AS/AS Empathy

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I am an AS proud father of two wonderful daughters. 1 NT 1 AS. Found out I was AS as a result of my daughter.

I dearly love both my daughters. While my NT daughter is a total mystery to me I am sometimes, not always, able to sense, dare I say, "empathetically", how my AS daughter is feeling, just by being with her, especially when she is feeling down or overwhelmed. I suppose that as she shares some of my defective wiing, our thought processes are similar. I was wondering if other AS parents of AS children had a similar experience?

I wonder if NT people experience this with everybody? It is not something I can describe in words and it may just be my imagination of course. I have no empathic responce to anybody else, including my long suffering wife.

well, i'm not sure about this in parent-child; but i can say that i notice this effect with my AS/HFA friends, so i'd assume the parent-child version is at least as strong.

as for NT's, what i notice about my roommates is that the women seem capable of this feat with everyone here (man, woman, NT, AS), but the NT men that live with me dont appear to be able to sense emotions whatsoever, or they do a pretty good job hiding it

I more easily relate to my two aspies, the youngest is pretty NT but too young to tell. My NT dd, however, will cover her feelings to make another feel better, or whatever reason, tell me she is fine and I beleive her, only to have her meltdown later after holding it all in too long. Times like these I sometimes feel "I should have known" but at the same time teaching her to say what she means and ask for what she needs will help her a lot in future adulthood and God knew what he was doing when he gave her to me.

After all, though I didn't know what AS was for many years, God knew how he wired me, my childen. I beleive in God as creator, this helps me considerably in not seeing myself as defective, by extension, none of my children as defective for their brain wiring either. My AS has given me many gifts, my children as well. Just b/c some things are harder for us than others doesn't mean it isn't made up for in other areas. Much like a blind person has keen hearing.

That said, it is a challenge. I can tell, sometimes just by looking at my two aspies, what is going on with them, or at the least that "something" is going on with them that needs drawn out. I feel I have "mother's instinct" on my side as well as I have always been a very natural, nurturing mommy. My NT dd takes more work b/c she will give me her prize-winning grin and try to pour sunshine all over everything rather than say she is angry, jealous, hurt, especially if she doesn't want to feel this way or thinks it is irrational. I have taught her that feelings don't go away just b/c they aren't expressed, they are like seeds that grow in dark, lonely places of the mind and soul and must be gotten out into the light not to turn into BIG ol weeds that will choke the life out of all the "good plants" in our garden of life.

My ex husband was so like our dd, and tried to put on a brave face for me and act as if everything was okay until he couldn't take it anymore then I would be blasted with held in feelings in a moment of conflict, that, for me, felt like they were coming out of nowhere but for him, had been building a long time. I still hold firm to my belief it is the responsibilty of every individual to be honest and truthful in intimate and family relationships to get needs heard, met. Apparently this doen't come as easily or naturally to NT.

No way is my AS son going to be able to fake through something he doesn't like or isn't comfortable with, be it a meal he doesn't really like, or a social situation he can't handle. For example, he has texture issues among other things and has been picky eater all his life. When I make a new recipe he will try for my sake but can't gobble down a whole plate of something he genuinely doesn't like with a smile, like my NT dd will do. My AS dd, will not be able to function for more than a nanosecond in an environment she doesn't feel safe in or doesn't understand the premise of what is going on. My NT dd will "go with the flow" until she gets the hang of the new situation or sees it through.

Children in general are a blessing and as I always teach my children, blessings come with responsibilities. Each one of my blessings require different responsibilities on my part to help them grow into what they were created to be. It is my job to learn to speak their language, be it AS/ NT, hormonal issues I can't grasp of a boy growing into a young man, just like "toddler speak" that most ppl can't understand but the parents... it is my job. SO, when my brain wiring gets in the way of this, I just might have to work a little harder in those areas than an NT momma. I am okay with this, and embrace the neurodiversity in our home. I embrace the way I was created and seek God's help to teach me to work within it to the best of my ability. The goal is to help each one of my precious children do the same.

