ASD and empathy

[Primrose]

Does anyone else with ASD feel they have high empathy? I feel like I do.

The only issue is I don't express my thoughts or feelings well and I could come across to others as cold. So I think people around me don't know I have so much empathy.

 

[SimonSays]

I've had this a lot in my life. People assuming I don't feel or care, just because they don't always see the signs they are looking for. Because I don't always express my feelings their way, I must be cold or indifferent. Not indifferent, just different. Observing rather than identifying. I know what you mean.

 

[Alexej]

@Primrose ,
Have you looked into the areas of alexithymia and "Theory of Mind". Both of these might give you some more info related to this post.

Alexithymia has to do with being able to recognise and name emotions.
Theory of mind has to do with understanding how things are perceived by others.

(these are poor descriptions - but hopefully enough to give you a clue)

BTW the search function here is not bad in the Forum, and might give you some useful posts.

 

[Primrose]

I've had this a lot in my life. People assuming I don't feel or care, just because they don't always see the signs they are looking for. Because I don't always express my feelings their way, I must be cold or indifferent. Not indifferent, just different. Observing rather than identifying. I know what you mean.

Yes, this is exactly it.

 

[Primrose]

@Primrose ,
Have you looked into the areas of alexithymia and "Theory of Mind". Both of these might give you some more info related to this post.

Alexithymia has to do with being able to recognise and name emotions.
Theory of mind has to do with understanding how things are perceived by others.

(these are poor descriptions - but hopefully enough to give you a clue)

BTW the search function here is not bad in the Forum, and might give you some useful posts.

Thank you. I will check it out these areas. I hadn't heard about alexithymia before.
Will search the forum too.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Does anyone else with ASD feel they have high empathy? I feel like I do.

The only issue is I don't express my thoughts or feelings well and I could come across to others as cold. So I think people around me don't know I have so much empathy.

There are 2 basic types of empathy,...cognitive and emotional. I would suggest, from the literature and from this forum, many folks with an ASD would actually score pretty high on the emotional empathy scale. I can be a blubbering idiot when it comes to reacting to someone else's emotional pain,...real or even watching a movie,...even some music. This comes from a different area of the brain than cognitive empathy.

Cognitive empathy, as others posted, above comes via the "theory of mind" aspect. Different part of the brain, frontal lobe and limbic system. This allows one to take the perspective of the other person. If you come off as non-reactive to microexpressions and body language, if you come off as having some difficulty understanding "what the big deal is" during a conversation, if you come off as somewhat cold, insensitive, or stoic,...you may be low in cognitive empathy.

Having said that, I have heard of a few, rare autistics that one would call "empaths",...extraordinarily sensitive,...almost to the point of appearing to have "psychic" abilities.

 

[Primrose]

There are 2 basic types of empathy,...cognitive and emotional. I would suggest, from the literature and from this forum, many folks with an ASD would actually score pretty high on the emotional empathy scale. I can be a blubbering idiot when it comes to reacting to someone else's emotional pain,...real or even watching a movie,...even some music. This comes from a different area of the brain than cognitive empathy.

Cognitive empathy, as others posted, above comes via the "theory of mind" aspect. Different part of the brain, frontal lobe and limbic system. This allows one to take the perspective of the other person. If you come off as non-reactive to microexpressions and body language, if you come off as having some difficulty understanding "what the big deal is" during a conversation, if you come off as somewhat cold, insensitive, or stoic,...you may be low in cognitive empathy.

Having said that, I have heard of a few, rare autistics that one would call "empaths",...extraordinarily sensitive,...almost to the point of appearing to have "psychic" abilities.

Thank you. I will read more about this.

 

[SimonSays]

I'd never heard of Alexithymia either. They seem to have a label for everything these days. It's not even a word I find easy to pronounce. What I often experience which may very well be defined as Alexithymia. But it's just what I experience.

