5 Signs of Autism You're Probably Wrong About...
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
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*Books Mentioned:
Against Empathy by Paul Bloom: amzn.to/4cyBtuB
The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon: amzn.to/4bfBPFh
📸 Instagram 📸 : / imautisticnowwhat
💛WATCH NEXT💛:
If you want to see a video about 6 things that ARE traits of autism that are often overlooked, here’s a link: • 6 Obscure Signs you're...
And if you want some fun autism memes, we did another meme review last week!: • Autism Memes for When ...
📹 My Videos mentioned 📹:
The Best Theory of Autism you've probably NEVER heard of... (Monotropism): • The Best Theory of Aut...
📒 Sources 📒:
Empathy Imbalance: link.springer....
Annoying Stereotypes: www.bbc.co.uk/...
Autism Representation in the Media: enna.org/autis...
EQ: psychology-too...
docs.autismres...
Emotional vs Cognitive Empathy: www.verywellmi...
Double Empathy Problem: en.wikipedia.o....
reframingautis...
Measuring Theory of Mind: www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Theory of Mind Definition: www.sciencedir...
Matt Rife Backlash Articles: variety.com/20...
southcentralpa...
Matt Rife Tiktok: www.tiktok.com...
Savant Definition: www.merriam-we...
en.wikipedia.o...
Savant Syndrome Synopsis: www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Kim Peek: en.wikipedia.o...
Savant Syndrome Myths and Misconceptions: link.springer....
Alex's Story Autism.org: www.autism.org...
Autism is Under-diagnosed: www.thetransmi...
The Treatment of Autistic People News: www.independen...
www.bbc.co.uk/...
Autism and ID, One in Three: www.healthday....
Dyscalculia: delphiniumcc.c....
Autism, Maths, and Sex: www.thelancet....
Systemisers are better at maths: www.nature.com...
Mark Normand Comedy: • Mark Normand Has the W...
www.tiktok.com...
📖 *Books I'd Recommend about Autism 📖 :
Aspergirls by Rudy Simone:
amzn.to/3xSZ6Mg
Different not Less by Chloe Hayden (read if you want to cry):
amzn.to/40fKx2m
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price:
amzn.to/3LhMV3j
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DISCLAIMER: I am a second-year psychology student and a late-diagnosed #actuallyautistic individual. I am not a qualified healthcare professional.
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I had a lot of fun researching and making this one! It was a nice distraction from the chaos of my life currently 😅 Alas, Mr Landlord is ghosting me 👻
But what do you think of Simon’s special triangle? 😂🔺 Was he onto something back in 2015?
If you want to see a video about 6 things that ARE traits of autism that are often overlooked, here’s a link: ua-cam.com/video/eT_IUs_fzdg/v-deo.html
And if you want some fun autism memes, we did another meme review last week!: ua-cam.com/video/z0OWCaL7kLA/v-deo.html
Thank you sooo much for being here 🐌💛 Hope it’s nice and sunny where you are (or not if you don’t like that)
"Maths" comes from the assumption that "Mathematics" is plural, which it's not. There is only one Mathematics, not multiple "Maths".
Yes, we are all in a yellow submarine.
Im living for the 🍓🍓🍓 theme.
I think Simon really struggles with a severe lack of empathy. As Your landlord. Fingers are still crossed, Meg🤞
I think Simon and his theories and triangles create so many misconceptions about autistic people.
why would they accuse me of lacking empathy? I calculate my empathy very carefully
Gotta figure out who deserves my empathy and who doesn’t
I don't even know how to be empathetic I'm autistic and psychopathic 😢
calculating? idk man that's pretty autistic/j
Same
@@joeyRaven201one thing that might help, is to imagine how you’d feel if that happened to you or remember how it made you feel if you have experienced it before
Something that frustrates me regarding the lack of empathy stereotype is SO MANY people have a very surface level idea of what empathy even is.
Also lacking empathy isnt a bad trait, its morally neutral
yes! so often people say 'empathy' but mean 'compassion' because the surface level understanding is that those show in the same way but they absolutely do not. I have a limited amount of empathy, but boundless compassion for others. they're not the same.
@silly_dia no its not lol its a bad trait I have issues with hyper empathy and lack or empathy but its Definitely ethically wrong if not morally
@@katc2040having Empathy isn’t a choice, some people just lack empathy and you can’t be born inherently moral or immoral, be ethical or moral is about choices and actions not how your brain works
*being
I'm hyper empathetic, it's just that sometimes I can't recognize when someone is upset. There's a difference between lacking empathy and not picking up when someone is upset. When i realise someone i love is upset, then I really feel empathetic to them. I just might not realise it in the first place.
YES this is exactly me
Yes, I’ve said to my wife “my autism doesn’t make it ok for me to make you feel bad, but it is the reason I don’t realize I’m making you feel bad without me intentionally being a jerk. Here’s my plan for how I’m going to avoid doing it again“
@@upgradr yessss! And another thing is that if it's someone I know REALLY well and they're predictable, I develop a pattern for them so I can somewhat recognize when they're upset. However sometimes it doesn't work because if they display that pattern and I ask them about it, they then say they aren't upset. It's very hard navigating a world that's so set on neurotypical norms as an autistic individual.
@@soyevquirsefron990 yes! Your wife sounds very understanding and I'm glad you two can communicate effectively and understand each other :)
@@artheenbyrogue804when my wife gets mad, the first thing she does is get quiet (she doesn’t STAY quiet tho!) But she also gets quiet when she’s tired or concentrating and I can’t tell which so I get anxious and keep asking her random things so I can gauge her reaction.
A lot of her favorite things about me are due to my (self diagnosed) autism but there are a couple things i keep getting wrong that upsets her, but mostly we have weird funny arguments like
Her: why do you keep interrupting when I’m doing my homework?
Me: you were being quiet so I thought you might be mad so I was trying to get a reaction so I could find out.
Her(smiling) HERE’S YOUR REACTION, WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT?!?
Me: you weren’t mad but now you are. At least now I know, thanks
The neighbors listening in on us: Sh! Listen, they’re arguing! I think?
1:15 - Lacking Empathy
8:11 - Being a Genius/Savant
13:50 - Being good at maths
16:26 - Being a boy
23:03 - Being incapable
For anyone who wants to jump to a certain point or wants to rewatch a certain part, here you go!
thank you!! :)
AS someone who has ADHD, god bless our warrior
thank you
AuDHD here, _THANK YOU!!!_
I'm all of them except the Last one
i am reminded of the heartwarming story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer where we learned that if you are different everyone will exclude and ridicule you but if your disability becomes useful to them they will suddenly love you and you should accept that. so inspiring/s
I was bullied - not only for but also because of - acne. Once I came to school with Makeup on. Suddenly they where nice to me. It would look good at me and I should wear this often. Everybody was kind as if nothing ever happened. I never wore Makeup again in school, I just could not handle this twisted s*it. Poor Rudolph! Hope he did better
Oh this is why ableism exists: it's all because we teach kids Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. 😂 All we need to do is stop this and everyone will love autistics
DAMN. You are so correct that it literally hurts.
