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P82 To have feelings of gentleness, one must experience gentle bodily comfort. As my nervous system learned to tolerate the soothing pressure from my squeeze machine, I discovered that the comfortable feeling made me a kinder and gentler person... It wasn’t until after I had used the modified squeeze machine that I learned how to pet our cat gently... As I became gentler, the cat began to stay with me, and this helped me understand the ideas of reciprocity and gentleness.
...The relaxing feeling of being held washes negative thoughts away... Gentle touching teaches kindness.
P83 I always thought about cattle intellectually until I started touching them. I was able to remain the neutral scientist until I placed my hands on them at the Swift plant and feedlots in 1974. When I pressed my hand against the side of a steer, I could feel whether he was nervous, angry, or relaxed. The cattle flinched unless I firmly put my hand on them, but then touching had a calming effect. Sometimes touching the cattle relaxed them, but it always brought me closer to the reality of their being.
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The application of physical pressure has similar effects on people and animals. Pressure reduces touch sensitivity. For instance, gentle pressure on the sides of a piglet will cause it to fall asleep, and trainers have found that massaging horses relaxes them. The reactions of an autistic child and a scared, flighty horse are similar. Both will lash out and kick anything that touches them.
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P91 At a conference a man with autism told me that he feels only three emotions, fear, sadness, and anger. He has no joy. He also has problems with the intensity of his emotions, which both fluctuate and get mixed up, similar to sensory jumbling. My emotions don’t get mixed up, but they are reduced and simplified in some areas...
During the last couple of years, I have become more aware of a kind of electricity that goes on between people which is much subtler than overt anger, happiness, or fear. I have observed that when several people are together and having a good time, their speech and laughter follow a rhythm. They will all laugh together and then talk quietly until the next laughing cycle. I have always had a hard time fitting in with this rhythm, and I usually interrupt conversations without realizing my mistake. The problem is that I can’t follow the rhythm. Twenty years ago, Dr. Condon, a Boston physician, observed that babies with autism and other developmental disorders failed to move in synchronicity with adult speech. Normal infants will tune into adult speech and get in sync with it.
While Temple Grandin’s autism makes her a sympathetic student of cattle, it also makes her unusually observant of human behavior as she stands outside it, the same way that European sociologists or anthropologists stand outside the native cultures they study.
P92 The work I do is emotionally difficult for many people, and I am often asked how I can care about animals and be involved in slaughtering them. Perhaps because I am less emotional than other people, it is easier for me to face the fact of death. I live each day as if I will die tomorrow. This motivates me to accomplish many worthwhile things, because I have learned not to fear death and have accepted my own mortality. This has enabled me to look at slaughtering objectively and perceive it the way the cattle do. However, I am not just an objective, unfeeling observer; I have sensory empathy for the cattle. When they remain calm I feel calm, and when something goes wrong that causes pain, I also feel their pain. I tune into what the actual sensations are like to the cattle rather than having the idea of death rile up my emotions. My goal is to reduce suffering and improve the way farm animals are treated.
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