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.