I've never mentioned it to any of the medical people; another symptom, and as I am currently en-route to a diagnosis, it's just a question of when I get the opportunity, now having been referred to be properly assessed. It doesn't change the fact that I experience what I experience. I don't need a label or a piece of paper or somebody's understanding to accept this is what I experience. And I'm not expecting any benefit from actually being correctly diagnosed. So in many ways there is no real purpose other than recognition. Do I need Alexithymia included? Well if I remember to mention it when that actual assessment comes.

It does feel nice to know somebody else experiences similar things, perhaps even in the same way, which in many ways is a strange thing for me to actually discover. Because it has always seemed to me to be an assumption, even if somebody is standing next to you when watching what is happening and says they understand exactly; they agree with everything, on some level that may not actually be true; that we just make the assumption that it is and there's never anything to indicate otherwise. But that doesn't mean it actually was true.

Just like if two people read a poem; both might say it was beautiful and expressed this or that, it's likely that they didn't experience the same feeling at all.

But having spent time on this forum, I now realise that there are people who experience similar if not the same as me, that it actually starts to make me think that a diagnosis could still make a difference even if in day-to-day living it doesn't.

 

[zozie]

Confession: I briefly worked as a "medium" for people because my emotional empathy is so sensitive. But it's not cognitive at all. I don't know why people feel the way they do. I don't even know where their emotions end and mine begin half the time (and particularly when "reading" people's "energy"). I just have a knack for describing an emotional situation as an image. People would say, "Yes, that's exactly how I feel!"

I quit that line of work for several reasons, a few being that (1) I never felt "magical" and my clients wanted me to—thereby disempowering themselves and inappropriately hyper-powering me, (2) I don't find the field to be ethical (I don't know any mediums who are trained as therapists, but they ought to be, since people are coming to them with real issues that need real treatment). And (3), I was so overloaded with "other people's vibes" that I could barely function. It became difficult to not space out all the time. I'd forget to eat, lose track of time, and so on.

For a while I thought I must be psychic. Interestingly, when I went into treatment for trauma, my sensitivity lessened. I don't know what sensitivities will come up when I do become a practicing therapist, but at least I'll have training in ethical and effective practices.

 

[SimonSays]

I don't find the field to be ethical (I don't know any mediums who are trained as therapists, but they ought to be, since people are coming to them with real issues that need real treatment).

An excellent point.
I know of one who is...she was a medium first, then trained as a therapist. But I suspect you are right that the majority are not.

I was so overloaded with "other people's vibes" that I could barely function. It became difficult to not space out all the time. I'd forget to eat, lose track of time, and so on.

Wow...powerful stuff.

nterestingly, when I went into treatment for trauma, my sensitivity lessened.

That is interesting.

I never felt "magical" and my clients wanted me to—thereby disempowering themselves and inappropriately hyper-powering me

I was invited by that medium/therapist I mentioned to join her healer training group. She said I had natural abilities. But like you I never felt magical and somehow this seemed to be necessary to fit into what those who came for healing wanted. It wasn't therapeutic enough to be formal, yet I wasn't new agey enough to give off the appropriate vibe. I didn't remain in the group for very long.

 

[zozie]

I was invited by that medium/therapist I mentioned to join her healer training group. She said I had natural abilities. But like you I never felt magical and somehow this seemed to be necessary to fit into what those who came for healing wanted. It wasn't therapeutic enough to be formal, yet I wasn't new agey enough to give off the appropriate vibe. I didn't remain in the group for very long.

I am immediately wary when someone in the helping field says I have "natural abilities". First, isn't a portion of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs Self-Determination? I get to decide if I'm a natural or not, and what I decide to do next if I am. Likewise for anyone else. But this is counter to new-age culture. The "point" of a healer is to dispense wisdom to a recipient and unquestioning audience, not facilitate the process of one finding one's own wisdom.

I ended up having a lot of arguments with other "healers" about this point of self-determination. But I also ended up seeing a lot of clients who were healers themselves who were overwhelmed by their own work.

