Autistic empathy

With a little loose time this after noon.......

    I have to check in with my body to know how I, myself feel.

    For empathy:

   I don't feel like I could be the one to say if I am "empathetic" or not . I can't say. Others say of me that I very solution oriented and that feels right. And inspirational. I come at problems with a business like drive. When people are suffering I obsess over how to best help them. They become a sort of short term special interest. I do need to ask many questions and find out just what is wrong sometimes to see if I am even the right helper in the moment.

    When there are no problem and just people abiding together I find myself able of some forms of prescience, like knowing "Bobby's" wife will have a baby - and it's a boy -before he's told anyone at all or that so and so will be early and in a bad mood. or the like. Or I had a go bag the morning of the fire before it began, feeling the coming of some shift in my life changing. 

    I can still be shocked, too, and feel led on when someone might, a week after a tearful late night call, not even remember the thing that distressed them so, while I'm still making calls and trying to set up some solutions for them. I learned from this to hold back. How fleeting emotions are.

     PTSD is another thing, though, and needs a stronger hand at the till than mine - sharing too many of those traits in common,  being too close to it myself.

     I know about myself that I can take chest-burning umbrage at things like wars, pointless famine, using the planet as a toilet and the like. There I am mostly overwhelmed by the magnitude and realize I can but do for those who are within arm's reach, and just hope there are others with cool enough heads where these other afflicted are.

     I was also, as child always giving away my things (except my radio)  to any child who would express a keen interest in them. That child's happiness was what made me feel good - a solution to the problem. The things I never missed. Children's parents would come round, returning items that seemed too valuable or personal for them have been given. I felt they didn't belong to me and would not touch them, felt a shamed to have the thing around and avoided the child who I had given it to out of shame. Was that empathy?

    I have also. like some of you, have had the thing where people would tell me the deep dark stuff of the nightmares of their lives. I kind of enjoyed hearing it all, as material for stories - like David Sedaris might. Funny thing, though, the better I have learned to establish and protect my personal space the less frequently this happens.

With a little loose time this after noon.......

    I have to check in with my body to know how I, myself feel.

    For empathy:

   I don't feel like I could be the one to say if I am "empathetic" or not . I can't say. Others say of me that I very solution oriented and that feels right. And inspirational. I come at problems with a business like drive. When people are suffering I obsess over how to best help them. They become a sort of short term special interest. I do need to ask many questions and find out just what is wrong sometimes to see if I am even the right helper in the moment.

    When there are no problem and just people abiding together I find myself able of some forms of prescience, like knowing "Bobby's" wife will have a baby - and it's a boy -before he's told anyone at all or that so and so will be early and in a bad mood. or the like. Or I had a go bag the morning of the fire before it began, feeling the coming of some shift in my life changing. 

    I can still be shocked, too, and feel led on when someone might, a week after a tearful late night call, not even remember the thing that distressed them so, while I'm still making calls and trying to set up some solutions for them. I learned from this to hold back. How fleeting emotions are.

     PTSD is another thing, though, and needs a stronger hand at the till than mine - sharing too many of those traits in common,  being too close to it myself.

     I know about myself that I can take chest-burning umbrage at things like wars, pointless famine, using the planet as a toilet and the like. There I am mostly overwhelmed by the magnitude and realize I can but do for those who are within arm's reach, and just hope there are others with cool enough heads where these other afflicted are.

     I was also, as child always giving away my things (except my radio)  to any child who would express a keen interest in them. That child's happiness was what made me feel good - a solution to the problem. The things I never missed. Children's parents would come round, returning items that seemed too valuable or personal for them have been given. I felt they didn't belong to me and would not touch them, felt a shamed to have the thing around and avoided the child who I had given it to out of shame. Was that empathy?

    I have also. like some of you, have had the thing where people would tell me the deep dark stuff of the nightmares of their lives. I kind of enjoyed hearing it all, as material for stories - like David Sedaris might. Funny thing, though, the better I have learned to establish and protect my personal space the less frequently this happens.