@@dn3305 Had the same thing happen to me :(
haha, i learned to hate that story for that reason. people get upset because i have crafted a pretty good rant on the subject every christmas...the systemic bullying that goes on! santa's shop ought be sued out of existence. ...we need a rewrite..
I told a friend of mine that I'm probably autistic, and he asked me if I could dance, and that if I could dance I'm not autistic because "autistic people don't have rhythm" I play multiple instruments and know SO many autistic musicians, like has this guy ever actually paid attention?
I have no rhythm dancing, don't like to do it (unless at a rave or mosh pit) but play rhythm guitar in my garage band.
David Byrne would like to have a word with him. 😂
What? Where did he get that from? 😂
I’m autistic and I play music professionally. …and I literally quit a band last year because the drummer had rhythm issues. Lol
I used to DJ and make beats as well. I’m HYPER sensitive to rhythm. (I don’t dance though.) 😂
Probably a television series.@@Link-dx1lx
Another one to add - being shy. Being shy is not inherent to being autistic, it's usually because of one of two causes. 1. Going nonverbal, which is NOT the same thing as being shy. Or 2. Getting bullied at a young age for expressing autistic traits and deciding not to talk to avoid getting bullied, which is just masking and not a trait inherent to autism.
I'm low masking and no one realized I was autistic as a kid because I talked a lot. But the way I talked and the things I was talking about would have made it very obvious I was autistic, it's just that the only people who noticed that were the bullies.
so true, i used to be called "shy" or "quiet" when i was in elementary school, but that was only after the relentless bullying i got during kindergarten because i talked too much, and up until today i just... don't talk because i don't wanna be bullied
It's not going nonverbal!!!!! Please learn about the types of verb communication with autistic people.
@@aerialdive I don't really understand what you mean. Can you explain with different wording and more context so I can properly address it?
Some nonspeaking autistics are pretty gregerious when they get access to communication.
@@aerialdive I'm also not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean that we shouldn't use the word "nonverbal"?
I know that many nonspeaking autistics are actually highly verbal and can have language as strength even though they can't reliably communicate their words with their mouths. So they prefer to be called "nonspeaking" to nonverbal.
Is that what you meant?
As an autistic person with eidetic memory, I should point out that true photographic memory has never been scientifically demonstrated to exist. Memory consists of multiple components coming together, not a single image snapshot in your brain. The memory feats people often associate with photographic memory, like being able to remember long sequences of numbers, or match dates to days of the week, are learned skills developed through practice.
The myth of photographic memory can lead to people placing unrealistic expectations on themselves or others. It's like you said about the genius myth, where parents might wonder, my child is autistic, so why don't they have photographic memory? That's because nobody actually does.
well i mean i asked some peaople, some peaople say they see pictures and videos in head like me, but most peaople sied when they think in there head and looka t memorys, they just see words in a book. while my head will store information in an odd way like it could litterly be on a random computer in a random galaxy in a random universe on a random planet.
@@NightmareRex6 Yes, but those pictures or videos are still put together from different parts, and subject to bias and external influence. I can picture things in vivid detail, but does that mean all of those details are accurate, and that I'm not embellishing or filling in the blanks?
What people don't understand is you can train your memory. Your not born with photographic memory, you have to earn it or work for it. I am good at math because I work so fecking hard at school because I'm scared of not being accepted to college or a job because of autism
The more you know 😮
For many people with eidetic or photographic memory it's not actually photographic but merely a trick of the brain used to break down information into its base form
For me it's similar to highlighting a word on a page except I don't need the highlighter my brain naturally breaks down information into what is and isn't important
Man I haven't killed any cereal in a while, it's just sitting there in my pantry chillin.
I liked how that was the clip for serial killer.
Love it bro
nice 1!
Chillin? Chillin like a villain? A villain that needs to be stopped? You'd better get back out there before the cereal kills again!
@NekoChanSenpai nah, I just checked. I think he likes the cool dark space that is my cabinet.
Telling autistic people they lack empathy can be dangerous. When I was a kid, I got told this a lot, and I would sometimes give up trying to empathise with people, because I thought I wasn't able to. When I do figure out what people are feeling, I empathise really intensely.
When someone's angy and you feel angy to for seemingly no reason because you're empathising too hard.
@@sarcastickitten6119...that's something people experience? Huh.
@@NinjaDoilyn I mean. Maybe. Personally i sometimes do. More often than not with people I'm close to tho.
That's not how it works. Who gave you your diagnosis? PS: You can't self-diagnose.
@@Jesper-bl2ns I think your in the wrong comment section buddy.
And. Who are you to say? Are YOU autistic? Can you verify that Isn't how it works?
I'm autistic, I'm also a nurse. I'm very compassionate but empathy confuses me. How can anyone know what someone else is feeling? if we put ourselves in someone else's shoes we will only imagine what WE would feel like in that situation, not what they would feel.
I agree, but I also kind of think most NTs have very similar reactions to things. I've noticed patterns with their reactions to things, and I kind of feel like they tend to have less variation than NDs do. Unless they've had some serious trauma in their past (which i also personally feel like that turns a person ND), I've found it's easy to predict NT's reactions as long as you can get in the pattern headspace. If that makes sense.
I think it is helpful to consider the difference between the use of the words "sympathy" and "empathy". No one - NT or ND can literally know what someone else is feeling, that wouldn't be empathy, it would telepathy or something. But sympathy is when you intellectually imagine how it might be for someone else, and empathy is where you feel it on a visceral level, as though it were happening to you. You don't feel what they're feeling, you feel what you would feel if what happened to them was happening to you. It is more than just imagining, which happens at an emotional remove. When you experience empathy your brain creates the responses it would have if the thing were real, and so on an internal level, you are actually experiencing it, not just imagining. For example, I once had a serious back injury. Before the injury, if someone had told me they broke their spine, I would have had heaps of sympathy - I can imagine that would hurt a lot and be awful. If I think about trying to function with a broken spine I can imagine that it would seriously limit your mobility, and you would need lots of help for daily tasks, and I could imagine that would be depressing. But since my injury? Now if someone starts to talk about a serious injury I don't think - I feel. I feel the crash of fear in the pit of my stomach. I feel the grief - grief, like when someone has died. My heart rate elevates. When I see their pale skin I know exactly how little jostling they can handle, how exhausted they are, not in my brain as a thought, but on a tactile level. That doesn't mean I would know exactly what an injured person was specifically thinking or feeling in that moment. I don't know if that description helps at all.
