Week 2 (8/9/14 – 12/9/14)
I can't believe that after seeing
what I've seen so far, only 1 week has passed. I've been feeling so
stimulated/aroused by the environment that I can actually skip my
afternoon medication without feeling sleepy after lunch. Maybe it's
the hot weather that's also irritating me and keeping me awake. I've
started to get used to the “3rd-World” vibes, and suspect I'll
get a “Reverse-Culture Shock” when I come back to Australia...
"SCOLIOSIS GIRL"
A medical student (“Anjali”)
asked me to help be her mini-interpreter in Tetum, for a girl with
Scoliosis, to perform a back exam. The girl was with her grandmother
in the examination room, and was crying. I asked her grandmother why
she (girl) was crying. She said that it was because she was worried
she'll be admitted to BPC today, and have surgery done soon. I told
Anjali this, and she gently hugged the girl, saying calmly in English
that she doesn't have to worry about being admitted today, and that
she'll go home, but will need to see Dr. Dan later in the week.
Obviously the girl didn't
understand what Anjali was saying, but she quietened down
immediately. It amazed me that someone who can't communicate in the
other person's language was still able to calm them. My hypothesis
was that her sense of touch (“hug”) and calm tone of voice was
enough to comfort the girl for the time being. Anjali's response was
a pure demonstration of how the universal emotions and non-verbal
communication of humans can transgress language and cultural
barriers.
Is this considered empathy? I
wouldn't intuitively know how to respond in such a situation unless I
rote-memorized it like nearly all my other social situations. There
are times that I can identify how the person is feeling, and know
what the “correct” response is by Neurotypical standards, but
when I execute it, it doesn't always have that “authentic”
appearance even if I meant it. It can look authentic if I faked my
body language and tone of voice really hard (instead of my usual flat
affect and relative monotone), which would tire me out even more. I
feel like the character Sheldon from the show “Big Bang Theory”,
who in one episode, patted a woman on the shoulders saying “There,
there...” when she was upset. It's not that I'm fake, it's just
that I have to act a certain amount to avoid being seen as completely
aloof or rude by NTs, even if I genuinely do care about some of them.
I became more aware of my
deficiencies in intuitive socio-emotional processing of NTs, and at
night got frustrated by the fact that for the rest of my life, I'll
have to learn the majority of these things by brute study and
intellectualization. Will I burn out and give up eventually,
sheltering myself from the NTs after work like a “Hikikomori”?
Will my analytical mind ever give way to intuition as I go older, or
will I be permanently stuck in this state? There've been a handful of times where I
automatically get “vibes” about a social situation, and have been
correct, but I feel that they are flukes and dunno how it came to me.
Alas this is the quandary of an Aspie...
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