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An important aspect of social relationships is the ability to empathise with the feelings of others. Empathy is a two-dimensional emotion. It has a cognitive component (theory of mind, or mindreading) and an affective component (emotional processing) which allows us to share the feelings of others.

When engaged in affective empathy, we vicariously experience the emotional states of others, understanding that our feelings are not ours but rather those of the other individual.

Lack of empathy and/or sympathy have long been thought of as a universal trait of autism, but recent research seems to indicate that this varies among individuals. Certainly I do not think that I have ever truly empathised with anyone.

I never felt any empathy for my mum when she was terminally ill. I’ve never felt it for a partner, and I don’t feel it for my daughter, friends and colleagues. Nobody. It sounds very cold to say this, but this is my reality.

But…

I made a new friend last year and for over 10 months I was really confused about the very strong feelings I had towards her, because I had never experienced such emotion before. The feelings I had were so strong that it was painful sometimes, palpable.

So what is different about her? Well for one, she lives hundreds of mile away, so we communicate by text and voice clip. Boy can she talk. When we’re on a roll we can do hundreds of messages a day. She’s very expressive, exceptionally funny, has a way with words and has the most amazing lilting voice; her accent melts me. We can and will talk about anything and everything.

She’s not had the easiest of times but she talks very openly about her life, and I really feel when she does. When I say “feel”, it’s as though what happened to her is happening to me. It’s a physiological response. I just want to hug her which is so alien to me. I hug my friends when greeting them and saying goodbye, because I know you’re supposed to, but it’s different with her. I feel emotion as though I’m experiencing what she experienced.

So what is it about her that is different?

I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s because we communicate digitally. There is no body language or facial expression to confuse me. I can re-read and listen again to voice clips until I understand what is being said, which is so hard to do in real time. Plus she can’t see my facial expression, which was always something that Maria picked up on, misinterpreted, and got angry about.

I really don’t know.

I actually like it. I am loving feeling.

So what do the experts say ?

A lack of expressed sympathy or empathy may not be the result of a lack of emotion in someone who has autism, but rather due to underdeveloped skills.

To connect with another person one must:

  • Recognize the other person’s feelings
  • Understand the other person’s hopes, dreams, and/or expectations
  • Have the emotional experience to relate personally to another’s feelings
  • Have the tools to physically and verbally express empathic feelings

Research shows people with autism may struggle with cognitive empathy because they are unable to recognize and name emotions based on facial expressions.

The ability to name emotions is an important step toward experiencing empathy and sympathy. Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, describing, and processing one’s own feelings, often marked by a lack of understanding of the feelings of others, and difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal. Being able to identify and label emotions is key to recognizing those emotions in others.

While cognitive empathy can be lower in people with autism, affective empathy, which is based on instincts and involuntary responses to the emotions of others, can be strong and overwhelming. Newer research suggests that some people with autism may actually feel other people’s emotions more intensely. This is definitely what I am experiencing.

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I had a meltdown on Friday night, and 3 days later I’m still knocked for six, stuck in the meltdown hangover.

Since separating from Maria almost 12 months ago, I’ve been a member of several closed singles groups on Facebook. No one caught my attention until a few months ago when Jenny arrived in the group.

There was something different about Jenny. She didn’t seem to be taking the group seriously and her posts and comments went over the heads of the many guys who were drooling over her because of her stunning looks and her risqué comments. I saw something else though, a witty sarcastic intelligence. I had a gut feeling that I would meet her one day, and I did.

We had a bit of a fall out a couple of weeks ago. Our friendship is very new, just 6 weeks old, but already I know that she’s someone that I want in my life forever. We’d been chatting 19 hours daily, swapping almost 7000 messages in just 3 weeks, 1163 on one day alone (yeah, Aspie stats obsession!). I even visited her for 5 days just a few weeks after we first spoke.

She felt like a friend on steroids. We just got on, we had an affinity. We were on the same level. It’s rare for me to find someone like that. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything of a romantic nature from either side, not that I would really notice if there was.

So when we fell out my anxiety levels heightened. I didn’t want to lose this amazing new friend. We quickly resolved our issue, but then it all went wrong again within hours and I wasn’t sure why. I asked if she was still coming to visit me at the end of the week and she said it wasn’t a good idea, so rather than pick up the phone and resolve the issue, I put my head in the sand and that was the last we spoke until 4 days later.

At the end of the week I sent her flowers, to get her attention. I knew that she’d contact me; she’s too polite not to. We chatted and things seemed to be smoothed over, but then she just turned on me. For three hours we had a circular conversation that ended up with me going into a meltdown due to the futility of it.

To be told over and over that she didn’t believe what I was saying, that I was playing some kind of game, frustrated me. How do you prove that you’re not lying? I quickly got closer and closer to meltdown. It didn’t make sense to me. I surmised that she was jealous of my other friendships. Was she into me in “that” way, and I’d not realised? I’m pretty rubbish at spotting that.

Eventually I started to react to what was being said rather than act rationally. I could see the friendship slipping away and I needed a way to let her know that I wasn’t interested in others, that my only interest was her friendship. So I told her that I loved her. Yeah, I know. Dumb move because I don’t. I’ve no idea what I feel for her but it’s not that. I guess I thought saying that would prove to her that I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I was in meltdown and all cognitive ability goes out of the window.

So now we’re not speaking again because it’s all a little weird. I miss her. I miss our daily conversations about nothing much. I’m afraid that I’ve ruined what would have been one of the best friendships of my life, and I don’t know what to do next.