@@eliannafreely5725 in that case i have very little empathy but incredible amounts of sympathy
you just made so much make so much more sense in that last sentence wow
One thing I never got was the whole "People with autism lack imagination!" This is just my personal experience but every autistic person I have met/became friends with is like "Oh would you like to see my 800 page fanfic and 5 binders of fanart based on my fave show?? What's that? You want to hear about my collection of comfort OCs?? BESTIE I AM SO HAPPY"
People are like "where are you getting your ideas from?"
@@SotraEngine4 my... brain? where do other people get their ideas from??
Omg this! My neurodivergent friends have such extraordinary imaginations, including designing fictional languages and scientifically accurate alien worlds, elaborate stories and world building, etc.
@@comradewindowsill4253 lmao. The best response
@@tillandsia776 Sounds like me
With regards to that balancing thing, my best friend is legally blind, and has to deal with the myth that when one sense is weakened that must mean the others are heightened. They aren't. My hearing and sense of smell are more acute than hers. She has many other admirable traits that put mine to shame, but sensory acuity isn't one of them.
It's like people used to playing Dungeons and Dragons where every character starts out balanced level ones. While reality is more like a point based system where some just start out with fewer points to build a character. lol Einstein was a charming multi-talented neurotypical genius, and Feynman even more so, for example. Newton was probably on the spectrum. He did invent the cat door after all. ;)
I have extremely poor vision, and I believe I also have an audio processing disorder. I feel when it comes to sound levels, I can hear quite well, and I'm also sensitive to sound, in that it'll hurt for me before it seems to affect others. But I also get migraines with sound/light sensitivity, so for all i know its just a different version of that symptom. It's not that one is better cuz the other sucks. most of my life they just both suck. I'm just occasionally "blessed" (read: cursed) with being able to hear things even when people are "being quiet". can't tell you what the convo is about, but i can tell you they're having one.
@@horrortrashcanI think many people think of point buy and similar systems used in computer RPGs
The ”god evens things out to everyone” feels like it’s for people in power to not feel bad about having more. Or a excuse not to make things more equitable.
I wonder what god gives the homeless people..
Or it just reflects how naturally/inherently hierarchical people are
I hate how lacking empathy is often equated with being evil. You see it with “psychopaths” and “Narcissists”. These are disabilities but society treats them more like demonic possession or lacking a soul. It’s a completely normalized form of ableism that isolates these people and makes it difficult for them to get support for their disability.
Well, narcisits tend to hurt those around them so I think it is understandable. People don't think that because of them lacking empathy but because most of them actively hurting people, sometines looking for it. If someone was but wasn't around doing so I don't think they would get said backlash
The thing with psychopaths is that i gave watched interviews and channels where they admit to doing awful things. Sometimes they smile amd laugh too and admit they will do it again and people in the comment say how great they are for breaking stigmas
part of the ableism towards people with antisocial disorder is calling them "psychopaths". They are not inherently dangerous. They are far more likely to end up with life-long depression because they can't connect to the people around them, than they are to hurt people. It is a disability just like any other. They need help, not stigmatization.
THANK YOU
I have a partner that has aspd and doesn’t have empathy, but he’s still a kind person despite this. he has a very strict moral code for himself and tries his best to have a positive impact on others, even though the way he views himself and others very abnormally and in ways other people may interpret as bad in some way. i also have another partner (poly relationship) who has npd, he has a bit more empathy but also has strong feelings of being better than others or being worse, flipping in between. in a lot of people with npd this usually results in them hurting others but he never lets it get to that point, he’s aware of his triggers and limits and understands what boundaries need to be set in order to keep from hurting other people or them hurting him
tldr: aspd and npd (and cluster b disorders in general) don’t equate evil or being a harmful/bad person
I’m 33 and yesterday I brought up to my mom how I’ve been doing research into adhd & autism for the past few weeks and she said I was too empathetic 🤦🏻♀️ I had to explain to her that autistic people _do not lack empathy and are often highly sensitive._
She shrugged me off saying wasn’t it just fashionable now. I thanked her for suggesting that for the first time in my life I was ✨fashionable✨
She was told when I was a toddler (back in the early 90s) that I had “clumsy child syndrome” and there was absolutely no follow up. No discussion. I found this out in my mid 20s.
I can’t afford a diagnosis (€1500) and can’t even imagine being able to save up for it as I have ME/CFS and epilepsy that have me house bound and at times bed bound, sleeping for up to 16 hours a day. Disability allowance does not allow for saving.
I’m so overwhelmed.
I just want someone to take me seriously but apparently I’ve done such a good job at masking that now no one will believe me and are just irritated when I refuse to mask.
Which by the way has really helped my health. It’s so draining.
My superpower (according to my wife) is fitting all the dishes in the dishwasher. I think she just doesn't like doing the dishes, LOL.
"some of us are playing the sims" while I was playing the sims... I feel seen
I WAS JUST PLAYING SIMS
doing that rn
SAME
or the mincraft screenshot while inm playing minecraft...
The side eye I gave my screen because I was attempting to build my OCs a home during the video.
I from a very young age, have always been able to understand someone else’s perspective by standing in their shoes. High cognitive and emotional empathy. But I do have to be TOLD about it. If I just see it, I am ready to sympathize but can’t really guess at what’s going on.
Same. Without being told I can make more or less well informed guesses, experience does count as far as it goes, and the empathy is there - but without supportive information (for lack of better words) I am more confused than anything else.
is standing in someone's shoes figurative?
@@ShadowTheLight it’s a figurative expression for being able to take someone else’s perspective
@@stephenie44 oh
they want you to downgrade yourself for the sake of their silly egocentric bubble.
somone: whats your autistic talent
young me: frogs
them: what?
Young me: just frogs
them: oh...okay
Same but witch hunts (16th century ones) 😂
It always sound like the "only science and maths matter" discourse against social sciences.
The superpower requirement does explain why Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer rubs me the wrong way. Why did the reindeer bully him in the first place?
That's bothered me for decades...
To me, it has always felt like the lesson is “you only deserve to be included if you have something valuable to give”. Honestly, I still struggle to understand the intended meaning.
The supposed meaning is that even when you have a difference that can be bullied for, people would be able to turn around and accept you, maybe to the point of seeing the unique benefits of having a weird trait.
Of course, given how perfectly it maps onto “disability as superpower” rhetoric and mindset, maybe it is only that in a world where disabilities were just ignored.
That also brings up the interesting question that is “if Rudolph only had a pimple on his nose and not a lightbulb, would Rudolph have been accepted?”
You don’t understand why Rudolph was bullied?
He was bullied for being different. It’s a common problem for people that are different.
