This has been pretty widely discussed under the name “the double empathy problem”, although as always it’s good to have more actual data. The general gist in the existing discussion is that autistic people and allistic people have trouble with each other’s communication styles, but this is treated as a communication deficit in autistic people rather than two different styles that have difficulty understanding each other. An analogy might be a minority that (poorly) speaks the language of the majority, and then is considered stupid despite the fact that they are bilingual and none of the people they’re speaking to have made an effort to learn the minority language.
I wasn’t sure to what extent this was autistic community in-group jargon, so I spent time trying to loosely explain it, when it turns out that a quick Google to check whether I’m crazy indicates it’s pretty well established and I could probably have just linked the Wikipedia page.
The idea is older than Milton. In 1988, Jim Sinclair wrote “Some Thoughts About Empathy”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090321213935/http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/empathy.htm
Autistic person here:
I often ask people how they are feeling. Even though 90% of the time I can correctly tell by changes in a person’s behavior, language, facial expressions, intonation, etc, I am aware that I can’t literally read minds and the most obvious solution to this is just ask.
The 90% correct guessing figure comes from asking people and validating or invalidating my guess.
However, in at least my personal experience, neurotypicals almost never read my emotions correctly, will tell me how I am feeling, and essentially never ask. If they do ask, they will often get frustrated by how complex my emotions are, to the point that they vastly oversimplify to the point of caricature.
Then they go on to do or say things based on how they think I feel or felt and functionally spread lies about me constantly, which I am constantly bewildered by.
I would say that I am far more empathetic than most neurotypicals I meet or know, far more likely to spend my time and energy being emotionally available for them than they do for me, far less likely to assume my initial impression is correct, far more likely to truly engage.
As to the increased suicidality of Autistic people yeah that tracks with my lived experience.
Not in that I’ve personally considered suicide, but I am in constant tension of wanting to communicate with people vs essentially always being misinterpreted.
So I’ve just grown to be more and more content with mostly being alone.
Basically everyone I ever once thought I loved or trusted has been so utterly incapable of giving me 10% of the emotional support or availability that I feel I give them that I’ve learned that most people will exploit me and then scream at or assault me or have some kind of total emotional breakdown which they then blame me for whenever I am able to tell them how I feel.
Its beyond exhausting.
As an example that happens frequently to me: I also have a form of neuropathy, which often causes me to be in extreme amounts of pain for no obviously visible reason. I will tell people, I am not angry with you, I am in extreme pain, I have neuropathy, and they will just say no you aren’t, no you don’t you’re just angry for (insert projection of their own insecurity here).
As an allistic person who also puts lots of effort into being understanding and prefers to be conscious of and verify/disprove my assumptions, I agree that most people are maddening when it comes to this crap. I can have a full, detailed breakdown of my internal state ready to go and they’ll just project onto me if they’re riled up enough to not really be listening.
I’ve found the best trick you can pull when somebody does that is to find what you agree with them about and talk about that for a while. Once their head cools off a bit more and the conversation cools back down to normal emotional temperature, you can calmly tell them how you were really feeling and how it hurts to be misunderstood like that. Usually that elicits an embarrassed apology, from adults. If it doesn’t, they probably don’t want to be your friend, they wanted to be your abuser, and you their punching bag.
All just in my experience, of course.
The absolute worst, in my experience, is people who believe they are ‘empaths’, people who are hugely into superstitious nonsense like astrology or literal witchcraft, people who think they can ‘manifest’ things.
Those kinds of people have whole worldviews built around themselves being special, enlightened basically having superpowers.
They have no problem telling you how you feel or what you are thinking or why you did something, but if you even attempt to correct them, god forbid tell them they’re literally delusional, they’ll freak out and have a huge breakdown and cause as much drama as possible with everyone they know.
I have had waaaay too many of those kinds of people in my life.
I agree with you that most normal people would be embarrassed to learn they misread someone, but I seem to just have very bad luck of being surrounded by people who are just incapable of basic human decency.
Oh they absolutely are the worst.
I’m sorry to hear that, those types are so much trouble to deal with. I had a deeply narcissistic roommate in college who felt they always knew what others were feeling/thinking. They got quite abusive by the end and it really messed me up for a while. All that to say, I know that type of pain.
I think maybe narcissistic types tend to seek out patient, understanding people. Maybe consciously they think they’re looking for love and understanding, but unconsciously it seems like they’re looking for people they can reliably abuse when they’re having a bad day, y’know?
I don’t put up with those sorts anymore, it makes life much simpler.
Also autistic, and I agree with you about all of this.
Hah, maybe we can be friends lol!
How’s your day going? =)
As autists, whats your opinions on people telling you what their pets were thinking or feeling?
I may be on the spectrum, and suspect i am but dont even know how to move forward finding out(already have a big motivation problem. As in struggle to get up everyday)
I ask because it drives me crazy when people go on and on about a thing their pets do/does as if they had a significant conversation with their pets to find this out.
Well, on the one hand, I do believe that dogs and cats have emotions similar, though likely not as complex as humans, and that if you know a cat or dog well enough, you stand a good chance at understanding some of its fairly basic emotional states.
Dogs and cats are both usually quite capable of sensing emotional states in humans, though each one will react a bit differently, so in that regard, they are sort of humanlike.
But… you wouldn’t be able to understand a cat or dog’s very specific opinions about a topic it could not possibly grasp.