The best part of that demographic was that I got to help someone identify and create their own boundaries. The worst part of that was when a shopkeeper told me she suspected I was a "psychic vampire" because I disagreed with her mandate to get people into my reading room, no matter what.

 

[zozie]

But you know, I can see the pull to the new-age community in the first place. If you can't explain your experience to a conventional therapist, you'll go wherever you can to find a listener who won't judge you as crazy. It's just ... the field is in need of balance, IMO.

 

[Aspychata]

l was curious about what strengths l have. So l tried a tab of remote viewing. It is possible to do. We truly aren't limited by electrical devices. This is a tab different then reading. l remember going and reading a story about a fallen police officer. l was sad. A number came to my mind. l couldn't find the number in the story. l went to another online source, and this was the freeway number he drove off of. So l think remote viewing is legit. lol. But l don't talk about reading or do it because some people become very frighten when you tell them things about themselves that you shouldn't know.

 

[SimonSays]

The "point" of a healer is to dispense wisdom to a recipient and unquestioning audience, not facilitate the process of one finding one's own wisdom.

I would say that the healer empowers the recipient to heal themselves. To offer them an opportunity to realise or recognise something that puts them into a state where they literally shift into a version of themselves that reflects the way they wish to be.

 

[zozie]

l was curious about what strengths l have. So l tried a tab of remote viewing. It is possible to do. We truly aren't limited by electrical devices. This is a tab different then reading. l remember going and reading a story about a fallen police officer. l was sad. A number came to my mind. l couldn't find the number in the story. l went to another online source, and this was the freeway number he drove off of. So l think remote viewing is legit.

I'm convinced that a lot of it is legit. In my dabbling as a pro psychic, I encountered a lot of uncanny situations, where I didn't expect to be "right" about something but I was. I guess my own training in philosophy took a critical eye too often to those happenings. But I also remembering seeing a ghost in my mom's house. When I told her about it, she said the contractor who had come to restore the original structure (the house is on the historical registry) remarked that he often encounters spirits in his line of work. And he just restores houses, nothing "magical" there.

The question that always came back to me when I saw clients was, "What if you got the question of 'is it real?' out of the way? What do you do next?" I found that line of inquiry much more interesting. Part of why the new-age community is messed up is because it's trying so hard to legitimize itself, kind of like psychology. As such, both are stuck on the "it's real" or "it's science" merry-go-round.

But if you set the matter of legitimacy (or science) aside, you get into all sorts of experiences that can't be easily explained. I do think that a disproportionate number of autistic people have sensitivities to something that is, at the very least, highly unusual, whether it be empathy or anything else.

 

[zozie]

I would say that the healer empowers the recipient to heal themselves. To offer them an opportunity to realise or recognise something that puts them into a state where they literally shift into a version of themselves that reflects the way they wish to be.

I guess what I mean was that I kept coming across the culture of healing as dispensing answers. I agree with you; ideally, a healer will empower a recipient to heal themselves. what I found in reality, however, was that it was about supplying the "right" answers.

 

[Aspychata]

l met a "healer" in Hawaii. She put her hand on my chest and l did feel energy come forth. It was an enlighting experience. She told me she saw a little girl near me. l told her l knew l was just preggies and l knew it was a girl. But by the 8 month l did try to remote view my daughter's facial features. This maybe kinda of cheating but l was anxious at that point. Her face or (spirit came to me in a dream).She had the most beautiful eyes. This came true.

 

[Tom]

Yes, absolutely. I figured it out early, when I had an incident in first grade that showed me I was a little unusual in that way. But I think that being generally uncomfortable/anxious around people, in social situations, etc that much is supressed or redirected into easier to handle directions, such as with animals.

 

[Tom]

I wanted to add, it still is within me, and comes out at times. For instance, over the years whenever there was an accident, or injury, no matter how bad, I was always strongly driven to respond and render aid. Sometimes I was the only one, in a group of people, presumably NTs, to do so.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

I'm quite emotional, but I don't express it well, even non verbally. ESPECIALLY non verbally.