I'm 44, and when I was little it was a common belief in the medical field that "little girls aren't autistic!" I heard those exact words come out of the mouth of a lady who had been a paediatric nurse for 30 years! And my initial response when it was suggested that I might be autistic was "but I'm highly empathetic!" So there's a lot of misinformation still out there.
Thank you for this Meg.
Why would someone say that
Why would someone say that
Ngl The fact that a nurse said that is scary...
I had the same response when I started to suspect I was autistic.
Im 26 and my doctor and parents also believed girls couldn't be autistic. The conclusion they came to for why I was exhibiting so many autistic traits in early childhood was that I had come across an autistic boy at school or on a field trip and spontaneously decided to start pretending to be disabled for attention! 🤯 I partially blame this doctor for the horrible relationship I had with my parents growing up. They sincerely believed I couldn't be autistic and that I had basically dedicated my life to pretending something was wrong with me so that the people around me would serve me and take care of me for the rest of my life.
A third of that EQ test is "distractor" questions, such as the "do you dream at night" and "do you prefer animals" that aren't supposed to be evaluated at all.
idk tho. animals make more sense than humans in some ways. like, if you were to make eye contact and smile at most animals, they'd take it as a threat display, and that makes more sense to me than the alternative tbh
@@comradewindowsill4253If dogs are familiar with you they supposedly like it if you look them in the eyes.
I think it is VERY important to remember that all the percentages are based on only officially diagnosed autistics. And most people getting diagnosed are being diagnosed because they are struggeling. So all the Autistic people who are not struggeling (visibly) enough are not getting diagnosed. Therefore, a number such as 1/3 of autistic people having a learning disability, does not take into account all the non-diagnosed. I think the number would be WAY lower than 1/3, if it was truly based on ALL autistics, not just the ones that had been distressed and struggling enough to be noticed and then diagnosed.
Literally every autistic person is struggling in some way. It’s ignorant of you to comment this. Just because you don’t have a learning disability doesn’t mean you aren’t qualified to be diagnosed. Plus, masking.🤦
@@gaybatman24601 I think you misunderstand me. I agree that all autistic people have struggles. I am very much opposed to the mild vs severe view. What I meant is, that those of us who get diagnosed are often either children or those who have reached breaking point. So for example, the many women who go undiagnosed because they mask all their lives, are not part of the statistic. And so numbers such as 1/3, are based on those who have reached burnout or developed depression etc.
@@kalt1976i fully agree and see your point. Ive only going diagnosed because i burnt out badly. Still navigating at 35yo
@@etcwhatever Me too. Went all through school, university, prestitious job and having a family and no one ever considered I could be autistic and so wasn't identified until I hit burnout and c-ptsd.
I hope you get to a good place in your life
@@kalt1976 i crashed and burned during my 2nd failed engagement, an auto immune disease flare up and a demanding job. Thank you...i hope i can reach a state where i can resume work. I hope youre doing well 🤩
In my personal experience, I have noticed that I had a hard time feeling deep empathy for people who hurt me in the past or people who seem in my mind, “less deserving of it”. People have told me that that was a very cold way of approaching things. Other times I feel over empathetic in situations that other people may find strange.
Empathy takes a lot from epple who feel it. Why would we give that to someone who doesn't give it back
Not sure that anyone would find it easy to feel empathy for someone who had hurt them (if it was deliberate). So I wouldn't see this as a 'cold' way of approaching things, despite what people have told you. It actually seems like a very sensible way of approaching things. Trying to force ourselves to feel empathy for people who have hurt us is very damaging, in my opinion. It's like we are telling ourselves we don't matter enough to be allowed to set our own emotional boundaries.
Im the same but i dont have the solution for this puzzle
@@letsrock1729 empathy doesn't mean agreeing with a person it just means understanding their motivations. You can do so without getting walked on.
@@TwoForFlinchin1 I understand people's motivations almost 100% of the time, but I don't see that as 'having empathy'. Understanding their motivations is a matter of logic and rationality. Whereas, to me, 'empathy' is an emotional response which just happens (or not).
I saw a really annoying reddit thread today abt picky eaters (autistic people weren't mentioned, but it definitely felt like the elephant in the room) and the number of people who said they can never be attracted to picky eaters because they're basically children was too damn high. (in regards to your final point)
My son described his sensory sensitivity to me. To him, wet mushy foods feel like nails on a chalkboard to him. For autism, its not picky, its physically uncomfortable to eat some foods.
I am superpicky and I am so glad to have parents who never forced met to eat something I didnt want to. For example, I hate berries like strawberrys, those little seeds feel like I am chewing sand and that is disgusting. I like the taste of the berry I just cant stand those seeds. Also, there are some foods I find so disgusting, I could not even swallow them or I get this feeling when you have to throw up @.@
@@ericprice6192 for me, I'd compare it to physical pain. I'd rather eat something that burns my mouth than eat something I don't like the taste or texture of.
The more educated I become on autism, the more I (falsely) assume that others are just as educated. As you said, going into the real world can be rough. Also: do people even read books?!
😂😂😂
Yes they do, but not the people that actually need to read them.
The fascinating other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The entire dataset is biased towards rating themselves "a bit above average", even people a lot above average.
Also, I read real books. Very large, very dry textbooks, in fact. I'm working my way through "TCP/IP Illustrated" RN, which I bought a physical copy of. It's about twice as large as The Bible. Spoiler alert: it's not illustrated, not really.
I've read most of the books people pretend to have read.
Speaking as a person: no, not for decades
I was told by my grandsons teachers that he doesn't have empathy, because he can only feel empathetic if he imagines himself in that situation. Isn't that what empathy is? I have ADHD and may have Autism!
I think everyone must imagine how that person feels by imagining how you would feel.
Yes that is what empathy is :D
That's what I do too sometimes!
One of the staff members at my work started crying and i got told to go away by another staff member because i was just stood staring at her. I felt really bad for her but I never know how to react in those types of situations. Lack of the correct reaction doesn't mean you lack empathy.
Ahhhhh the 'what the F do I do' situation. I end up frozen trying to figure out what to do, do I go up and hug them, ask them what's wrong, say something different and if so what, do they want consoling.......it's too hard especially at a work place where there's different rules and expectations
One of the biggest reasons I did not think that I had autism for so long was that savant style autism runs in my family, but I'm not a savant autistic. My great Grandfather was a master painter. He got an honorary doctorate and taught in universities around the country despite not going through any education himself. My uncle and cousin are savants at programming, doing things I don't understand in places I'm not allowed to know about. I wish I was born with the savant gene, that would be awesome. Instead, I'm just a normal autistic with no special skills who can barely function in society.
