Autism and Empathy - Please share your own experiences

I'm still waiting for assessment, but I can relate to what's been written here, especially by pegasus. It never occurred to me (before I began suspecting I might be autistic) that I didn't have any empathy, because I can actually feel things very strongly at times. I might, for instance, see a sad story in the newspaper and remember it for weeks, months or even years afterwards. And I get upset at the sight of people or animals suffering, and even feel sorry for inanimate objects sometimes. But when I did the EQ (empathy test), I scored very low, which took me by surprise at the time.

Here's a link to thread I started on this forum in December 2017, about the paper 'More on the ontological status of double empathy' by Nicholas Chown, about autistic and non-autistic people's senses of empathy, with a fair number of replies:

https://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/11136/on-the-ontological-status-of-autism-and-double-empathy/56742#56742

I'm still waiting for assessment, but strongly believe I'm on the spectrum. I think I'm empathetic, but don't always come across as such. Like your son, I feel strongly if I'm aware of other people's emotions, but don't always recognise it unless told directly. I'm bad at getting my own facial expression, and tone of voice right, so people who don't know me enough to ignore that can misinterpret my response. And I'm not good at responding immediately which also probably looks like lack of empathy, whilst I'm just processing what has been said.

It varies, but if someone isn't being direct, then it will take me a while to figure out what somebody's body language or tone is saying. Or if it's a noisy environment then there will be a delay in me processing the words (even if someone is saying how they're feeling directly). Then depending on how strong an emotion it triggers in me, it might take me a bit of time to work out what those emotions are. Then if I'm overloaded it will take a while to come up with a reply. I rarely have enough space in my head to work out what facial expression and tone to use as well, but if I did this would also take more time to process. All the while staring blankly at the person. So I probably come across as not empathetic a lot of the time, particularly if someone is expecting an instantaneous reaction. 

It depends on the environment and how I'm feeling, sometimes I can process this all in a few seconds. Other times it can be hours or days before I feel an empathetic response to the situation.

It's strange that there is such a narrow minded view of autism and empathy. I have other relatives on the spectrum who are also highly empathetic. But according to the experts "Empathy doesn't quite fit in with the autistic profile."

Empathy umm!

Apparently I don't have empathy and will never have it.

Now I just say okay funny that I have become indifferent to it now. 

I understand that males and females present differently, and also that all diagnostic tools are geared towards identifying autism in boys, but I don't think they will have any problems in identifying autism in my daughter. She has problems with sensory processing, social interaction, social communication etc. She's selectively mute in the nursery environment. She also has difficulties with social imagination, quite a lot of repetitive behaviours, meltdowns, overloads etc. She can't cope with transition or the slightest change to her routine. She has not yet shown empathy but I understand this to be a learned behaviour, and she's still only 3 years old, so perhaps this will develop a little later. 

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me. I found your comment very helpful.

My experience matches your description, we process and express emotion differently and (to varied extents that are different in each case) can have trouble identifying or interpreting signals. Also when we do pick up on other's emotions this can also trigger something akin to sensory overload since we are highly empathic by nature, though this is disguised by the difficulty picking up on signals to start with.

Unless I'm mentally prepared and clear headed, I still miss tones and some of the more subtle facial expressions. However when I know someone is struggling the compulsion to help is so strong that not doing so causes long term trauma and guilt. However when I have too much going on in my own head there is little 'processing power' for all the incoming signals and I focus more purely on what is being said to avoid overload.

Odds are you already know this next bit from your research, but just in case.

Note things often manifest differently in male and female, GENERALLY speaking females on the spectrum are more likely to be able to read people. This is a big part of why many women on the spectrum have gone undiagnosed, until quite recently there was little research done into the differences and most of the older literature (before approximately 2 years ago I think) is not very accurate for women on the spectrum. This is very much a generalisation, not a hard rule.