This TikTok got me thinking:
I see a lot said and written about how Neurotypical people usually ask “How are you?” as part of a script, and don’t particularly care for an honest and complete answer. I figured that out myself a long time ago, and have had many conversations with strangers that consist of:
Them: “How are you?”
Me: “How are you?”
End of conversation.
Even so, I still harbor the Autistic urge to answer the question honestly and properly, and it can throw me into an emotional tailspin because, at any random moment, I don’t really know how I am.
To make matters worse, I’ve been trained from an early age to equate “not happy” with a negative emotional state, especially sadness or anger. So if someone asks how I am and my immediate (internal) reaction is not that I’m feeling joy, I conclude that I must feel sadness.
To make matters even worse, I have some degree of alexithymia, which is a fancy, hoity-toity way of saying that I often don’t know what emotion I’m feeling. My neutral state is neutral, which is partially the Autism talking, partially the masking talking (which is, in turn, the Autism talking), and partly the alexithymia talking (which is, as mentioned, the Autism talking).
And when I get those three different Autistic voices staring blankly back at me in response to “How are you?”, I kick into “Well, I must be sad, then. Because the Law of the Excluded Middle tells me there is no neutral.”
So… when Neurotypical people ask me the vacuous-to-them question “How are you?”, I risk being sent into a labyrinth of emotional confusion that usually lasts a few nanoseconds but builds up over time.
The solution is to continue to deprogram the notion that emotional neutrality is a negative space, particularly since emotional neutrality is the base state for many Autistic people.