Pattern Recognition, ‘Highly Sensitive People,’ and Autism, Oh My!
Navigating a familiar trap
I can feel the vibe of a person I meet immediately, but not all of its contours, forms, and lines. That’s my problem.
As Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung said…”Often, the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
One of my issues is that I use pattern recognition overbroadly. It is an issue because using syllogistic thinking on others in social situations has no merit whatsoever. People are not machines. A whole host of independent variables outside my awareness influence how people might behave in a given situation. I cannot say…”Person A behaved this way previously when I was around them, and they were nice. Therefore, Person A will always behave like this in the future.”
People do not run on zeros and ones or anything resembling binary code.
One can literally go berzerk trying to employ pattern recognition on human behavior. The lengths someone can go to are astounding.
“Person A likes person B, but person B rejected person A the last time they met. Person C doesn’t like either of these people. Therefore, person A and B will not hit it off, and person C will shy away from both Person A and Person B.”
Then what happens? Person B and Person A become friends, and Person C joins them! Always.
This way of thinking works well within the scientific method rather than with others in interpersonal relationships.
If things were not convoluted enough, you can succumb to reverse psychology.
“Person A and Person B seem to like each other. That must mean they will become arch-enemies because I am never right.”
And sure enough, what happens? They become best friends.
Einstein is the one who said you cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it. And yet, I still try to decode human behavior this way, knowing this is what trips me up and that this method never works. Woe is me!😇
An initial burst of intuition
So, when I meet a new person, my emotional and vicarious empathy level is on alert. Intuitively, I become aware of their vibe and the feel of their energy. On this point, I am usually 95% correct. But on the other hand, when transactional details, social plotting, or following the “social action” of the story happening around me becomes a part of the equation, I falter. And I start going back into pattern recognition mode.
Simon Baron-Cohen might say that pattern recognition is part of my “systemizing drive” toward making sense of the world. But this personally does not apply to me for the most part. While I might have pattern recognition in some areas of learning, the systemizing talent is not there for me across the board — i.e., when it comes to visual-spatial processing or anything mechanically, numerically, or natural systems-related. I was not born to be an engineer.
Big data does not work in interpersonal contexts. This is why an AI cannot yet socialize. I have forty-seven years of experience in life that I can take to the bank on the claim that pattern recognition is not very helpful when mixing. I am a data person, but bottom-up processing gets you nowhere when interacting with people. You can keep a spreadsheet of how everyone in your life behaved for the past month and try to use it to predict how they will behave tomorrow. Guess what? Most of what you expect to happen will not come to fruition. Only tendencies will, not actualities.
Autistic people usually are bottom-up processors of information. Many of us do not globalize or generalize information but instead process things piecemeal, allowing us to think outside the box. A swathe of us will come to a different conclusion than our allistic brethren and sistren if it is a generalized conclusion of the majority. A large number of us are not a priori thinkers.
So, what is going on here?
But I believe there is an exception to this: In interpersonal situations, primarily upon meeting someone for the first time, many autistic people have exceptional top-down processing, sensing a person’s energy or vibe to compensate for our difficulties in reading between the lines in social encounters. When we meet a new person, it is “top-down” to the extent that it is a novel situation — we have never met this person before. (Of course, if one is a racist or has implicit bias they have not worked on, it would not be solely top-down processing). If many of us did not have this, at the very least, intuitive sense of the kind of person we were dealing with, we would be at an even further disadvantage socially.
Autistic individual William Stillman says the following to explain some of his “psychic” abilities:
Second, my entire nervous system — my senses and emotions — operates at such a high frequency that I am bombarded by over-stimulation from bright lights, loud sounds, overwhelming aromas, and disrespectful conduct of others that the average person filters out naturally. I think of it as “spidey-sense,” and it feels like I’m a sponge or a magnet, collecting random fragments of sensory stimuli all day, every day.
Whether or not you think being a psychic medium is valid, one can agree with Bill that our overconnected brains can sometimes effectively help us tune in to the vibration of our surroundings.
Furthermore, many autistic individuals believe there is virtually no difference between being a Highly Sensitive Person and being autistic. Though one may lay claim to the idea that the two groups are different based on autonomic nervous system arousal patterns and their effects on both groups, the creator of this concept (Elaine Aron) grand nephew was initially diagnosed as a highly sensitive person but was later diagnosed as autistic. At least in 2009, Aron came out and said she preferred her “highly sensitive person” classification to an autistic diagnosis:
But no one who loves a child or their parents would want to think about autism, even when the child in question will eat only exactly three kinds of food or is happy for twenty minutes merely watching a bicycle wheel spinning.