Sorry long winded, I guess point being I do have easier time empathizing with my AS kids, and the NTs I have to work a little harder at it. Also, bassman, I never thought in the other thread you were saying "I" was defective, I was just hoping to encourage you that you, nor your daughter are either. I hope you can come to this conclusion about being aspie. It isn't a curse or defective wiring, we just need a different set of instructions than our NT models! It is up to us to find out what those are... true not easy, but so worth it.

Just when I thought I was done with my long response I was reviewing what I'd said, what you'd said, when this thought struck me. Perhaps it isn't that us aspies have such a crippled empathetic response, it is just that we, like everyone else, can more easily do so with those we relate to and have been there ourselves. With NT, we haven't really been in their shoes so it takes more work. On the flipside, most NT have no empathetic understanding for what I am going through either. That is a part of my having become so naturally long-winded in life, through my striving to be understood. Empathy takes putting ourselves in someone elses place, and if being in that place would bring different response from us, it is no wonder we don't "get it" now and again, or even most of the time. I, too, realized I was AS through my children being found AS. Yet I've had time to research good books and encouragement through them that this is acceptable. If I find my AS unacceptable, how can I expect my children to find themselves an equal, aceeptable person to their NT sibs, peers? You have empathetic response in there, you just have to stretch and feed that where your NT family members are concerned. It can be done!

My kids aren't old enough to know their personalities yet, but I frequently feel empathy for other aspie adults, and they for me - a kind of silent understanding that the neurotypicals don't seem to share. In my experence, neurotypicals are not good at empathizing with aspies - only with other neurotypicals. They can figure us out intellectually, just as we can figure them out intellectually, but it takes effort.

I think that is definitely an important piece of it. You can't empathise with what you don't udnerstand, and understanding is easier when you can relate.

Bassman, with a child, you've been watching since birth. You have enjoyed an opportunity to know her in a way you haven't been given before. Granted, this will change as she gets older and starts to hide more of herself in the effort to grow up but, for now, it is a window that is hard to find in any other relationship. Being a parent doesn't guarantee the connection, of course; plenty of parents have kids they simply can't relate to. The shared experience and observation is only part of it; many other elements exist, too. But it is definitely a piece.

I think the spectrum among NT's on this is wide. I've had a few friends of the "no strangers, only friends I haven't met yet" variety, but they are actually rare. Most NTs have the people they can connect to, and the ones they can't. Since the pool of those they can connect to is pretty decently sized, they gravitate towards those people and skip the rest. Life is easier, after all, being around people you understand.

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Last edited by Chamber on 20 Apr 2011, 5:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

What an interesting thread.

I have 2 sons, J aged 12 and dx'd AS, ADHD,GAD,OCD and tourettes, and C my oldest son at 21 years in the assessment process now.

C does seam to struggle with empathy, however I have noticed that when it comes to other people with additional needs (especially those on the spectrum or with spectrum traits) C is fantastic he seams to get them. C also appears to avoid most social interaction, but he is much better again with the above mentioned.

Even last night, C came home from his psychologist appointment, and one of the questions the psych asked him was "Who do you think you can relate to the most?" C's response was his younger brother.

Wow! The responses to this thread have really got me thinking. Thank you. (Oh! That could be dangerous. It could be another obsession coming on. I’ll just have to leave things be or I will have no chance of saving my marriage.)

I wonder if OhNowI GetIt has hit the nail on the head?

In an on-line test, I scored 19 out of a possible 80 on Empathic Quotient (EQ). this is about several steps below Vlad the impaler. The EQ questions are 100% targeted towards empathic response to the NT world. From all of the Aspie texts that I have read in recent months. I had come to understand that Aspies had poor empathic abilities. What if the experts are wrong? There is definitely a connection between myself and my AS daughter that I do not have with my NT daughter or my NT wife.