Yeah. My family falls well short of savantism, but my father was a self taught statistician and computer programmer...and I’m not. To some degree I got traits from my mother, who had some learning disabilities and may be where my ADHD came from. So I have my strengths and weaknesses, but mostly I consider myself an average shlub with some weird behaviors. That last I did get from my father. Whatta rip-off!
I've felt emotional empathy so strong, I had meltdowns.
If you want to see how much empathy an autistic person has, show them a video of a child being mocked while having a meltdown.
Unfortunately a lot of people define 'empathy' to mean 'you understand and like me' rather than 'you consider my feelings to be important'.
I’d add “and agree with me” to that list
it is...strange..i think. recently, i witnessed an autistic child getting yelled at for "ruining" an event because she was melting down a bit. everyone else seemed to be "ok" with it????[doing nothing] ..i was the only one to step in and say that she was ok and that her being upset was completely fine and understandable and tried to calm her down while validating what she felt....ironically, i got in trouble then for messing up the event by messing up the timing haha [but i have a reputation for that, so i suppose i'm used to it]
"you consider my feeling to be important" is not empathy, it's compassion. Empathy is "you're feeling what I'm feeling", empathy, sympathy and compassion are not the same thing. Just because an autistic person feels bad for someone and considers their feelings doesn't mean they feel exactly empathy, it can also be sympathy and/or compassion.
I’m rewatching Bones and someone tells the main character (who is ND-coded imo) “do you ever think you come off as distant because you connect too much?”
And that makes SO much sense to me. I care so much about people and tragedies that when I talk about them I think I come across as cold because understanding all the facts is how I keep their stories alive.
It really keeps going back to if you've met one Autistic person/person with Autism, you've met one person with Autism/person who is Autistic.
The empathy and theory of mind things get me. These things were even imbedded in my diagnostic exam and I was angry about it. Neurotypicals struggle with empathy more than anyone else I come across but because I can’t dose out empty platitudes and frown the right way when someone is sad I lack empathy. To me empathy is going “I feel what you’re feeling” or “I am touched emotionally by this thing happening to another person” and I don’t see neurotypicals that do that. As a kid I would cry inconsolablly if anyone got hurt or if someone stepped on a bug or something but god forbid I don’t know what to say to someone when their family member passes. The theory of mind part is tricky cuz the parts of it that are like “I have a hard time understanding what others are thinking and intending”, like yes absolutely but the part that’s like “I understand that other people can be thinking things differently than I am” I get that stuff. The first lesson an autistic person learns is “everyone seems to be thinking completely differently than I do for some reason.” You try to explain the double empathy problem to a neurotypical and they’re not even interested in the idea. Tell me who has issues with empathy here. I think that the bottom line is that neurotypicals are writing the test and many of them struggle to listen to explanations fully and would rather jump to conclusions that make sense to their worldview so they paint negative pictures about disabled people that don’t capture the full scope of the experience and because they don’t think our experiences matter they won’t change their mind even when presented with contradictory information. Things like this make diagnosis so much harder and us literal thinkers even stop believing ourselves when we hear these misconceptions.
Brilliant comment!! Completely agree!
this. I walk the world with the attitude "I don't have to understand _why_ you're feeling the way you're feeling - but that won't stop me from respecting your feelings and boundaries." - but often, I feel like the same grace is not extended to me. For example, if I don't articulate myself well, or take 'too long' to respond because I'm still processing, many people tend to assume a bad intent / explanation for why I'm not responding the way they want / expect me to, and then accuse me of what they made up in their head.
I want to print this and plaster it everywhere I go
@@augustaseptemberova5664 this happened to me so often in school/university! I was seen as impudent when I was, quite frankly, just "buffering". On top of things like not "speaking up", speaking too quickly or not making direct eye contact. I think it's even worse if people see you as "intelligent" because you perform well on tests etc., at least in my case, it seemed to make people even more distrustful when I said I didn't understand something. They assumed I must be "playing dumb" and made up some ridiculous reasons as to why, destroying my self-esteem in the process--I thought I must be some kind of imposter who'd conned everyone into thinking she was smart but was in fact spectacularly stupid.
Absolutely. Like so much of NT communication, empathy seems to be 'vibes based' for want of a better term. It's more important to be seen to be making an effort than to actually sympathise. I see people who I know for a fact don't believe in an afterlife saying 'they're in a better place now.' Is it comforting to hear that from someone who doesn't believe it? Not to me. But apparently it's the right thing to do because 'it's a nice thing to say', whether it's meant or not. I just don't work that way.
So even though the empathy inside me is strong enough that I once cried because a kernel of corn fell on the floor and couldn't achieve it's buttery destiny with it's brethren, I don't know how to display it correctly with other people. Therefore I 'have no empathy'.
Oh my gosh yes. The lacking empathy thing. I've spent so much time of my life trying to figure out how people think and how they operate by watching and listening and questioning... That has led me to develop a deep sense of empathy because even if I'm not able to understand why somebody is feeling the way that they are I'm able to understand how they got there and I'm able to understand the emotions that they're feeling and it affects me significantly.
The theory of mind applies to everyone, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken me 52 years to discover I am autistic after telling plenty of people my issues and being dismissed because “everybody has problems”.
I don't understand autism and I am autistic...
I see it as this. Allisitic run on Windows and we run on Linux
Nobody really does. It's one of the byproducts of squashing a bunch of closely related diagnoses into one. Previously, it was hard enough, but now it's pretty much one of those good luck things.
As a Linux admin, I'm digging this. "Some of us are Android, some Red Hat, and some Gentoo, and some of us can emulate certain Windows features, but the moment you see the CLI you know you're in for an EXPERIENCE."
You know what's even more whack? We are all humans, yet we hardly understand our own psychology. Psychology is probably the least developed scientific field.
@@IaconDawnshire lol, this is exactly how I explain it to people.
Intelligence should not be just measured in math and language and logic but also creativity
Dyscalculia! I’ve told people for years I’m dyslexic with numbers but didn’t realize it was a thing! Thanks for the video❤
I’m not diagnosed with autism, but I scored high on a monotropism questionnaire and can I just say having traits of monotropism makes things so much harder than they need to be?? Like, it’s so frustrating how I can really only focus on a small amount of things. If I have to think about multiple different complicated things at a time I get so confused and overwhelmed and people look at me like I’m stupid. That monotropism stuff is no joke.
The Double Empathy Problem has it's own Double Empathy Problem Problem...
Which is that 'the autistic experience' isn't exactly universal even when you ignore that autism is a spectrum. I often find that I have waaaaay more communication problems with autists from the US than I do with neurotypical people from my own country or neurotypical people form the US.
Because I live in a country with better mental healthcare, more support programmes specifically for autists and much better general understanding of autism than in the US. Our experience of autism isn't the same and it shows.
