I encountered a situation which immediately gave me imagery of red flashing lights in my head.  I had been too direct in a friend when they were talking about feeling upset as I lead off with "I could tell." although afterwards I was explicitly emotionally supportive and asking to help them with whatever was bothering them. I recognize that this was a mistake on my end but my past memories hit like a bus all at once and i straight up considered deciding never to speak to this person again.... why?

There has been a continual pattern in my life of people explicitly hiding thier uncomfortability with me and expressing it all at once when it becomes too much. They become uncomfortable with x, y, or z thing which never even crosses my mind because I'm unaware of a specific norm within the context of the environment at present, it takes them forever to say it to such a consistent extent that this pattern is baked into my head, and when they finally say it, it's days, weeks, months after it actually happened. The initial response is padded with a lot of careful language, especially if they know I'm autistic, which just makes me feel worse because I'm aware it's a form of emotional management, and then it happens a few times, each times becoming less and less patient, but with that same overlying pattern, until the damn bursts and the relationship is irreparably damaged.

On one hand, most of the people involved I like as people, and I genuinely do feel bad that I hurt them, and understand why that was... but on the other hand.... the fact that it boils under the surface... especially when i can sense something off initially but can never confirm what it was because the information i have by my senses alone isn't enough confirmation (and the few times I do bring it up people are unwilling to discuss it), and the fact that the pattern repeats itself to such an extent where I genuinely feel out of control even when I try and stop it actively makes me quake in fear. From my childhood the moments when this happened turned into core memories, or buried traumatic moments that resurface at the most inopportune times. If it gets bad enough it can turn into panic and suicidal ideation, and the only response that at least saves my emotional state is to put up a wall of indifference and say "So long as I haven't done anything immoral, it's your issue, not mine".... but I can't do that, I know that's unhealthy and destructive, and I just want the cycle to end.

In addition when I often ask for advice on the manner I get three types of responses. The first one is the aggressive response which typically tells me that I'm framing this too much as a them problem when the only thing I should focus on is myself, the problem there being that they often straight up ignore the fact that I had to actively fight against an extreme version of that in order to even ensure that I wouldn't emotionally burn out (also that... that advice  has never been useful because rarely anyone has been able to give detailed and effective examples or advice, I literally have never been able to improve without that). The second one is the coddler who does the exact opposite, I don't think i need to outline what's wrong with that. The third response is a passive response, which is the most unhelpful because it's characterized by a complete lack of understanding the overarching issue, or lack of recognition that it's a thing, or just insufficient mental investment into the problem, so people looking at events as isolated incidents and seeing this as me just lacking common sense.

I honestly don't know how to approach changing my own behavior in such a way where sacrificing my own emotional health is kept to a minimum, and people in my own life are so unprepared to at least give basic advice on this that I feel like I can do absolutely nothing, and that when advice is given it's often so out of touch with the actual problem I face that it's basically useless. I feel an absolute aversion to changing myself because of my intentions and what being forced to appeal to others in the past has resulted in mental health wise. If i ask for anything here it's for at least a point in the right direction on how to view changing myself for the better.