Are high-functioning autistic individuals more likely to take things personally?

[Answered on Quora.com by Dr. Natalie Engebrecht]

Than whom? I assume that it means ‘take things more personally than NTs.’

One mistaken understanding about people with ASD in general is that we are low in emotions. But the truth is that we are INCREDIBLY sensitive. Furthermore our sensory issues result in a greater capacity to get dramatically hurt and upset. One way that our nervous system copes is to become alexithymic, which makes it difficult at times for us to know that we are having an emotion to even though we are. A good example is last weekend when I was upset, my mind did not feel upset but I had the symptoms of a heart attack (I was having a physical panic attack).

Another—perhaps more dramatic—example was at Christmas time when my older son made a joke. I have two Buddha statues at my work as part of the decorations for my meditation classes. He said: “I though Buddhists were one with everything, not have one of everything”. He had told the joke to my younger son who has a greater tendency to understand me, and my younger son said: “Don’t say that to mom, she won’t find it funny”. Nonetheless my older son could not resist. I remember sitting at the table and him saying it. My younger son told me later he knew that trouble was coming because the left side of my mouth twitched and my fingers moved briefly. At the time I did not get upset. But I started obsessing, and feeling really upset. I felt that it was an unfair statement. I am very very minimalistic. I have four sets of clothes, one lipstick etc. So my brain could not make sense of it. By the evening I had taken a number of my things and put them in garbage bags (20 in total) and had a fire in a garbage bin burning other things in the backyard.

So yes, I would say that I am more sensitive than most people in certain circumstances. If it is not a personal comment about me, I have far more resilience and less emotional reactivity than other people. I am able to listen to devastating trauma histories my patients share with deep empathy for them, without getting dysregulated. Basically I do not like things that feel unfair to me. If a comment makes sense then I am not overly sensitive, but fairness and logic are very important to me regarding myself. I am also sensitive about people who know me well saying things that are untrue about me. For example I don’t lie, I approach the world and people in a kind and caring way, and I am non-judgemental. If a person that knows me well accuses me of one of those things then I can get very agitated.

Recent research by Henry and Kamila Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, suggests that the fundamental problem in autism-spectrum disorders is not a social deficiency but, rather, a hypersensitivity to experience, which includes an overwhelming fear response[1]. Known as Intense World Syndrome, it is suggested that the core challenge in ASD is hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity of neuronal circuits which leads to hyper-perception, hyper-attention, and hyper-memory. This results in the world being painfully intense when the neocortex is affected, and aversive when the amygdala is affected, resulting in social and environmental withdrawal. Due to the fact that the brain is plastic and the brain of people with ASD is believed to be very rapid at learning it is believed that this hypersensitivity results in the individual creating a small repertoire of secure behavioural routines which they obsessively repeat in order to feel safe.

Instead of people with AS or HFA lacking in empathy we empathize too much. What looks like a lack of empathy or coldness to the outside world is actually a response to being overwhelmed by emotion. We have an excess not a lack. People who live with or are friends with people with AS will attest to this. This theory suggests that the social difficulties of this with AS/HFA result from an attempt to cope with the world where the volume on all of our senses and feelings have been turned up to 10++.

My mirror-emotion synesthesia makes things more intense for me. I feel what other people are feeling. it is really helpful for my work, but can really be too much when being around people. Furthermore, things my autistic friends get upset about make sense to me. They are logical. But things neurotypicals get mad about can really frustrate me and I feel responsible for them. I want everyone to be happy and no-one to suffer. So in my personal life that becomes a lot and I keep my circle small to prevent being overwhelmed.

Research finds that people with AS have hyper-memories but lack the normal extinction of fear that NTs exhibit. Basically in ASD the brain amplifies fear memories and then generalizes the fear to other stimulus configurations. This results in anything being similar to the original fear becoming frightening also, and the fear of stimuli being exaggerated. Furthermore, research shows that these fears are persistent in people with ASD due to impairments in extinction (the tendency for a stimulus to become neutral after no danger occurs); this results in the fears not being able to dissipate and a circular obsession occurring that runs the fear over and over in the person’s mind, preventing them from using their logical brain. Essentially the person goes into a flight/fight state, without a way to escape from it.

So on both a personal level, yes I am more sensitive and also on a research level people with HFA or AS take things more personally.

For more information on (high-functioning) ASD, have a look at: Embrace Autism
A blog about quantitative- and qualitative research on autism, by Dr. Natalie Engelbrecht ND RP and Eva Silvertant.
Footnotes:
[1] The Intense World Syndrome – an Alternative Hypothesis for Autism