome.”

My first impulse to search cyberspace for some information about Asperger’s Syndrome came around my 53rd birthday during the summer of 2010.  Jesse Saperstein was promoting his book, “Atypical: My life with Asperger’s in 22 1/3 chapters.” As he described events in his life and how autism played into his inability to cope with the world in the way that "neuro-typicals" do, I recognized that his story did not sound unusual to me at all.  In fact he sounded like one of the few normal people that I had ever heard speak about how hard it is to “fit in” with the strange beings that populate this planet.  When I searched the terms “Asperger’s in adults” I found page after page that described my life experiences in astounding detail.  Everything from my intense interest in astronomy as a child through my love of photography and videography as an adult might be attributed to my being a “visual thinker.”  I began to wonder.  Was I was a wiz at geometry as a teenager for the same reason that I had such difficulty with algebra?  Strong "visual thinking" is one characteristic of one type of mild autism and it seemed to apply to me.  Angles and shapes can be “pictured” in my mind but numbers and variables outside of any concrete context make no sense to me.  

Next I considered my super-literal way of thinking.  I had been suffering through the worst year of my life that summer and I was having real trouble communicating with absolutely everyone in my world.  I was sick and alone, without family or friend except for the brief company of strangers who walked their dogs past my apartment door.  Upon reading the briefest of descriptions about the problems associated with "too literal" thinking, it dawned on me: "Holy crap!  Maybe I'm Amelia Bedelia!"  A huge part of my inability to successfully interact with the people in my life had been directly related to my insistence that everything that anyone had ever said to me was to be taken literally.  I considered the possibility that all communication between myself and the world around me had broken down because we had not been literally speaking the same language!

I read on down the list of Asperger's characteristics:
          ~...narrowly focused special interests....check!
          ~...extreme social anxiety that interferes with normal interactions....check!
          ~...difficulty understanding how to have friends or be part of a group....check!
          ~...inability to maintain eye-contact in close conversation....check!
          ~...poor fine motor skills and sloppy hand-writing....check!
          ~...inability to read the unspoken part of a conversation...what the hell is that?

It became clear that I was on to something.  After a couple of months of soul-searching and researching, I went to a local psychotherapist for counseling.  I received her diagnosis of "right in the middle of the range that is considered to be Asperger's" on my seventh visit to her office.  For the first time in my fifty-four years I began to understand why I have always felt that there is something wrong with everybody in this crazy world and why they must perceive that there is something wrong with me.  I am beginning to understand why so many seemingly simple things in life have been so difficult for me.  Understanding my autism has given me the confidence that I needed to communicate to the outside world about what goes on inside my head.  It’s also given me the freedom to be myself without worrying about how others might try to define me.  For those who care to know who I really am, this blog is my attempt to tell you.