For that matter, I find that I have an easier time communicating with neurotypical people in the same socio-economic strata as myself (low income working class) than with autists from a different one (middle class and up, in particular).
So on the whole I feel like the situation that the Double Empathy Problem describes is real, but the notion extrapolated from that that autistic people automatically have less difficulty communicating with other autists feels less certain. I would say, rather, that it's a rather obvious truth that people who have more or less in common tend to have an easier or harder time understanding each other in general and autists have social difficulties on top of that that can be lessened or worsened by that.
Oh dang, I had seen that same comedy sketch and felt so so uncomfortable but couldn’t find anyone saying the guy was being offensive. The way he asked the mom what her son’s “thing” was felt so gross, like asking what her son’s redeeming quality is.
I was diagnosed Thursday at 40 years old and I feel things VERY deeply. Almost overwhelmingly so.
Concerning empathy.
"Frieren's sharp but she can struggle to read emotions. I imagine this will cause many difficulties and disagreements on your journey. It will prove tricky, but there is an upside. She knows her weakness and will worry and care for you doubly so to make up for it."-Heiter (Frieren Episode 27)
I cried when I heard this.
About empathy: I’ve been told I need to be more empathetic often enough that it gave me pause, because I don’t think that is accurate at all. I started asking people to explain what they meant, and basically what they mean is I can’t intuitively pick up on what they’re feeling from their facial expressions or other nonverbal cues, etc. I also don’t presume to know how someone feels about something unless I’m explicitly told, so I often ask, even when other people think it should be obvious. I don’t disagree with that. However, if someone takes the time to explain how they’re feeling, or I know them well and have enough information to make an educated guess, I would say I am very empathetic, perhaps more than most people. So I don’t know, is empathy inherently tied to intuition? I feel like those are two different things that often erroneously get conflated. I find it very frustrating because I always feel as if I am being painted as an egomaniac and/or callous person, when that is the complete opposite of my personality.
There’s a great acted video out there (called “it’s just a 15 minute walk” or “it’s just a short walk” or something like that), and in it, an autistic woman is working at her laptop when a friend comes into the room and starts complaining about her boyfriend or husband, and in the course of griping about him, the friend talks about just wanting to be alone. So the autistic woman packs up her laptop, says “I hope you feel better” and leaves. On her way home, she gets a call from the friend, who accuses her of being unsupportive for leaving. She tries to explain that she thought that was what the friend wanted. It doesn’t work.
I think that’s a huge amount of it. I often think I’m not as bad at reading people as I’m “supposed to be,” but I can’t see how in the world that poor woman was supposed to know that her friend expected the exact opposite of what she said. Especially since being alone seems like a perfectly logical need to me.
I think this is why we get accused of being unempathetic. Yes, people conflate empathy with instinct, of reading between the lines. I suppose because they assume that we did read between the lines and then chose to ignore it.
ok so I wrote a long comment then accidentally deleted half of it, so here's a summary cause I can't be bothered to retype--
trying to figure out peoples intended meanings analytically is something I... well, not 'like', but something that I sometimes do as, basically, a puzzle, same as sudoku. I think a big part of NT communication strategy is this literalness vs logic filter. if someone says something which is on the surface illogical, or the first interpretation the hearer comes up with for is illogical based on the observed reality, then that automatically means the first interpretation is scrapped, and it must mean something else. this is where a lot of misinterpretations come in, because the longer it takes to come up with a solution the more potential diversions from the intended meaning there are. but there's a few different 'buckets' that things sort into.
there's the very last bucket which is 'lie', in which the statement is not intended to match objective reality but the hearer is supposed to believe it is, and that's the final bucket cause that's what you have after all else is ruled out, so that's always a possibility. excluding that though, I think there are a few things it could be; 'underspecified', where there's some prepositional phrase missing (i think this happens cause it's shorter, and NT communication favors brevity over redundancy). another possible bucket is 'synonym'. many words have multiple meanings, and only one of the less-obvious ones is accurate. finally, the last case I thought of is in a bucket I don't have a satisfactory name for, other than maybe 'idiom' or 'shorthand', where the phrase as a whole means something not derivable from/more complex than its constituent parts, more or less.
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here's the logical issue with treating 'i want to be alone' as a literal statement. the speaker approached the listener of her own free will, and began an involved rant to the listener. 1, if she wanted to be alone and the locale didn't matter, she could have just gone somewhere else with no people. 2 if she needed that particular space to be alone in for some reason, she would not have started a long rant, which necessitates the listener remain in place to listen to the rant. at most, the interaction would include a *brief* explanation of the cause of her feelings (leaving her actual feelings implied because adding both is technically a redundancy, since her tone and the situation itself would imply her feelings) a request for the other to vacate the area, and (possibly) an apology for politeness' sake. thus her words cannot be literal, which starts a process which generates possible other meanings based on a set of permissible categories.
here's some I came up with:
'underspecified' = eliding a prepositional phrase of '...by my husband' from 'I want to be left alone'. this is allowed because the context sets up that her husband is unpleasant for her to be around right now, so logically she would want him to leave her alone, so the identifying info is redundant. thus the statement is just a further expression of frustration with her husband rather than a request.
'synonym' = the word 'alone' is being used in the meaning of 'romantically single'; she is expressing a desire for celibacy because her current partner has put her off of romance, either for the moment or permanently.
'shorthand' = 'I want to be alone' means 'I want to not have to deal with other peoples' problems for a while'. the listener's presence is acceptable so long as the listener is passive, or at the very least agreeable ie, if the listener starts also ranting on a similar subject, that might be ok, because the two are not expressing opposing viewpoints, but reinforcing each others', but if the listener starts arguing with her, the listener would no longer be welcome.
finally, 'lie' = she doesn't actually want to be alone at all, but she wants the listener to believe she does, to further the impression that she is suffering, and thus to manipulate the listener into something to her benefit (at minimum giving more sympathy, but other possibilities include attempting to turn the listener against the husband for example). I prefer not to come to this conclusion unless all other options are exhausted, unless the person has a penchant for lying often, because it's often only establishable by elimination.
there are likely more potential 'true meanings' that I haven't thought of: if anyone else bothers reading to the end, and has any other ideas, please do add them, I find this interesting.
ultimately though, I figure that it doesn't matter which answer is correct, because regardless, since she's ranting (which is a form of communication that requires minimal participation of the listener), one can likely safely presume that no request is being made, and that stopping her rant to ask for clarification is unlikely to go over well given her emotional state. basically; if the listener has realised they are being treated to a rant, the script for interacting with it is to provide mild agreement and to be a passive listener, because a rant is mostly for the benefit of the speaker rather than the listener. so most imperatives during a rant can be set aside for later reflection. often these requests are things the speaker doesn't actually want, because they were speaking in the heat of the moment, and afterward don't truly intend to do much about, but if there is something that they decided they truly wanted to do and wanted your support on, it will still be executed at minimum only *after* the rant is concluded. once the strong emotions have passed, one can ask for clarification about any that one is uncertain on.
