A skill I can't develop because no one treats me as an equal - which only gets worse as my skill falls behind the age-appropriate average.

It's not so much that I "fail" to see, it's that my moral code precedes everything else - including my very existence. I refuse to behave as barbarically as other people, no matter the cost. If I have to barge into people like a raider, that says more about humanity's moral bankruptcy than it does about any shortcoming I have. I want to be accepted, but I cannot accept myself if I act as badly as my abusers.

I'm not "stuck in anticipation of being attacked" in the sense that I'm always adrenalized. My predictions come from the logical analysis of scientific knowledge of human behavior applied to how people have consistently treated me in the past. I'm not panicking; I'm resigned to be treated badly and to be verbally or physically attacked. My "executive function" is operating fine. I have no problem living my life as long as no one else kicks my sandcastles over (i.e. actively and intentionally interfere with my life) but people can't seem to help themselves.

This does not describe me. I can discuss anything; I simply can't remember chains of events because my brain takes apart all events and analyzes them piece-by-piece, then stores the analysis and throws away the events. My memory is near-photographic for still pictures, but all events are decomposed into their ingredients. It's like watching a movie and only remembering the cast list afterward - except no one ever told me their names when I was young, so I can't remember names now either. So I remember individual acts, stripped of their context.

You are correct that people are not threatened by sadness; you are incorrect that they would be triggered to help. People only see weakness in sadness; they only see vulnerable prey ready for slaughter. Every time I have been sad in public I am mocked incessantly, when I'm not simply assaulted.

This is correct for me; my assault was so consistent and exclusive that remembering individual events was a waste of energy - I had to economize and turn my memorization engine into a mass meat grinder in order to process it all fast enough and be able to out-guess my opponents.

I don't interact vocally because I was punished every time I used my voice - either by my parents or by my peers. Staying silent was my best strategy.

Also, I have never disassociated in my life - I've had to face life at full volume with not so much as eyelids to dim it. People have done the equivalent of shove a firehose in my face and wonder why I'm drowning.

Incidentally, what would it say if a patient could not disassociate? What brain injury would that reveal? Does anyone know?