What It Means To Be Highly Empathetic, And Autistic
Ascribing generalizations to a diverse group of people only serves to harm us.
When I was in the fourth grade, I took a handwritten note, sprayed it with my mom’s drugstore perfume, dotted it with loopy pink hearts, signed “Love always” with my full name, and dropped it in the locker of the kid I had a crush on. Before I went to school that day, my mom asked me if this was what I really wanted to do: “I know how much you care, but this may not be received the way you want it to be.”
As this story demonstrates, I am an outwardly emotional person; I may also cry when I see someone crying, or absorb everyone’s emotions in group settings. All of which probably wouldn’t be worth mentioning if not for one fact: I’m also autistic. And public perceptions dictate that autistic and empathetic shouldn’t go together.
The popular myth that all autistic people are socially withdrawn and unempathetic — like the teenage protagonist in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or the undiagnosed but stereotypical representation of The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper — hurts the entire…