I am autistic and have little emotional empathy. When I see someone crying, I calculate my response rather than feeling their pain. I want to help, but their emotions don’t affect mine. I also struggle with cognitive empathy for people I don’t know well, as “putting myself in their shoes” often backfires. The last time I tried empathizing I got yelled at by someone I wasn't talking to. Never again. If every time I try to do something I get yelled at, I'm going to stop doing that thing. I’m not a bad person (usually), just bad at guessing feelings without knowing the person well. It’s a double empathy problem.
Regarding genius, intense special interests can make us excel. I used to have an intense interest in juggling. At 16, I taught myself to juggle five balls in three months (half the expected time) due to intense practice. This persistence isn’t genius, just dedication.
I love math because it’s consistent and logical. Proofs are like addicting puzzles. I have a math degree not because of autism, but because of masochism. I’m decent at math, better than average but not a genius. My persistence often hindered me, spending hours on proofs I wouldn't solve anyway. I learned to quit when necessary (I had to make rules for myself lol), improving my results (two tours of Real Anal makes you learn to quit). Learning to code was done out of laziness-I’m good enough, but my code is messy. We can take interest in something normally, but when we like something, we tend to REALLY like it. I don't like coding lol; it's just a tool for me.
I'm professionally diagnosed with autism, and I struggle with empathy a lot, to the point where people in my life assumed I was a sociopath. It doesn't help that I have alexithymia too. I can feel some logical empathy, albeit limited, but my emotional empathy is completely non-existent. While I don't think all autistic folks should be stereotyped as having no empathy just because I do, it is a trait that autists certainly can have.
- Luitpold, 25th June 2024.
I feel other people’s emotions in my own body. I just don’t always have the spoons to deal with them. The grocery store is especially hard, because everyone seems so stressed.
I can relate to what you said about how some autistic people feel other's emotions very deeply. I sometimes literally feel like I am absorbing any and all negativity around me. Almost as if I am a sponge for it.... I've never been a "people person" and I don't enjoy social stuff too much but when I am around a small group of people who I am pretty comfortable with I tend to be able to help them feel better, less negative. That's because I enjoy seeing the people I'm around smile and laugh so I do tend to go out of my way to be silly 😜 and go to different extremes to help a friend feel better, even if I am being the one who gets laughed at. Because I feel like laughing and being able to find happiness in any situation is very important. So I can end up feeling drained and exhausted from my social encounters and this sometimes causes me to have to isolate so I can "recharge." I'm not sure if anyone else can relate to anything I just said, and my apologies for being so long winded! My point was that I think autistic people are definitely capable of feeling others emotions very deeply and thus can be affected by those emotions.
Yeah all the bad emotions have been sticking and never leaving me so its causing me a whole lot of very badental health crisis and Im just 20 at this point
I understand.... just a little bit of advice, please be kind to yourself and allow yourself the necessary time to "recharge" or just come back to yourself.... and listen to what your body and mind are telling you. You'll know when you need to rest and go to your safe place! 😊🫶
@@A.Abercrombie-uo9ji its absolutely impossible, I refuse to be homeless again
@@draalttom844 I totally get it..... I amr just now leaving the streets for an apartment. I was homeless and on the streets for a little over 6 years, almost gave up hope. Glad that I didn't! Now I want to give back to the community that was so awesome to me, and I am not referring to the people who have homes! So you can't dwell in the past, live in the now 😀 and see the amazing things that you can do!
I have always found emotions to sometimes be overwhelming. I can feel them intensely, sometimes so much that I struggle to process them. I tend to distance myself from news stories that are upsetting, which may appear that I don't care or have no empathy, but it's more to protect myself to avoid anxiety.
Ok, the "cereal killer" at 1:33 made me laugh, a lot.
Stock video & editing is amazing, as always
Some autistic people do experience hypo emotional empathy however my autism makes me experience hyper emotional empathy, which is contrary to the stereotype of empathy in autism
I'm autistic, and I'm very empathetic. I also have undiagnosed dyscalculia. I like that just by existing, I'm somewhat disproving myths about autism.
I'm also non-binary, which once again disproves the nonsensical notion that only boys can be autistic.
There are female autistics. Most of us are/were undiagnosed but we exist.
I'm also autistic and nonbinary, and I was never diagnosed at a young age, despite being AMAB and raised that way. In fact, it went undiagnosed for much of my life. I had to actively pursue the diagnosis myself after coming out as trans, and after learning about the correlation between gender diversity and autism. In that and several other respects, my neurological history is more like someone who was AFAB, which I find oddly affirming.
I am an autistic woman with high empathy and dyscalculia too. Yes we exist and yes we are autistic
It was Asperger's syndrome that was thought to only affect boys not autism in general. Kind of a moot point at this time.
@consuelonavarrohidalgo5334
And diagnosed females are undiagnosed for fitting classic 'male' constellation rather than complying to the new 'female' limited trait slate. Or deny the very 'trait' labels as they are still applied. It exists and does not exist in whatever recipe that best silences/eradicates each subject. Simulate 'eye-contact' and the autism ceases to exist. Become a bit vocal and it is called the epitome of verb/word skills, entitling to demand/spin content to silence/eradicate.
I think the theory of mind stuff is interesting, because in my experience, autistic people don't lack this. It's kind of this interesting experience where you know intensely that you're different from other people because they tell you so, sometimes nonverbally, but you don't know *how* you're different and when you are told the differences, they surprise you, because they don't make sense and the way that you're being treated doesn't make sense, because what you're doing doesn't seem offensive to you.
Like, I learned a long time ago through things I was taught and what I read and interacting with other people and thinking about it on my own that everyone's different, but then I experienced that other people's differences are tolerated and mine aren't. I can do the same weird thing that someone else does and *they're* charming and everyone laughs, but if I do it, I get the side-eye.
And there are some times when I think something I do is normal and everyone does it and later I find out I'm wrong.
This seems like another communication breakdown to me, like with the empathy stuff.
The empathy thing. I think the biggest difficulty for that is the difference of operating systems. When people say "Im sorry that happened" or somethig similar, to me it feels like a conversational dead end, and thus feels like they dont care. I have to remind myself that is their way of showing care; I just don't understand that. To me it's natural to share something similar to show care, and to open up to more. I guess that's bc when its left like that, I dont know how or if to respond further. That has gotten people accusing me of being selfish, which hurts still, and hurt before I understood that there is that difference.
The sims 4 has a new reward trait called "practice makes perfect" that I think is basically autism. Your sim will learn half as fast as a typical sim at first, but will gradually learn faster and faster until eventually they catch up with the typical sim and surpass them at the mastery level.
