10:00pm May 10, 2012

➸ felis corvus: Autistics and "personal space"

feliscorvus:

I don’t claim my own experience is universal, but I have a strong aversion to people I don’t know extremely well standing too close to me. It often feels like they are touching me, leaning on me, and giving me electrical-type zaps even though they’re not usually making actual physical contact.

…

I get this too. And the zapping thing (and level of discomfort) happens at different distances with different people. Like there are some people that a large room is not big enough for both of us. But yeah my level of comfort with people in close proximity is much less than most people.

I don’t know if you saw the interview footage of me on CNN. But the reason I spent the entire time leaning away and looking away weren’t just “because I’m autistic and do that all the time”, they were because my stress levels were approaching “terrified prey animal” level due to how close the interviewer was sitting. If he’d stayed further away and/or been someone else, I’d have looked at least somewhat less terrified. Holy crap I never want that stress level again. Being on international TV is terrifying enough without someone sitting so close they’re almoste blending with me in unpleasant ways. (shudder) I appreciate that they took the effort to tell the entire world the lengths they went to to verify that I’m legit, but I don’t think I’m cut out for TV. It took all of my self control not to dart under a bed or something. (Of course the one time I did dart away from them, they just followed.)

Anyway I find that even when I don’t know people, the most self-contained ones are the ones who can get closest to me without discomfort on my part.

Of course I also have to put up with a lot of people getting close to me or touching me, because of needing help with personal care. Doesn’t get rid of all the discomfort. But I remember at the time I first had someone come in. And they were only coming in to cook. I was so terrified that I ran out the door and started lining sticks up on the driveway. Because at that point, simply being inside my house gave me that same level of discomfort (and I was very high strung in those days).

At the same time, while discomfort is there, I have had a hard time learning I was allowed to respond to this discomfort.

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