Unable to judge meltdowns, shutdowns and dissociation

I find it immensely difficult to identify pain and emotions in myself and others.  I often need my husband to tell me when to stop and leave something.  Work wise, even before I had my diagnosis, I’ve needed someone to give me permission to have a coffee and a breather.

I also find that after an event I will be absolutely exhausted.

That does sound familiar. I tend to think of it, in perhaps very simple terms, as attempting to slow events down to a mental processing speed you feel you can cope with. Trance should (I think) be thought of as something entirely natural, for both ND and NT, as there is plenty of evidence that it happens to both quite a number of times on any given day. But perhaps it might be better to think of trance as intense concentration on that which you have clearly understood from events, accompanied sometimes by the feeling that you just can't keep up with the rapid pace of unfolding events; and so have a tendency to completely withdraw (mentally and/or physically) from those events.

I once watched a trainer coerce almost his entire training group into showing their acceptance of his extremely fast-paced presentation. His pace was probably intended to demonstrate his agility as a trainer, and so convince trainees of his ability to do the job with panache. They were mostly nodding their heads in agreement, and as such I think he had basically put quite a few of them in an entranced state. I sort of felt he was trying to demonstrate to them just how easy it is to get language learners into acceding to a language presentation, but perhaps without their having the faintest clue what he was talking about. I sort of felt many of those watching him were just nodding their heads in agreement so they could just get on to the next (and perhaps more easily understood) stage of his presentation. Sure, there were those who probably sussed that he was trying to show them just how easily language students can lose the plot, but I reckon quite a few others were just overwhelmed and really wanting to move on. I waited until he was apparently satisfied with the response that he had elicited and told him he had left me completely behind. (He had entranced me too, but I was perhaps resisting his intended message.) He went on to suggest my difficulty actually proved his point, but I could see that he had lost quite a few people in the process. In effect, I had probably ruined his party piece. And I wasn't at all convinced that he wasn't just excusing himself. What I do realise is that on the evidence of my own inability to mentally keep up, he seems to have made up his mind that I was in some sense impaired. That probably wouldn't have mattered if it hadn't been my misfortune to later work with him as a colleague; a colleague that he probably would not have hired if hiring had been his responsibility. Another career move doomed to failure!