Published on 12, July, 2020
Partly because I'm trying to cheer myself up, partly because we need a bit of positivity in life and also because I'd like to get to know you all a bit better, what is your autistic superpower? I prefer to think of the positives that being autistic brings rather than dwell on the things I struggle with and I like to think of my strengths as "superpowers".
Mine are empathy (sometimes my heart can feel like it's going to break or explode!) and spotting details / patterns, particularly in numbers and equations. I also think I see more details in nature than my neurotypical friends (nature is my "special interest") and I get far more joy and excitement from nature than most people do. What are yours?
(Just I case it's confused anyone, I've changed my username, I hope that's OK?)
Hello everyone
My superpower is empathy also, I didn’t always look at this as a positive thing but now I do. I have the ability to feel what others feel and can be quite overwhelming tbh. That said I think it is a gift these days. I try my best to control feeling too empathetic by avoiding certain things but I do love how connected it can make me feel.
I did an Introduction to Counselling course in 2007. The course tutor leader called me out in front of the class saying I should say 'empathic' NOT 'empathetic'. I think she had true empathy deficiency problems and issues (amongst other things) imo. The world's gone mad There are said to be (at least) 3 different levels of empathy too, as we know (cognitive, emotional, compassionate)
www.ted.com/.../brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability
youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw
Allyboo said:The course tutor leader called me out in front of the class saying I should say 'empathic' NOT 'empathetic'. I think she had true empathy deficiency problems and issues (amongst other things) imo. The world's gone mad
That doesn’t make any sense as both words have the same meaning!
I hope so too!
At least that was nearly 15 years ago so hopefully things have progressed and evolved generally since then (and continue to)
I completely understand why, I am sorry you had that experience.
Exactly, that's what I thought at the time too. I felt very aggrieved and just 'sucked it up' I've wondered since then that perhaps she'd had personal unpleasant experiences with the word 'pathetic' so maybe was some sort of trigger for her (I guess there's some indication there that my empathy capabilities are on the rise anyway, hopefully)