I have a question to ask autistic people
auntblabby
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Thank you, that makes sense to me. Compassion, sympathy and empathy are difficult concepts for me. I often fall into the trap of projecting my feeling on others and then confuse it with their true intentions.
Yes, exactly this - and not an inability to empathise/sympathise - and I guess that´s why it is called "autism" = being in ones own world. The difficulty of taking another persons view includes this confusion.
It is hard to imagine, that others may think, feel and percieve completely different from you - and that is , what is also called lack of "empathy", which is often confused with "compassion".
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goatfish57
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It is hard to imagine, that others may think, feel and percieve completely different from you - and that is , what is also called lack of "empathy", which is often confused with "compassion".
Thank you for the description, it is very helpful. And like kavya, I need to learn how to do it.
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Rdos: ND 133/200, NT 75/200
Not Diagnosed and Not Sure
It seems to me that autism is NOT defined by lack of empathy, far from it. I would almost like to re-name 'autism', since it implies illness, and it seems to me it only becomes a withdrawal from the world (specially from other people) when people born with these exceptional qualities are faced with aggravating environmental and social factors.
So my question is this, I only have experience of my son, though I've read a lot and seen a lot of youtube vids from autistic people...
Is it true what I believe, that rather than not having empathy, autistic people are instead born with EXCEPTIONAL EMPATHETIC AND SENSORY SKILLS? (empathy which extends not just to people, if not inhibited, but also to animals, objects, the world around..)
Thank you for all and any replies!!
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I am pieplup i have level 3 autism and a number of severe mental illnesses. I am rarely active on here anymore.
I run a discord for moderate-severely autistic people if anyone would like to join. You can also contact me on discord @Pieplup
CockneyRebel
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My own experience is mostly like BirdInFlight, but I also have trouble feeling emotionally connected to people, which makes things worse. I don't love people, but sometimes do like them. I used to be able to have strong feelings for animals, and still like them, but now I don't have strong feelings for them, either. However, I do empathize, and sympathize with people and animals. Much of the feeling is in the abstract mode, though.
I find strong emotional output from others, even positive ones, hard to take, so I tend to keep my inner self isolated from them. I find being an introverted hermit is best for me, but that may not be the same for others on the spectrum.
Like Kiriae, I sometimes talk to the inanimate objects in my home, and no I don't imagine that they are alive and talking back. I live alone, so this is a way to have a kind of pseudo, or surrogate, social contact that is within my abilities to handle, as the inanimate objects don't overload me with their own emotions, since they don't have any. I actually do have a couple of favorites, too. Almost from the moment I got them, I have been fond of, and sometimes talk to my two canes, as they help me get around, and help reduce the pain of my two bad knees. I even gave them names. They are still objects, but there is no harm in amusing myself by talking to them. Sometimes I will say "Excuse me" or other polite phrases when encountering objects in my home, too. Hey, when you live alone, and are mostly house bound, and don't have a pet, ya gotta talk to someone! This occasionally causes problems when relatives drop by unexpectedly, or arrive while I am in another part of my home. They will hear me talking to someone other than them, and wonder what's going on, as there is no one else there but them and me. You would think after several decades of life, they would remember that I am in the habit of talking to myself, as I also have a tendency to think aloud.
As for relatives dropping by and coming in on me, yes, some of them have keys to my place. I have several health issues, so they need to be able to get in should there ever be an emergency. Also, my father and step mother own my trailer home, so they can come in to check on things. While I would prefer less contact with my relatives, at least I do live alone, so it's better than any other place I've lived in.
