A trait of Autism the so called professionals have missed

Post Reply New Topic

The official DSM say people with Autism lack empathy.

Once again, Empathy is not an emotional ability, it's a social skill.

Empathy is the ability to read nonverbal signals and respond to them appropriately. This is what autistic people lack. To know what others are feeling by the way they are behaving and to know what the proper response is and take that action automatically. Quite honestly, autistic people can be in the same room with a person who is very depressed and needing a hug, without ever noticing until they tell us. Frankly, we tend to be so wrapped up in our own thoughts, we easily miss details like that, just as we miss facial expressions through lack of eye contact. We're not intentionally cruel, just unobservant when it comes to people.

The ability to resonate with someone else's feelings (once you know what those feelings are) is Sympathy. Autistic people are certainly capable of feeling pity or compassion for others who are hurting, once we know that they are hurting. But you can feel deeply for someone's suffering and still be at a complete loss as to what to do to help.

This is a common misunderstanding, only made worse by that stupid "Empath" character on Star Trek NG, which totally blurred the line between the two.

Empathy = Social Skill

Sympathy = Emotional Reaction

Not the same thing.

But unfortunately a lot of people use a more vernacular definition of empathy while referring to autism. This includes medical professionals. . .

Once again, Empathy is not an emotional ability, it's a social skill.

Empathy is the ability to read nonverbal signals and respond to them appropriately. This is what autistic people lack.

Once again, Empathy is not an emotional ability, it's a social skill.

Empathy is the ability to read nonverbal signals and respond to them appropriately. This is what autistic people lack.

The official DSM say people with Autism lack empathy.


I have poured my heart out on this board and I have got nothing back except warmness kindness and good advice that has really helped me in practical ways.

The trait of Autism missed is I think people on the spectrum are really kind helpful people who will go out of their way to be helpful.

I'm confused about the empathy issue. I think that I care about people, but do I really? How do I prove it?

According to alexithymia tests, I can't even tell what I'm feeling, much less anyone else. If I don't understand emotions at all, and can't identify them, how can I feel empathy?

So I'm just not sure if I'm able to feel empathy or not. I wish people well, and want them to be happy, and if they're having a problem, I want to help them. But maybe that's just logical and philosophical, and not emotional. I definitely don't feel what they're feeling.

When I went to get my Asperger’s assessment done the psychologist asked me if I had sympathy for others (meaning did I feel sorry for others). I said No, but I did feel guilt and shame. So, while I lacked sympathy the psychologist acknowledged that I had a lot of compassion and empathy.

I can choose to express sympathy once someone has expressed what exactly has been bothering them, but I sometimes feel a bit resistant simply because the majority of people have not had any sympathy for me. It has always felt like I have had to go out of my way to understand others, but they have never bothered to reciprocate those efforts. However, I now see that they might just have been oblivious to differences (difference in thinking). How are you supposed to give someone something you lack the capacity (knowledge) to give? So, there is a neurological misunderstanding which occurs. Things are overlooked. NTs assumed I thought like them. I do not look any different to them, so why would there be a difference? Why would there be a need to question what you assume is natural and should apply to everyone? NTs assume I have similar needs and ways of expressing those needs. This is a pitfall shared by those on the spectrum. Responses are automatic. We automatically assume everyone else thinks like us, so what we naturally think would comfort us is automatically (unconsciously) applied to NTs. It is not because we lack empathy. We come to believe what we are doing is ‘wrong’ because of the reactions we are given from NTs. We are pushed to learn ‘correct’ responses. And to pause and think about the 'correct' social responses.

