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Autism and Empathy - Please share your own experiences

NAS66072

Hi all, I'm new to the forum. Pleasure to meet you all.

So I have a 3 year old daughter who we are sure is on the spectrum (still waiting for assessment for her.) I also have a 12 year old son with autistic traits also, although his symptoms are more subtle. Well he took the Ados test a few days ago and we were told that he meets the diagnostic criteria for Autism. They did not give him a final diagnosis yet as they still need to go over his developmental history, but they also stated that his ability to feel empathy did not quite fit in with the autistic profile.

My son does not naturally pick up on other peoples emotions, body language, vocal tones etc. You have to be direct with him, and actually tell him how you feel, but once he is aware he does care, often too deeply.  Now my 3 year old also has deficits in reading emotions, social cues, body language etc but she does not yet show empathy.  After lots of research I have found that people on the spectrum experience this aspect differently and so I would like to ask the community to share your own personal experiences regarding autism and empathy, to help me understand this a little bit better.

Any information you can provide would be very helpful.

Thank you.

Parents

  • 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.

  • in reply to Autistic Entrepreneur

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

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