My partner went out on a date the other night and I absolutely loved every moment apart from one bit when I tried to visualise him enjoying himself with the person but had no visual reference map for creating this understanding in my head. In that one moment a huge shot of anxiety rushed through me, and started to send me on a spiral of fear. My brain felt it and filled in the gaps with intrusive thoughts.
This happens a lot to me in all sorts of contexts, but it usually happens over the phone or in the presence of someone else, and as a result it has often been misinterpreted by others as anxious attachment or jealousy when it’s completed unrelated to that. (Don't get me wrong I do a lot of work around my anxious attachment and my jealousy so I'm not saying I don't have those things) In turn that misinterpretation leads to intense meltdowns because as an autistic person I am traumatised by all the times I haven't felt able to communicate my experiences to others / when people haven't understand the nuance of my thoughts and feelings.
But for the first time I was able to pause in the moment and say to my brain "that's interesting that you need a visual reference to map this experience onto, why is that". And a FLOOD of memories and knowledge came rushing back which helped me to understand the beautiful layer of the world that my autistic brain operates within.
Seeing connection or disconnection
Since I was young I have been confused by secrecy surrounding love and desire, or the opposite of that resentment and distance. Everything seemed to be unnecessarily clouded with pretence and I could never work out why, and it was that that creates anxiety within my brain. A simple example is that I had a boyfriend as a teenager who quite blatantly fancied one of my best friends. I never had a problem with the fancying, it was the fact they couldn't seem to speak it out loud or acknowledge it when it was right there in front of us and I didn't understand why it was something that needed to be silenced or obscured. When he eventually slept with her a few years later I wasn't hurt by the sex, I was hurt by the fact I didn't know or understand his reasons for keeping it secret, that he was actively trying to obscure something I could *literally* see and touch.
And the latter is where I now understand my experience of connection and disconnection is different from many. I literally see it and sense it in ways others do not. Not in a "bright visual colours dancing across the room" kind of way. But in a half physical, half visual kind of sense.
Sometimes I see two people interact and there's so much visual buzz and sensations around them due to their connection that I either get buoyed by that energy and can join in on the flow, or I get sensorily overwhelmed and can't keep up with the "standard" stuff I'm meant to pay attention to like words and body language AND the giant whirring energy surrounding the pair.
Other times I can enter a room of full pain and resentment and the underlying energy makes it difficult for me to breathe or to look at people. Some people in that room think I'm the weird one for not being able to socialise or maintain eye contact, but I can't understand what game everyone is playing cos the "elephant" is very literally right in front of our faces. It is a physical and visual experience for me, it is not a metaphor.
When people don't see what I see
What I realise now is that in many instances people aren't actively trying to obscure the truth or deny my experience - they simply don't see it.
What this means is that I'm there either pointing something out that takes them by surprise (which some people absolutely love and others get defensive around) or I'm waiting for them to acknowledge things that they simply don't connect with. And when that doesn't happen I get anxious because I then feel like I'm existing in a more confusing space than I realised.
Just to be clear I'm not talking about people having "different points of view" or "different beliefs". I've always enjoyed exploring those differences with others and enjoy it when other people's thoughts and interpretations challenge my thoughts and interpretations. What I'm talking about is a very real, physical and visual, type of sense and experience around the layer of energy that connects or disconnects.
Why having no visual or physical map is a challenge
This brings me back to my starting place. One of the ways I have coped with the energy that surrounds connection is by grounding it in more "common" senses. When I first dated my girlfriend, going out in public was a challenge because she didn't like physical touch. The only way for me to not be overwhelmed by the energy between, us combined with the energy in a busy restaurant, is to be physically touching the people my connection is with. Otherwise the energy from other connections becomes distracting or I become overwhelmed by the situation.
In addition, it's why going to familiar places is useful when I don't know what the energy dynamic is going to be. If I have to navigate seeing all of this unspoken energy AND navigate a strange environment it's a challenge. If my sense of place is secure then I can engage with the energy layer easily.
When me and my partner were long distance living we had this huge gigantic energy connection which spanned across my world and his world. I could feel that connection running all through me and around me. But it was so big that in order to manage and cope with it I needed to visualise it alongside the physical world. But sometimes that would come up against a barrier. I didn't know what much of his physical world looked like. So when we were talking on the phone in his living room and his daughter and her mum were in the next room I couldnt ground our connection or their connections in physical space. They were all just floating there filling my senses. I had no visual map to place the connections on. And I had no way of touching him to be able to focus on the words he was saying.
While my partner and I do lots of things like sending each other videos of the spaces we are in before we speak or text, this isn't always a viable option (I wasn't going to to get him to send me pictures of his date for instance).
I don't yet know the answers for managing these scenarios where my experiences of connection need grounding. Or where I'm feeling and navigating the sense of energy that others aren't. But what I know is that having this clearer understanding around how I experience the world will enable me to be less anxious.
When I'm overwhelmed by something that others don't see, or overwhelmed by trying to navigate the many sensory layers I experience without having a visual map to place them on, I now have the words to explain to parts of my brain or to other humans that “I'm not a weirdo, I just experience things differently and that's okay”. And that it’s not that people are always keeping things secret from me or trying to ignore the obvious energy layer that’s present, it's that I get to know and experience these beautiful layers before others even know they exist.