I didn’t seem so busy when my eldest daughter was little, I seem to have had more time to relate to her but an empathic connection just never developed in the same way as it has with my AS daughter. This doesn’t mean that I love my NT daughter any more or less than my AS daughter. They are both wonderful people. There is more to this than watching someone grow and develop.

I have asked a few subtle questions of my AS daughter and I suspect that she also feels this connection. It’s a little difficult to tell because she is too young to be able to analyse her own emotions and share them with her dad in a grown up objective way. When she is old enough she will not want to. I do know that she lets me feel her presence, when I am feeling overwhelmed, by taking my hand just at the right time.

If empathy is a way of recognising signs in other people of how we react ourselves to familiar situations, NTs would find this less difficult, as there are more people that would react in a similar way to them. Perhaps it is possible to learn empathy from a book. But then, in my case, I would still be unlikely to get it, because I am totally blind to non-verbal communication.

I don’t knowingly know any other AS adults. It would be interesting to meet a few to see if we share this opinion or if I relate to them differently than I do to NTs. (Are there any Aspies in Hong Kong that fancy going out for a pint or a bite to eat? Silly me!) I wonder if the academics have researched this. I have done the usual google search but not come up with anything.

The academics dwell on the concept of mind blindness in aspergers and link this to a lack of empathy. Is the research wrong here as well? I know that we are all different. In my case, I have no difficulty reading between the lines, if I understand a situation. The textbook Mary, teddy bear and box example, which is often quoted in aspergers related texts, is not a problem for me. I am perfectly capable of understanding somebody’s viewpoint given their situation. I am not good at reading the signs that would give me the clues to what their situation really is. I have to rely on what I am told or what I can read. I wonder if I would have failed the test when I was a child? I don’t think I would have done any worse than my peers.

Bassman, I think you are on the right track. My first finding of another "aspie" was on a momsboard in which one outspoken, off-beat mom would always be asserting, without concern for being polie, my true thoughts on issues. I would think, "wow! I thought I was the only one!" I bugged the hell out of her until she finally quit returning my emails. Before I scared her off though, she gave me a great book list and like you, I learn so much better when things are spelled out. I read all about me in those pages, and my aspie kids too. I was amazed and relieved. I was on my way to the journey I am now still on, to understanding. I think it is a great idea for you to try and meet other aspies in your part of the globe. You may find you have more "empathy" than you know when another actually thinks similarly to you.

Since I have been caring for children since I was pretty much a child myself, I have often been able to see what is needed for a child in the way of empathetic response. By the time they hit a certian age and learned to "cover", I couldn't do a thing with them. In the friendships I have had where someone overlooked my oddities enough to "let me in" and would really explain themselves, then I could have empathy in thinking of my own sitaution where I may have felt that way. It really takes someone else who is willing to "let you in" and not expect guessing games. Example, my ex would sigh, grunt, make other noises, set things down hard... until it would finally dawn on me. "hmmm, is something wrong?" This was met with varied responses, usually none I could do anything with. If someone isn't willing to spell it out, empathy might not be so attainable for us. But for those who really love us and want to get to that place, they may be the one who needs to learn some new skills as well.

If ex wasn't willing to talk openly and would insist "nothing is wrong" then I'd be happy to go back to whatever I was doing. I would, perhaps what some would consider, in my "rigid way" carrying out my plan to have 30 min down time reading a book or browsing websites. I would feel this discomfort at his fuming in my space of down time and really not feel bad for him, rather, be annoyed he was causing stress and strife in my space while I had determined to do a thing. But if coming out and asking didn't work, what was I left with? Guessing. No go. Was I empathetic? I don't know, but when someone has gone through something I understand, like say, a miscarriage I am all kinds of empathetic. I will send a card, offer a listening ear, offer my own heart broken stories of loss. I have it in me, I just need the context to put it in.