There have been times when I have been distraught and it has gone unacknowledged by NTs (our distress signals are different?). I, on the other hand, have been able to pick up through affective and somatic empathy when others have been distressed. At times I have been overwhelmed by this distress. In more recent years my study experience has allowed me to pick up the 'cues' through observation. I might not always know what to say in every situation, but I recognise others distress and may demonstrate this awareness through actions. I may do ‘something’ to try to make the other person feel better instead of using words. Now that I know what NTs need I am able to adapt my responses to satisfy them. Also, there was a point where I didn't know what others (females) wanted from me exactly. I always assumed they wanted me to fix their problems because that is what I would have wanted (I am female). I now know differently. Most NTs are oblivious (ignorant) to our needs, so they don’t reciprocate the effort. We have to emulate NTs to survive and this can be an exhausting process. We have our own unique way of thinking and have to learn the NT way of thinking. I know I will never truly know how a NT person thinks and they will never fully know what it is like to be on spectrum. So, how can they say with certainty what it is we experience or don’t experience? And vice-versa. What I think that NTs are trying to say with all this ‘empathy’ stuff is that we need to learn to be more responsive to their emotional ego. IMO, if they want to hold this expectation they should learn to return the favour (but is that realistically ever going to happen anytime soon? No).

There is no universally accepted definition for empathy or sympathy. Different disciplines have different definitions. And people have a tendency to confuse the two. There are actually quite a few different types of empathy e.g. cognitive (imaginational empathy or perspective taking), affective, emotional (vicarious sharing of emotion) and somatic. Cognitive empathy skills are taught in a lot of counselling courses because a lot of people lack cognitive empathy skills. My supervisor, on cognitive empathy, said that a lot of NTs do not get it right either. Heck, I can share an experience I had on my last day of placement. A manager wrongly assumed that I ‘must’ have felt embarrassed because she understood that I did not like being the centre of attention, and she had just put me on the spot in front of a group of people. I did not feel embarrassed by that experience. In truth, I had missed the social cue and was oblivious to what was wanted of me in that particular situation. I felt quite neutral. So, what did I do? I corrected her and let her know her (not in these words exactly) that her cognitive empathy was off. I honoured how I was feeling instead of allowing someone else to incorrectly assume how I should be feeling in that situation. It has been my experience that NTs will either assertively correct you if you get things wrong or will react in a passive/aggressive manner in response to the 'slight'.

This might not be the experience of all on the spectrum, but I find that I have always had hypersensitivity. This is particularly true of my response to negative emotions. In fact, the AS female profile states that females are often over-empathic rather than lacking in empathy. I know at certain points in my life when things became too much (I couldn’t cope with the sensory input) I became very self-focused and had apathy towards others. People were painful (or caused pain), so all my 'care' went to animals and nature. Once I worked through my issues (stressors) things became easier to manage and my 'empathy' returned. I was no longer in survival mode. I was able to spend time to intellectually develop the skills and knowledge that I ‘naturally’ lacked. I am now able to maintain very steady (not natural because I sometimes over-stare) eye contact, I am able to observe peoples non-verbal behaviours because I am not self-focused and hiding in my own world, and I am able to pick up on all sorts of things NTs miss. I am present to the world around me. Self-focus is nothing to shame (toxic-shame) yourself about, as many NTs do this too - particularly those who have gone through trauma (complex and PTSD kind). I know a lot of my shame issues stemmed from me taking what others said at face-value. I trusted what others said as truth. For some reason I thought they knew better (dependency issues, not developing trust in self, probably contributed to this) and this created a lot of self-doubt. Being constantly criticised by others distorted my thinking too. And I lost sight of my innate values for a time because I was pushed to operate according to a different set of 'rules'. So, shame developed from those experiences and I believed myself to be 'defective' (wrong), as opposed to just being neurologically different. To break out of all that distorted thinking I challenged all the rules I had adopted throughout life.

Addit: Articles on shame:
http://robertmasters.com/writings/shame ... -exposure/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/int ... us-emotion
http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.ed ... rom-shame/
http://www.psychsight.com/ar-shame.html

I actually read an article where it says that people on the spectrum can shut down and show absolutely no emotion because we have may overempathize too much. I think it varies on the individual.

Thank you so much for this post, I can relate to everything you wrote, so much so that it is kind of overwhelming.