Sure, you can probably tell if it likes or does not like a person or kind of food… but its not going to be capable of having complex opinions about fashion or politics or finances or something.
When people seriously act like their pet is telling them things that are far too complex, this person is either delusional or basically manipulating/guilt-tripping you by presuming to speak for an animal, and then they’ll say ‘Don’t blame me, pet just doesn’t agree!’
This is basically the behavior of an immature child or a manipulative sociopath.
Also, on its face, I don’t see anything wrong with talking to a pet as a form of trying to work through your own feelings…
… As long as you realize that that is what you are doing. That its not much different than talking to yourself in a mirror or a doll or something, in that regard. In another regard, the pet just views this as you spending quality time with it, and it probably enjoys that.
Sometimes it helps to just sit down and talk through your own feelings, and having a loving animal certainly can help you feel more calm and loved.
But again, if someone gets to the point that they actually think they are having a complex conversation with an animal and it is communicating complex opinions back to them… we’re back at either delusional or this all being a kind of sociopathic manipulation technique.
EDIT:
Its wild to me that Autists are often described by their tendency to attribute human like emotional capacities to things that do not have them… but its usually never pointed out that we know they don’t actually have them.
If I had to guess, I’d say we do it as a kind of coping mechanism of projecting our own experience of being emotional entities treated as unemotional objects… onto things that actually are unemotional objects.
If you can’t even pretend to have emotions for an object playfully, you’re likely not going to be able to treat an autistic person with empathy.
Kind of a coping mechanism and a bullshit detector at the same time.
Shit. Your edit really hit home for me. I’ve always done that but in a form of humor to help me better understand peoples reactions. Can know very quickly. “Oh sorry that joke didn’t land” as a nice cover incase what I joked about was super offensive and I missed that (I’m high ADHD probably autistic but undiagnosed)
:) It’s going pretty well. My husband and I have two days off together in a row, so we’re going to deep clean the apartment.
How are you doing?
Doing better than I’ve been in a while.
After my doctors determined I was Autistic two years ago, my family decided I was actually schizophrenic and needed to be sent to a mental asylum in the middle of no where.
When I did not go along with this, they deactivated my phone plan, thus locking me out of my email, bank accounts, everything I had set up with 2FA.
Things went downhill from there, my car got stolen, I got robbed, lost my wallet and my bank cards and ids… ended up homeless for about a year, getting the shit kicked out of me by fentanyl addicts.
But uh hey, managed to get some of my id/cards back, and lucked out and found a motel that lets me stay month to month.
I’ve been doing my own physical therapy for half a year now and can finally walk without a bunch of braces, though only for short durations.
I had a bunch of broken bones and torn muscles and tendons… Slowly getting back to normal.
Good thing I managed to qualify for SSDI, otherwise I’d be dead!
Yo can I be y’all’s friend too?
As long as you’ve seen Lethal Weapon 4 rofl
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0Qda32IKM&pp=ygUkbGV0aGFsIHdlYXBvbiB3aHkgY2FudCB3ZSBiZSBmcmllbmRz
I am sorry to hear this. Please try to find more spectrum friends. It’s astonishing how nice it is to be friends with someone that can just be like. No worries I get it. And that’s it. Cause we both are empathetic of others and not just for show like most typicals. Typicals aren’t listening most of the time they are just waiting for their turn to speak. When I’m doing that it’s so I don’t forget my thought. Otherwise. Full focus on who I’m engaged with. It’s just so different and I think divergent to divergent is the more rational version of communication as we don’t run on MASSIVE assumptions like you are pointing out the typical in your life do.
The article is based on a study in Autism for which it doesn’t give a link, title, date, or authors. After searching that journal, I believe the source study is this: Non-autistic observers both detect and demonstrate the double empathy problem when evaluating interactions between autistic and non-autistic adults (Jones, D. R., Botha, M., Ackerman, R. A., King, K., & Sasson, N. J., Dec 2023).
It could also be this: Cheang, R. T., Skjevling, M., Blakemore, A. I., Kumari, V., & Puzzo, I. (2024). Do you feel me? Autism, empathic accuracy and the double empathy problem. Autism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241252320
That fits too, and the article does quote two of that paper’s coauthors… although it doesn’t identify them as coauthors of the study in question, and it’s common for science journalism to get opinions on a study from scientists who have done similar work.
Man, that’s super useful information, directly so, and it explains a lot of issues I’ve had communicating with the autism support group that uses the same space as my chronic pain support group.
Now, I’d never thought they didn’t have empathy, because plenty of them expressed it verbally, once something was verbally communicated to them. But it could be difficult to discuss things when emotions were high, and that’s pretty common when timing means they’re coming in as we’re going out, and we’ve got members visibly upset, but only to people that can read emotion visually.
Makes so much sense out of things.
Legit, even if this information only helps this one situation to bridge the gap between a single neurotypical/neurodivergent interaction case, that’s amazing.
So the ovious question is: how good are autistic people at reading the feelings of other autistic people?
late diagnosed millenials are like the spiderman meme. finding out most of their close social circle was neurodivergent. not hard to predict self sorting like that. who wants to exhaust themselves trying to maintian connections with people who wont understand them and often get upset at being asked to try?
Actually, excellent. In groups, they cooperate in a better way than neurotypicals.
don’t know about that specifically, but what i have read in general is that austistic people as good or better at communicating with each other than allistic people are with each other.
