Empathy and the Autism Fallacy

It is a commonly held belief that Autistic people don’t feel empathy, but I would like to argue that the opposite is true. The root of the problem are the differences in communication and the perception of non-verbal cues.

I’m speaking from my own experiences and I’m not putting words in others mouths.

Let’s look at the different types of empathy.

There are three types of empathy:

1. Cognitive Empathy- understanding someone’s thoughts, perspective or mental state.
2. Emotional or Affective Empathy- feeling what someone else is feeling.
3. Compassionate Empathy- a desire to help or tale action the relieve suffering.

Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand another’s thoughts or to see their perspective and I think this is likely is where it is believed that autistic people may struggle. Autistic people, like me, may have difficulty knowing what others are thinking or feeling. We can have (I do) problems with social cues, body language (i.e. non-verbal cues), facial expressions, tone of voice, or social norms in general. My difficulties in interpreting or working out what is going on, does not mean that I do not care. When I do work out there’s a problem, I may not know what to do. It does not come naturally to me to provide ‘a shoulder to cry on’ or a hug. I feel awkward, out of place, sometimes I feel like I need to get away. But I do try to help. I have to use reason and logically try to work out the best solution. I may share a similar experience to try to show that I understand what the person is going through, not to ‘out do’ them, but to show sympathy. I really do try, but often unsuccessfully.

Affective empathy, for me at least, is very powerfully felt. If I see starving children in Africa on tv, for example, I can’t just watch with indifference, like I perceive others do. It breaks my heart, I want to cry and do. I stopped watching the news when I was about 13 because it upset me so much. I realised that there was nothing I could do and the sense of helplessness really affected me badly. The suffering completely overwhelms me and I often withdraw into myself, I think as a form of self-preservation. I really can’t cope with all the emotions.

I sometimes think that the emotions of others around me somehow ‘rub off’ on me. When my husband is really angry about something, I calmly try to help him, but later feel the rage within myself and may shout at the dog!

There is a theory called ‘The double empathy problem’ by Dr. Damian Milton and he suggests that communication difficulties between autistic and allistic (i.e. non-autistic) people are a mutual problem. It is not the autistic person at fault, it is a miscommunication between both parties. I may not show that I care in an allistic manner and I may not show my own emotions either, meaning that I can then fail to get any sympathy if I am struggling or hurting. I can give the example of my two trips to Accident and Emergency, where I was not believed when I had broken bones, because I did not show pain.

We just need to know that we are all human beings sharing this world and a starting position of compassion should go without saying.