ASD and empathy

[Alexej]

I need to figure out if I am autistic.

Well @Sheree you are in a good place to work that question out here.
You could try some of the online tests, but remember they are only indicative. Another question you might want to consider if you sense that the characteristics of autism seem to fit, is whether to go for a formal assessment or not.


There are many threads about "am I (or might my [boy/girl]friend be autistic)" and "should I go for a formal diagnosis?

If you want just to hang around for a while and get to know us that is fine too.

 

[Sarah S]

Well @Sheree you are in a good place to work that question out here.
You could try some of the online tests, but remember they are only indicative. Another question you might want to consider if you sense that the characteristics of autism seem to fit, is whether to go for a formal assessment or not. .

I agree and i have just added this in my own reply as well . thanks for the heads up on this one i missed to add this in my first draft

 

[Rainbowcat]

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.

I relate how you feel. Back in high school a teacher had told my parents that i look snob and some girls had told me i am cold. That hurt my feelings.

As an adult i am highly empathic, but lack congitive empathy. I am also very intuitive and used to see in my dreams future events about my life,the life of my friends,relatives or from my known circle. I also had dreams about events like natural catastrophies,accidents etc. that took place. The most disturbing dreams i had where, when relatives of people from my known circle,were going to die,and i would see that in my dream. The best part in these dreams were when i had find a way to foresee the questions and the answers of the semester exams. Then i would call my 2 best friends and tell them what to revise.
I find too that ASD people are much more intuitive than NTs are.

 

[Suzanne]

Yes and my husband thinks I am very cold, because I am not good at sympathy. However, he is good at that and so, when he has given the sympathic response, he gets on with his life, but for me, it is the opposite.

I can either immediately feel empathetic, in which case, I shed tears as well or as I get to know more of the issue, I can start to feel empathetic and this carries on, until the person is feeling better.

I know that if I was to voice my opinion on someone, that the recipient would consider me cold, because I find it very hard to be sympathetic, as I can be too analytical, which often gets rather a negative response.

 

[Bana_Boona]

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.

Yes--in fact, growing up I was always told I was "too sensitive," and I couldn't even verbally express what I was feeling most of the time. I cried a lot when my sister bullied me, and I cried at other people's misery sometimes too.

 

[Ken]

I don’t feel clear on all the definitions, but I am quite certain that I have very high empathy and compassion; possibly above normal.

It seems innately automatic that I feel the pain, sorrow or joy of other people – including people of other species (I believe that all living things are people. They all sense their environment and a desire to live). I even feel for non-biological things. Witnessing the infliction of pain, sorrow, abuse, etc. on another person (or thing) usually traumatizes me, most often permanently. Feelings of another person’s sad or happy experience often makes me cry.

It appears; however, that my expressions and mannerisms do not correctly reflect my feelings in NT language.

 

[Rainbowcat]

Yes--in fact, growing up I was always told I was "too sensitive," and I couldn't even verbally express what I was feeling most of the time. I cried a lot when my sister bullied me, and I cried at other people's misery sometimes too.

I relate to you. I am being told numerous times i am too sensitive from my mother and others. Now i reply to them that i am sensitive and it doesn't bother me.

 

[GrownupGirl]

I used to think I had empathy, but humans have been such scumbags in just the past year I hardly care if they live or die anymore.

 

[Fade2black]

I am acutely empathetic if I'm a third party when I'm on the outside looking in. When I'm the primary, for example someone is talking about having a bad day, I tend to be agitated with thoughts of how trivial some things constitute as a bad day for people not on the spectrum. If these people could stand in my shoes when I'm pushed to the brink of a meltdown, I'm sure they would rethink their bad hair day.

 

[SDRSpark]

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.

This has been my experience in a LOT of areas of life (to an extent, new age stuff, but also, everything else). I'm "gifted", which means I have a fantastic ability to be above average at just about everything I attempt (except for sports LOL) with very little effort - unfortunately, that comes with a lot of expectations.

Casual observers might see me doing something I've been doing for a few days/weeks/months or have a casual interest in and think that I'm some sort of expert and that I've been doing it for years, and they have expectations to match. In the real world this isn't that great of a gift - I've learned that I have to be on guard against other peoples' elevated expectations of my abilities, because otherwise I will find myself in situations that are far over my head (oftentimes wondering how the heck I got there in the first place). When that happens, of course, my failure is seen as my fault, not the fault of the people who nudged me into a position I had no business being in to begin with.

I have a long history of having to fight like the devil to be able to do what I wanted to do - "the establishment" has certain goals for someone like me, and they're not the goals I have for myself.

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.

Are we on the same wavelength? We are, aren't we?

This is exactly why I got heavily involved in some areas of "new age" spirituality. I always knew that I was radically different...everyone knew it, it was regularly pointed out to me - but I wasn't given any good reason as to why or how. Lacking actual science based answers (which, had I had access to them, would have saved me a lot of trouble) I turned to the one place where answers were available - the online new age/spiritual community. My beliefs that developed as a result of these interactions in turn lead to me being diagnosed as delusional. (No one ever did officially figure out that I'm autistic.) Yikes on bikes.

 

[SDRSpark]

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.

I don't readily admit to this at this point, but I have had a lot of experiences that I can't rationally explain. At this point, I just let them be. I can't rationally explain them, and I'm OK with that.

One time, I was sitting on the couch in the living room, and my mom yelled in from the kitchen "do you need to use the bathroom before I clean it?" I replied "no, go ahead." Then she asked again, "do you need to use the bathroom before I clean it?" I thought she hadn't heard me so I hollered back "I already said, no!" and she paused for a second and said "I didn't ask yet..."