Adults on the Spectrum - and the Ted Bundy Question

I have heard – many times – from new clients, as they try to explain their predicament, sentences like this: 

"I am not like Ted Bundy – but I could be."

I used to be very puzzled by this – after all, I’d hear these proclamations from the very best of people. In fact, most of my adult clients could be described as conflict-avoidant, even in situations in which they feel threatened (rare in adulthood, maybe, but more common under the label of “bullying” in childhood). These clients are gentle, never cruel to animals, and certainly not the type to take pleasure in the suffering of any sentient being. Yet they come in so unsure of their basic nature, and they tell me this: “I am not Ted Bundy, but I don’t know why.”

A knee-jerk reaction in this case might lead a well-meaning friend or even therapist to brush aside such concerns as silly. But I think clients sense they are different – that though they don’t act in ways to deliberately harm others, the reasons behind their non-violent nature are different than the reasons shared by most. I think they may be right.

Many of us rely on a kind of shared emotional experience to guide their ethical behavior. It’s easy to imagine another’s fear, or pain, in the moment – it conjures up our own feelings of fear and pain, and that alone is enough to serve as a deterrent. But what if that kind of imagined experience wasn’t so automatic, or instant? This is the case for many clients. They find another path for managing their ethics in the moment – sometimes these look like the “rules” so often mentioned in ASD literature.

It’s the autistic adult’s wonderful workaround for a system (social, emotional) that’s not available and instant enough to guide ethical behavior. And this compensating system can really shine in moments when what’s ethical may cause another pain or discomfort – think of the last M.A.S.H. episode – so wedged in our minds because many of us could understand the horror of being faced with having to choose between the survival of many and the survival of an infant. There are times when ethics must be applied in ways that violate our sense of that automatic empathy we rely on for a moral compass function. So many clients on the spectrum can operate in settings (corporate, etc) in ways that transcend the emotional comfort of others, and even themselves, to do what’s right. This makes for less inclusion and social comfort for the client, but they endure (when many empaths do not).

As I’ve written before, I often find that adults on the spectrum are highly sensitive. But that doesn’t mean that the sensitivity is available in the moment, especially in social situations. Relying on ethical “rules” is a wonderful compensation, when immediacy is important. But this doesn’t mean that inside, many of the same feelings that move most of us aren’t alive and well.

So while I can understand why clients come in with an unsettled feeling that they could be Ted Bundy, I know that, via one system or another, they aren’t, and won’t be.