I read in your statement in another thread that you perform very well at work. That you expect certian motives from others and operate on that basis. That, to me, is a way of empathizing. You empathize that they may not want to do the work, or would lie, so you know how to respond. If someone was a no-read and their behavior was erratic, that may upset your learned balance of "reading" others in the workplace. The fact that you can do so with work relationships and not so much intimate ones is the difference that you may not know the premise a loved one is operating from unless told.

Maybe you and your wife could start a letter journal to each other? Where, outside an emotional barrage of perhaps pent up feelings, you can read, line by line, over and over if you need to, where she is coming from, what she needs. What she is lacking from you. Then you have a chance to respond, after time for refection and perhaps a break from it and even distraction. You can come back to the journal and respond about what you heard her saying, what you understand her to mean, what you need as well. Love will rise to the occasion. If you were Christopher Reeve and had to spend the rest of your life in the chair, would she still want you to be Superman? What I mean is, not that aspie is a handicap, but if something did go wrong in yout body, would she adapt, would she still love you for the person you are inside? After two children together and likely being together for years, I'm willing to guess this is yes. So, you found out some new information that helps make sense of the real you. Is she willing to adapt? Is she willing to love you the way you are so long as you are lovingly attempting to do the same? I hope so!! ! She may have seen you one way when you first met, or when you were trying so hard you were covering up the real you. But she can grow to love the man you really are, with effort on both your parts. I'm not saying she doesn't have the right to her feelings about your not being superman, she has her right to be angry, dissapointed or whatever about having a spouce and child with this "other" brain wiring. But she has to get used to the way it really is. Again! Not meaning having AS is like/same as being cripple! But it can feel like it sometimes! I just mean her picture of you is forever changed, and there is no going back. I am also saying many things happen in the lives of ppl that require a lot of adjusting and change to continue on in love. Love is a living, breathing thing, it has to change and grow with time. It isn't stagnant or stuck in the past or hung up on unrealistic expectations.

As for your NT dd, it would to her well to learn, especially since she has an AS sib, what is needed from a differently wired person to have the empathy she needs from the other person. My NT "teaches" my AS son all the time! She will say, "how would you feel if someone xyz!" My son will very calmly think about it and deduce she is correct. He will also say he didn't know she felt that way. Likewise, she learns that without this kind of honesty, and just going along with things until she explodes is couter-productive to their friendship or her having a good time. I think it is good for children to learn to articulate clearly their position, verbal skills and not just the "read between the lines" junk. In families we all have to learn what the other needs. So long as everyone is willing, open and honest, where there is a will there is a way. You are not defective, you just have some learning and adapting to do. Now you have the information and tools to get started on that quest. Don't ever give up!

Yeah, me and 8yo daughter are that way. I've just known what was going on with her no matter how odd or frustrating her bahvor seemed to her father (before dx... and still after too ) I don't find it so strange. She and I think and react alike, just like, I suppose, NT's do.

I know why my daughter is cringing and covering her ears because I am too.
I figured out that brushing her hair wasn't just her tenderheadedness but also the sound of brush through her hair - and we worked around it.
I know when she's heading for a meltdown and why and usually know how to head it off at the pass.
I know why she struggles with some homework - for reasons my husbands just cannot comprehend.

The list is long and I have been tuned in and applying redirection since the day she was born without knowing how or why. Now I know. The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

draelynn you sound so much like me w. my 2 AS kids! glad to know we are in good company.

Thanks all for your very welcome advice.

A very special thanks to OhNowIGetIt. I have been, and still am in a very dark place at the moment. Your strong, confident and straightforward advice has given me a bit of a boost. There appear to be so many analogies in my relationship to yours. I will continue to do my best to bring things back from the brink.

When I realised I was aspie. we tried the journal thing. I read about the technique in one of the books. I found this useful at first. I was gaining some understanding of my wife's reasoning. It was so alien to mine. Not wrong just different. Unfortunately my wife got fed up with the journal and stopped contributing. I continued for a while but didn't see any point in writing to myself. I inferred from this that, while I was gaining some underatanding of her reasoning, she was gaining nothing from me. I guess it's because I am so literal anyway that I can't explain things any better in writing. Oh! I'm feeling low again. (Only kidding!)

