I had the absolute privilege to MC a presentation by autistic advocate and author, my friend and co-author, the wonderful Dr Wenn Lawson today. I always love seeing Wenn present as he is a fantastic speaker and has a wealth of knowledge in a number of areas. One of Wenn’s areas of interest and significant expertise is the concept of object permanence.
What is this you may ask? I asked Google which provided this explanation: Object permanence means that you know an object or person still exists even when they are hidden and you can’t see or hear them.
Clinicians used to think (and many unfortunately still think) that autistic people lack empathy meaning we can’t understand what others are experiencing.
The idea of autistic people not lacking empathy per se but instead having difficulties around object permanence is a view which has more recently been adopted and to my mind offers a more accurate – and more inclusive – view. This suggests that autistic people are not aware that someone or something exists if we cannot ‘see’ them. Some people worry that their family and friends don’t exist until they are actually standing in front of them. My own experience of this is that if someone is late that I think they won’t turn up and I will be waiting forever. And I think if someone doesn’t respond to an email or message that they are never going to do so. Mixed in with my impostor syndrome and rejection sensitive dysphoria and you can probably imagine the resultant stress. In fact, I am stressed about this right now!
I will explain… I am working with an organisation that I haven’t been working with for long. I had to amend a document and send it back. The manager has not responded yet. Logic tells me she is probably busy or doing something else. Despite logic, I still called her and she didn’t pick up the phone – this catapulted me into thinking I had somehow offended her! This is an object permanence issue. Without reassurance, I assume that the employer will stop working with me and all sorts of other dire things because I cannot hold that event or relationships in my mind. I assume the opportunity will just disappear. I call myself the follow up fairy because I am a shocker for following things up for this very reason.
The anxiety caused by object permanence issues can actually damage your career and relationships. Many years ago I was invited to give a keynote alongside Temple Grandin and Tim and Judy Sharp. This was early in my advocacy career and I was absolutely delighted and very excited about this opportunity. However, I could not ‘see’ the event so I needed reassurance from the organisation hosting the talk. I would have called them at least once every week often more than that! I wasn’t asked to do the presentation the next time it was held and I am sure my stressy-ness about it probably contributed to that decision by the host.
And I do need to talk about empathy here because understanding around these things is closely related. Autistic people have all sorts of different experiences of empathy. Some people have very heightened empathy and can pick up on the feelings of people around them as is by osmosis. Some autistic people are highly thoughtful and kind. And then some have low empathy. Often we have ‘better’ empathy for other autistic people and less for our neurotypical peers. This does not mean we lack empathy – far from it. In fact neurotypical people tend to have less empathy for autistic folks than they do for their fellow neurotypicals. Autistic academic Dr Damian Milton has written and presented widely on this through the concept of the double empathy problem.
I find my object permeance issues quite frustrating and wish I could just relax for a little bit and know that the most likely reason is usually the correct one and just because I can’t keep it in my mind does not mean it doesn’t exist or isn’t going to happen. For example conference organisers are almost certainly not going to change their minds and cancel my talk on a whim but I am always worrying about this because I cannot ‘see’ the event or my participation in it! Even if I can’t see it, I don’t really need to constantly reassure myself that everything is OK, my work still exists and people are still there even if they do not remind me of that all the time.
I think we need more understanding of object permanence as it explains a lot about the experience or many autistic people.
And here is a link to Dr Wenn Lawson’s website: https://www.buildsomethingpositive.com/wenn/ and Wenn’s YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD8L-Ht_jSQxBmWe6MzZvJA
Yenn Purkis Autism Page 