NT Experience

For NT people comforting is way to relieve distress in others. They achieve this using emotional mirroring and social co-regulation. Simply being present and emitting the right social signals can help another NT person feel better. They can talk soothingly and reassure them that their social network is intact – this is easy to do when you understand what the other person is thinking. It is not about logic, it is about feelings and social safety. Being alone can be very stressful for NT people, especially when distressed.

My Experience

I have no affective empathy. To me, Care is about helping somebody – solving their problems. I have no access to the social signals and cannot mirror them. I effectively have no ability to provide comfort.

Recently when I was upset about a situation my wife asked if I needed comfort. I was surprised – what could she do to fix the situation? Of course that is not what she meant. I had to do some investigating about what “comfort” meant.

I learned about social co-regulation. Who knew that was even a thing? Sitting in a room with somebody seems useless. Actually, having me sit in the room with somebody probably would be useless. Even if I want to “help” in this way, I am not equipped to do the emotional mirroring. Anyway, this is a thing and I had never heard of it. Also: if you attempt this, do not bring a book (I am told).

I found out about “somatic co-regulation”: holding a dog that leans against you or a purring cat reduces cortisol levels in humans. This is a biological response to a physical stimulus and I do experience this and find it pleasant.

Conceptually a hug is a reasonable thing to do for somebody in distress, but it didn’t really occur to me. I am not opposed to hugs, but I almost never use them – this is a form of somatic co-regulation. Curiously I do the equivalent to my dog. I like this LLM summary:

• The Dog Exception: You hold the dog because you perceive a Biological Threat Response.
  • Mechanism: The dog is a “Low-Complexity System.” Fear in a dog is a physical state of arousal. Holding provides Physical Containment and Sensory Dampening.
  • Observation: You are not “comforting” the dog’s soul; you are Mechanically Regulating a biological organism. You treat the dog as a “Broken Machine” that requires stabilization, which is a Functional Fix.

Comparison

I have no effective comfort mechanism unless somebody has a problem I can fix. I can’t perceive the signals to help people. I can’t provide social co-regulation.

I can perceive somatic co-regulation (physical touch) but aside from comforting small children and pets, I don’t use it on adults. I think this is a matter of complexity: pets and children are simple. I don’t know what adults want and for social safety I avoid touch generally. If asked to provide a hug, I could do so.

Semantic Divergence: extreme.