In response to this, I’ll quote Emily Morson:
Elaine Aaron (sic), in her drive to reverse discrimination against highly sensitive people, worked hard to distinguish HSP from disabilities, especially autism. And in the process, she made incredibly ableist arguments and threw autistic people under the bus.
Instead of seeing HSP as a positive way of viewing neurodivergence — including autism — she claims that HSP is a neutral-to-positive trait while sensory processing disorder, anxiety, ADHD, and autism are all uniformly negative disorders. That is an unhelpful, prejudiced way of viewing autism and other disabilities.
While Morson agrees that an HSP does not equate to being autistic, she sees a clear overlap between the two. She disagrees with Aron’s categorical rejections of dual diagnosis because one is a “disability,” and the other is a state of mind. It is hard not to see some of the ableism in Ms. Aron’s writing.
I subscribe to the belief that many autistic people experience emotional overexcitability in social situations due to the conscious awareness of our difficulties. The term “overexcitability” is often used to describe gifted children, but few people frame it within the context of discussing autistic people. As Barbara Probst says when speaking about gifted people and emotional overexcitability:
With emotional overexcitability, there’s a greater responsiveness to actual stimuli (including thoughts and memories); even if the responses seem excessive, they’re responses.
Autistic people can be twice-exceptional in general, and it can be speculated this is also true in social encounters. Autistic people may see other people’s true essences much more briskly than a lot of allistic people but, at the same time, have difficulties understanding social throughlines. It is like seeing a movie and quickly sensing out of the gate that Lex Luthor is the bad guy and Superman is the good guy, not picking up much else from the rest of the plot.
The problem is that this is as far as my intuition takes me. While that initial burst of intuition helps me pick up the overall vibe or kind of person I will be interacting with, after that, I am usually lost. This is probably due to the following:
Taken together, the literature indicates that, while neurotypical individuals demonstrate a bias for fast intuitive processing unless overridden by deliberative processing, autistic individuals demonstrate a bias for slower deliberative processing over rapid intuitive processing. The central role of processing time (fast versus slow) on intuitive and deliberative processing is highlighted by studies demonstrating enhanced intuitive responses when participants are forced to respond rapidly, and enhanced deliberative responses when participants are forced to respond after a time delay (Evans & Curtis-Holmes, 2005).
Now what?
It is essential to recognize that overexcitability can cause both rapid bursts of intuition and the spinning IMac pinwheel of “slower deliberative processing” or rumination.
An autistic person might go to a job interview and quickly understand what kind of person this prospective boss would be. And it might be a spot-on impression. If they can mask well enough to conform to these initial perceptions of their boss-in-waiting, it can be advantageous to them in getting the job. But because overexcitability is a double-edged sword that can cut both ways, it can also produce a chatty and ruminative mind not focused on what the would-be boss is looking for.
If there were a formula I could take that would allow me to use my intellect for social situations the way I can use my intuition upon meeting someone new, I would be the first to sign up for it. But my “slower deliberative” processing always gets in the way, forcing me to overanalyze each social interaction to death — even in real-time. There are no easy answers.
Conclusion
But I will try to provide some food for thought, anyway.
By focusing on just a few critical elements in each interaction bogged down in too much detail, you can prevent being swept away by the myriad of details surrounding you, marred by rumination.
With their fluid and dynamic nature, social situations defy rigid patterns or syllogistic thinking. The challenge, especially for those with a deliberative and reflective mind, is to find a way to engage in these situations without falling into the traps of overthinking or attempting to apply fixed patterns where they don’t belong.
The key lies in striking a balance between being prepared and being adaptable. In this context, preparation isn’t about predicting outcomes based on past patterns but rather about building a comfortable foundation for yourself. For example, before a social event, familiarize yourself with potential topics of conversation, but stay open to the natural flow of dialogue. This way, you’re equipped with starting points but not confined to a script.
In the moment, practice mindfulness to stay anchored in the present. Mindfulness isn’t about controlling your thought process but observing it without judgment. This can help you notice when you’re slipping into patterned thinking and gently guide your focus back to the unfolding interaction.
When reflecting on social encounters, aim to do so with a lens of curiosity rather than analysis. Instead of dissecting each interaction to predict future outcomes, consider what you learned about others and yourself. This shift in perspective can help transform rumination into insightful contemplation.
Lastly, be gentle with yourself in this process. Navigating social situations without defaulting to pattern recognition or syllogistic thinking is a skill that develops over time. Each social interaction is an opportunity to practice and learn not just about the nuances of human behavior but also about your unique way of engaging with the world.
Each social encounter is an opportunity to embody the ‘beginner’s mind’ — approaching experiences with openness and eagerness, free from preconceptions. Not every interaction will unfold as expected, and that’s part of this journey’s natural ebb and flow. But remember, too, that beginners often get lucky.
