Autism Myths: No empathy

Autistic people have no empathy, right? If someone shows empathy they can’t really be autistic can then? I mean – if they had empathy they’d understand other peoples’ emotions better and wouldn’t be blunt and upset them would they? Well, no, the autistic difficulty is about understanding the communication of emotions not failing to understand the emotions themselves. If I upset you it’s not because I don’t care about your feelings, it’s because I misunderstood your feelings or messed up communicating my response to your feelings. Or, if you’re feeling more inclusive, you could say I understood what you said and communicated in my way not yours.

Generally I try to write blogs that I think will be helpful to other autistic professionals but this one is because I’m annoyed so bear with…

“X had empathy so they couldn’t be autistic”

I was reading a book last night about an important scientific historical figure who is widely believed to have been autistic. Clearly we can’t diagnose people who are no longer alive, but there are certainly plenty of historical figures who are known to have displayed autistic traits and behaviours. This scientific figure – “X” – is one of those. I’m not naming them because I’m wanting to use the biography I was reading as an example of a more general phenomenon, not b*tch about about this particular author. Who probably knew no better, even if they should have done.

Addressing the question of whether X was autistic, the author writes:

I do not find such a long-distance diagnosis [of autism] convincing.

Fair enough – diagnosing historical figures is decidedly controversial. However, s/he goes on to say:

Even as a teenager, X made close friends, had passionate relationships, enjoyed collegial discussions, communicated well verbally, and could empathize with friends and humanity in general.

At this point I put the book down in order to fume for a while. I could unpick each part of that clumsy stereotype at length (don’t worry – I won’t – probably) but the last part really got me annoyed. X couldn’t have been autistic because X could empathise with friends and humanity in general. X could only have been autistic if s/he had been a completely solitary passionless cold fish who cared nothing for those around them. Gah! This book was published in the 21st century – it’s not some relic of a bygone age when autism was little known. Also thank you so very much Mr/Ms Author, and I’m so sorry that I have friends, can communicate, enjoy discussions and can empathise because I am clearly the wrong kind of autistic. [*Goes away and fumes again for a bit*]

Why this no-empathy stereotype?

So, why do people have this wrong-headed idea of autistics? I think it’s down to the fact that a big part of autism is about communication differences. As an autistic I may fail to read between the lines and pick up your emotions, or I may pick them up wrong. I may also fail to communicate my emotional response effectively. In those cases it’s not the feeling or emotions that are at fault but the communication.

As an example, imagine I was a native speaker of another language who knew English but not as a mother tongue. You might hint to me (in English) that you weren’t feeling happy, but because I was struggling to work out the meaning in my second language, I might miss the hint. Or I might pick it up but when I tried to express my sympathy my words might come out in my bad English with a meaning I didn’t intend. That wouldn’t be because I didn’t empathise with you (once I understood your emotions) or because I didn’t care about you. It would be a communication failure.

Communication differences

Autistic communication is different from neurotypical communication. We instinctively don’t do small talk (many of us can’t see the point) and we often attempt to express empathy by giving an example of when we’ve experienced something similar. Unfortunately neurotypical people can take a lack of small talk as being cold and uncaring, and a personal anecdote as being self-centred. That’s not what’s intended – we just speak a different language. I think this is called the “double empathy problem” whereby two people with very different experiences struggle to empathise with each other because they don’t understand where each other is coming from.

If I was being really controversialist, I would say it’d be nice if neurotypical people sometimes made a bit of an effort to speak “autistic” so that we weren’t always the ones having to communicate in our second language. I’m the one who has a communication disability, so perhaps you wouldn’t mind speaking my language for a bit? Leave out the dratted small talk, say what you literally mean, provide context, explain your feelings in words? No – thought not. You’d rather decide that because you told me your feelings in a language I struggle to understand, I’m a cold hearted automaton for failing to understand them. [Sorry – got annoyed again.]

What to do?

Autistic people don’t lack empathy. Some of us have such strong empathy that we can get overwhelmed by the emotions we’re picking up from other people. Some of us struggle to regulate our emotions so that if we’re told something sad we cry uncontrollably. Many of us are really strongly driven to make the world a better place because we want humanity (with which – spoiler alert – we empathise) to have better lives. But we do struggle to communicate sometimes. So please remember that if an autistic person has said something upsetting or unfeeling, it’s much more likely to be because they didn’t understand the emotions being communicated, or because they spoke your language a bit wrong, than because they didn’t care.

And if you see that clumsy “autism = no empathy” stereotype being banded around, push back a bit?