How (Some) Autistics Get by Without Empathy

Feeling “evil” isn’t easy.

A black-and-white photo of an older white man’s eyes, from the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.

In my writing, I have sometimes alluded to my not experiencing empathy, specifically what psychologists call affective empathy, or popularly understood as “feeling someone else’s feelings.”

(You can contrast this with cognitive empathy, also known as perspective-taking, which involves thinking consciously about how another person feels, or with compassion, which is consciously choosing to show people consideration with your actions. More on both of these later).

Whatever that intuitive magic is that allows other people to gaze at a person’s face or body language and feel in an instant what they might be feeling, I don’t have it. When something tragic or unexpected happens to a person that I care about, I can seem baffled by their reactions and indifferent at first. It takes me time to really appreciate what they must be going through. Moving through the world, I’m often emotionally adrift and without much sense of whether another person understands me, is offended by me, or might be quietly asking me for something.

“Autistics do have empathy!” is the protest of many Autistic self-advocates when our collective humanity is called into question by the RFK Jr’s of the world. “In fact, some studies show that we are emotionally overwhelmed by empathizing…