I know I do have empathy, as I tend to feel strong emotions from other people and animals, but it tends to stress me out, so I put up a wall inside myself to distance myself from the stressful situation. One example is that some years ago a relative had a very bad break-up when she found out her boyfriend was married. She came approx 150 miles to the home my mother and I were living in at the time, and stayed for a couple of days freaking out and weeping. In the abstract, I understood why she felt that way, and it was uncomfortable to be around her strong emotional output, but I still didn't feel connected to her. I just tried to keep some physical distance while she was there, partly to keep from feeling her upsetness so much, and partly to keep from saying or doing anything that might make her more upset. Many years before that I attended a family funeral for a war vet cousin who had committed suicide. I could feel the strong upset feelings from his parents, and from an aunt and uncle that he had lived with for a while when he was younger. The strong upset feelings coming from these people were very hard for me to take, but I had to be there, as I was my mother's driver for the occasion. The irony of the situation is that I don't even remember the cousin who died. There was a big age difference, and we lived in different states. I think I may have met him once when I was a small child, but I don't remember doing so, and yet there I was years later having to feel everyone else's grief over his death. Yes, I am sorry he died, but when other people in close proximity are having strong emotions, they broadcast them "loudly" in a kind of psychic radio wavelength, which tends to overwhelm me. Based on my own research, I know that many others on the spectrum have this problem, too. I can't turn this "radio" down, so I have to distance myself from it. Sometimes I can physically go away, but that's not always possible. When I must stay nearby, then I try to put up a psychic screen to wall off, and muffle some of the "loud" feelings of the people nearby. I realize that this makes me seem emotionally distant, but I have to shield myself from this excessive "noise."
I do feel bad when bad things happen to others elsewhere, like the flooding going on in other parts of the country right now, or the news stories about people getting attacked, sometimes by muggers, sometimes by terrorists, or family members. Basically any kind of story of people getting hurt, sick, or killed leads me to feel this way. I also feel glad or happy when I encounter positive news stories, too.
Personally, I don't believe that people on the Autism spectrum are not empathetic or sympathetic. I think it just boils down to two main things:
> Lack of ability to connect to others.
> Lack of ability to handle the stress of strong emotions in others, so we tend to distance ourselves from the stressful situation by trying to shut out the experience.
This often gives the rest of the world a false impression that we have no empathy. Also, we sometimes have trouble understanding other people's feelings.
Hope this helps.
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.--Henry David Thoreau
I leave it to the reader, to decide whether this is moral, but take no sadistic pleasure in hurting it.
Some people are even empathetic enough to give water to a thirsty cockroach.
I know this can technically be harmful to humans but still feel that even lower life forms have some kind of emotional life.
Thanks very much.
I study insect ecology and conservation, so yeah.

Relatively speaking roaches are fairly benign to humans. They are not parasitic, an aside from our OWN garbage/toilet contact bacteria (which again, comes from them living near us), they don't transmit much that can harm us. I don't know why people hate them so much.They are important decomposers, and most species would rather be in a tree or under a log in the forest than under your kitchen sink. We would be much more sensible to be afraid of mosquitos, yet they don't evoke the same response I've noticed. On this issue, I suggest we all, NT and AS alike, use less emotion and little more logic.
From my perspective, it fills much the same ecological niche as crickets and beetles, neither of which are so notorious.
Also, when said, lower lifeforms, of any taxa, are watched for long enough, they are expressive and made more precisely than any machine of man.
Specie-ism just putting your own kind first, but can you make something like that.
auntblabby
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> Lack of ability to connect to others.
> Lack of ability to handle the stress of strong emotions in others, so we tend to distance ourselves from the stressful situation by trying to shut out the experience.
This often gives the rest of the world a false impression that we have no empathy. Also, we sometimes have trouble understanding other people's feelings. Hope this helps.
that was succinctly excellent

Yes. For me a. I care a huge amount about people, more than a lot of other people do. Often, I have been called selfish. I was never really selfish though. It's not an emotional problem. I just have a hard time being aware of others and their feeling, or understanding where they're coming from if I haven't experienced what they're experiencing, or i just don;t know how to connect with others. Also, sometimes I can get caught on one idea of topic, and grab hold of it and spin on it, no able to see anything else but that. None of this is not having empathy, but it comes off that way to people. b. Sensory problems are HUGE. For me, the world around me is often extremely confusing, overwhelming, and painful. It's like my brain takes in too much around me and then can't handle it all at once sometimes. This means I'm often very uncomfortable. I've found my own ways of dealing with it that work well for me, and everyone has their things. Anyways, I hope this helps. I hope it helps. If you need any help with resources or questions, you can ask me.
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