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Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness. This is your

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host, George Muniz Gund. In this episode, I'm going to talk a little more

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about autistic empathy and why it is so misunderstood. Now, early listeners of

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this podcast might remember I did do a brief episode on empathy before episode

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31, but I've learned a lot since then. And I've learned a lot more. I've learned

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this... my therapist brought something to my attention that made a lot of sense, and

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it made me rethink my whole understanding of autistic empathy versus how

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it's perceived by neurotypicals because it can differ from neurotypical

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empathy and the way we're conditioned in society to feel empathy or what the

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right, the so-called right way of feeling empathy is. Anyways, just as a quick

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refresher on the last episode about empathy, I did way back in December of

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2022, if I'm not mistaken. I talked... if I'm not mistaken, I talked in that

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episode about difference in between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy.

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And I spoke of hyper empathy among autistic people, and I spoke of how, for a

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lot of autistic people, including myself, I'm speaking a lot... a lot of this is

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coming from my experience, I feel really intense empathy towards... not... I feel like

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if someone is upset, it distressed or whatnot, I feel that so intensely, and

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sometimes even more intensely than the person, if it's a non-autistic person,

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for instance, sometimes they do not even... they're not even aware that they're

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experiencing a certain feeling, a certain sadness, a certain frustration, a certain

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resentment, whatever it may be, and I'll pick up on that. And I believe studies

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have shown that autistic people do have more intense experiences with emotional

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empathy and hyper empathy, and I can certainly relate to that, because I feel

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that not just with people, but I have felt that, and I have heard about other

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autistic people feeling it with objects as well, like a towel. Like if there's a

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towel, and it's like under a bunch of other towels, and it's like I'm folding

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towels, and I don't... like something happens and another towel gets in front

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of that one, like I would not so much anymore, but when I was a kid, I would be

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in situations where I would be feeling bad for the towel, or I would like... you

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know, I would get like really attached to a certain car, and then that I had, you

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know, and I would like... I remember just thinking of like machines and objects as

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people, and like having feelings, and then like feeling bad for them, so back to my

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my feelings around people. I... and how I feel most autistics are in general from

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the support groups I've been a part of, and other autistic people I've interacted

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with over the years. It seems like we're really good at perceiving when someone

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is feeling something so much so that the person that is feeling that thing

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might not even be aware of it in that moment, and they might later come to

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realize and tell us, oh, I realized that I noticed I was upset about this or that,

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and we're like, oh, yeah, you know, we had a feeling like... so we're really... I feel

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like I personally as an autistic person have a very heightened sense of

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emotional empathy. Now, where the... now the thing is that can be... that is different

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than cognitive empathy, whereas like understanding why the person is upset,

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and that this is basically what I talked about in the last episode. Like, I

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struggle as an autistic person with understanding why the person is upset,

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and sometimes it's because sometimes they know why they're upset, but I still

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can't understand. Sometimes they might not even realize that they're upset, and

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this is where the... what my therapist told me about recently comes in, is that

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it's not just me being hyper aware to them. It can... it can be, but it... sometimes

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it's not just me being hyper aware to them being upset or me being triggered by

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some kind of previous trauma. Sometimes it's actually because they... I have such a

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heightened sensory sensitivity to emotional stuff and feelings, including

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from other people, that I might pick up on that before them, and then that might

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put me into sensory overload, and I might shut down. Well, and a lot of autistic

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people experience this where they shut down. If you're... you have such an amount

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of sensory or emotional overload, which is sensory related as well, it's all

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connected, that causes you to shut down and then not say anything or do anything

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or even move your face sometimes, because you're in just kind of a paralysis mode,

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or autistic inertia, as I've heard it referred to before, and I certainly

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experienced that. And so then the other person, when they're having this intense

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emotional moment, and you're... you shut down because you're actually like so

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overwhelmed by it, but they don't see that. And medical professionals, when

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they go to assess children, they don't see that either. A lot of times children

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don't get the diagnosed, and I've read documents of assessments of that

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psychologists have... psychiatrists have written, saying that they were not... that

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the child cannot be autistic because they displayed empathy. And it's like, no,

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like it's... this is a wrong way of viewing it, because the person... because...

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because you're not looking at the internal experience, because this is my big

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problem with the medical community not listening to the lived experience of

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autistic individuals, because if... if researchers were to ask autistic individuals,

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like, what was your experience? Like, what is your experience around empathy? It

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would become clear that we would... you know, they would understand that we

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experience so much empathy, we actually get overloaded with it, and we shut down,

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and that's the part that people don't see. So then people only see the shutdown

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part, and then we get told that we don't have it, and then it gets... it gets written

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and documented that autistic people don't have empathy. And then we have

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stigmas and stereotypes going wild, and tropes and TV shows and movies that show

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autistic people... characters played by neurotypical people, written by neurotypical

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people that are like cold robots, because that's what a lot of neurotypical

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people think autistic people are. And it's really dehumanizing, and it's really

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frustrating to continue to see this narrative and this trope propagated

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because of the lack of... of the lack of having our voices heard by the medical

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community, and just... and that speaking to deeper issues such as systemic

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ableism, which there... there's no way to... to just discuss that in... in one episode

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as... as regular listeners of this podcast will... will know and... and you know, whoever

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is familiar with the neurodiversity paradigm and however... how long we've

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been fighting this fight, but anyways... this is one of the worst, most frustrating

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pieces of misinformation that... that I still come across out there. So I felt

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like it was necessary to make this episode and clear the air kind of a

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refresher to my first episode on autistic empathy as well, but with this

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new sensory component and the understanding of that embedded in there

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as well. So without further ado, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope

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you're able to get something out of it and I'll see you next time.