I guess that I will succees only if I can find a way of getting my wife to want to succeed. It is so frustrating. We've been married for nearly 25 years. She has been suffering for 24 of those years and now that we have enlightenment and know what we are dealing with, she has given up on me. I still see this as my fault for not being normal, but I occasionaly feel cross and agrieved at the whole situation. I don't know why but I still love my wife and would like to find some of the happiness that I thought we had.

Sorry to hear the journaling didn't work out. It didn't work for me, either. I kept it up for a long time, maybe a few yrs, on my own. Sometimes he didn't even read them. I just was very determined to stay married, it took a lot for me to let go. I hope you don't have to do the same.

That said, for your wife, 24(and now 25 you say, wow! impressive!) yrs is a long time to live in the dark, so to speak, loving someone and not knowing why they aren't loving you back the way you need. I can understand her anger and grief of letting go of the dream that maybe someday you would be more of what she needed or wanted. Maybe more time for your wife? Maybe verbally offering each morning, "What is one thing I can do today to make us better/ life easier for you?" You know, baby steps in offering her something without requiring anything in return for awhile? Maybe counsiling?

I'd had enough being "counsiled" though I was willing to try if I saw him going for any length of time and commit to it. That is b/c he started and didn't finish a lot of things that were going to "help" us. I had many counsilors and drs growing up trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me. I felt like a lab rat and since there was no DX for AS until 94 and I left home in 92, with my parents just thinking I was a rebellious, disrespectful kid b/c I didn't fit any diagnosis. Well, my ex went to a counsilor without me a few yrs ago for his own depression, addiction issues ect. When he told the counsilor his wife was AS, the guy said, well then, you are going to have to be the one to change. He tried somewhat, but in the end he'd rather keep his secrets that held his betrayal and lies in place. For you, however, perhaps a good counsilor could help your wife to understand you can't "help' being aspie, and maybe help you to understand her and NT communication in general? Help you both bridge the gap between you, learn some new skills for coping?

I'm sure there are lots of reasons you still want to hold on, it is worth a good, long shot at it. I looked at the information on aspergers as keys to locks in our lives, and we just had to take time working them into the various places without retreat where we were "stuck". I hope for you your new found keys of understanding AS can help you unlock the gridlock in your marriage. I'm so glad I can give even a glimmer of hope to someone else.

aurea, that is so sweet about your boys, and the older saying how he relates to his younger brother. Same with my two aspies. They are 8 yrs apart and different genders, yet they have a definate bond that it seemed my son had been lacking until she came into the world.

Precious.

I went through something like this four years ago when my husband was dxed with bipolar. All of the 'advice' for keeping a marriage together focused around 'changing your expections of the marriage... it will not be what you originally envisioned.' I do not think there could be any clearer nail in the coffin.

With any dx along these lines, partners need to come to a compromise. If the love they feel for each is real and they are both willing to work this challenge from both ends, it can work. But if one partner just surrenders - gives it all up because they realize they will never get their fantasy, it is doomed to fail. You may never be an NT or really understand what it is she is asking for, but you can let her know that you are trying with every fiber of your being to do so. If your wife only has an expectation of you being 'normal' and is unwilling to challenge that belief and compromise her original vision of your marriage, it will not work. She needs to work at understanding your Asperger's every bit as much as you need to work at understanding NT's - two aliens learning each others culture.

With a dx there is a mourning period. Letting go of that original dream is hard. But it doesn't necessarily spell the end. It sounds like she may need her mourning period. I hope she can see the light at the other end of the tunnel. The happiness you had isn't an illusion. She may just be too hurt and scared to remember it. Keep talking. Keep the lines of communication open. I hope she sees the light. The fact that you are here, bearing your sole, looking for alternatives speaks incredibly loudly to your dedication to the relationship. I hope she can see that.

^^^ I think draelynn offers excellent perspective and advice here