I'm good at math and autistic. But I get it from my neurotypical mom. My mom who's still working head of her multinational company's accounting division at 70.
Non diagnosed, but terrible at maths and hated it at school. I could never grasp and figure out the harder stuff, I'm realizing I have a form of discalcia as I have found over the years I transpose numbers which doesn't help. I nearly quit an Architectural Degree due to having to learn and be able to do and or rearrange it to find another value, and it's something we would never use in real life! I get knowing about it and how it gets the answer but doing it nearly killed me.
Additional one: Not all autistic people are nonverbal
Also, even not all nonverbal people are nonverbal. Many austistic people who can't communicate using speech are actually highly verbal (they may love words and language and have them as a strength). They just can't communicate effectively using their mouth, teeth, lips and voice (or even body language and facial expressions).
Some have apraxia so severe they need support to learn to make their finger into a point at will so that they can communicate using gross motor of pointing to letters on a letter board.
@@ramblyk1do you mean not all 'nonverbal' are nonvocal/nonspeaking? To be 'verbal' requires skilfully manipulating language/words to effectively and clearly transmit messages. To send and receive 'nonverbal' cues which is totally different construct of the term 'nonverbal'. Or knowing how to enter/leave conversation and so on....
Gaming nonverbal to mean 'mute' is a huge assault on the communication process.
However, one can be BOTH nonverbal and nonspeaking. 😂
@@eScential Thanks for the reply.
Say there's a nonspeaking autistic person who has severe apraxia meaning they can't coordinate their mouth to make speech sounds. They understand everything that people say around them, have taught themselves to read and love language, playing with words and writing poetry in their head. But so far, they don't have any way to communicate their thoughts and feelings with their friends or family because they haven't had support to get enough control over their body to communicate through a way which is achievable for their severe motor challenges - pointing to letters of the alphabet. (they can't even reliably show their understanding through gestures or facial expressions because of the severe mind-body-disconnect they experience).
Would you consider this person nonverbal?
I believe most in the nonspeaking autistic community would consider a person like this nonspeaking, or anyone who can't communicate using speech, whether they have a way to communicate via words or if they don't yet (They don't tend to use "nonverbal")
Ed: I consider that people who understand language are not nonverbal and that there's no way to tell if a person who can't speak can't understand language. I think the vast majority of autistics who can't speak can understand language or have the capacity to understand language. But lots of people don't have access to robust communication yet. So I use nonspeaking rather than nonverbal.
Maybe there is different usage in the general autistic community online, but most of those people who describe themselves as "going nonverbal" can communicate reliably with speech at least some of the time and have access to AAC when they can't, but people who are labeled as nonverbal because of lack of speech usually don't have reliable AAC access either (because of severity of mind-body-disconnect and because the support they need hasn't been provided to them).
I'm not sure I understand what you mean with the rest of your comment.
Strawberry earrings! Were they for the strawberry moon by chance?
Thank you so much!! I actually didn't even know - that's so perfect! 🍓🌕
This reminds me of a time in college when I thought I would go into animal husbandry. One day in class, the professor was describing a disorder of pigs where the female's teats dragged on the floor. He and the rest of the male class were giggling and making side glances at me, the only female. Yeah, well, I decided to major in Spanish instead.
Yikes. That sort of thing is how I developed a lot of misandry and gender self hate. On behalf of my sex, I’m very sorry.
I feel bad for the pigs too.
😭😭😭😭
I was referred to the umbrella pathway for an autism diagnosis by my school at the end of February. They are meant to accept me onto their pathway within 4 months (by the end of June) but today I was told that the wait would be around 40 weeks! That will be December, if that value is even accurate. That's before they even start the actual assessment process.
The government really need to address the fact that diagnosis prevalence is increasing as we become more aware of undiagnosed individuals, and increase the NHS funding for assessing autism and other conditions! I read somewhere that some people have been waiting for over 3 years before getting accepted. Why is it so hard???
i was taught not to have empathy....my primary school and secondary school along with my 1st and most likely my last job have taught me that being kind is most likely will get me fucked over and i deserved it. i hate having autism
I hate NT way of thinking.
@@consuelonavarrohidalgo5334 and those fuckers expect you to get them out of shitty situations that they created
Well that is harsh but not untruthful. And it's not just for us Autistic people it's for everyone. We should never waste kindness on those who are underserving.
The difference between cognitive and emotional empathy that you pointed out is so important, I don't know how I haven't heard those terms before because they make everything make more sense. I've always flip-flopped between thinking I'm "highly empathetic" and thinking I'm a terrible person because I'm not empathetic enough, but really it's just that I have high emotional empathy and very low cognitive empathy. I also approach showing someone that I understand and feel what they feel in a very analytical way which people sometimes take as lack of empathy (like if someone is telling me how someone hurt them, then I'll start going through the thought process of why their actions are not justified and why it is entirely logical for the person to feel hurt because that's what I would do if I was the one who was hurt).
What bothers me about Matt Rife is the way he incorporates comedy into topics he has very superficial, surface level, stereotypical, or misinformed experience with. Autism is just one of those things. And so even when he conveys an idea or perspective coming from a good place, it’s so riddled with misinformation that it tends to be more problematic than productive.
the fact that he starts it with “anyone have an autistic child?” and not “anyone here autistic?” tells me everything i need to know.
This is it in a nutshell! And because they assume that the audience is as informed as they are, they just make the same cheap, stale jokes 🙄
While I am self diagnosed autistic and have a masters in mathematics, I can confirm that many of my peers in my program appeared to be neurotypical. I actually struggled to connect with many of them because of this, although at the time my being autistic wasn't on my radar. I actually find it funny considering myself "good at math," because I hit some point around the back half of my bachelor's degree where the entire thing stopped making sense to me, and I just proceeded to fake my way through the rest of the program. The stress around not knowing what is going on and constantly worrying about my grades actually severely traumatized me. Now, a few years out from graduating, I can't really do basic math, like tip calculation, without a calculator. My brain sees math and freezes. It's very embarrassing to have this happen around the people who know I have this degree.
I got to the stops making sense at about 15, which was School Certificate exams year. I failed miserably as I struggled all year but the maths teacher just seemed to focus on the good students. Ended up repeating the next year with a better teacher and a small class of people resitting. Passed barely with a C- I think.
@@BrickNewton I'm so sorry, especially because it sounds like your teacher failed you. After years of exclusively studying math (and also considering teaching math), I genuinely believe every person has a point where math will stop making sense to them, at least for a while, and their ability to push through depends heavily on the teacher. I think a lot of math teachers are really bad at patience and communicating with students who are struggling. But hey, a C- is still an amazing accomplishment when you aren't getting the support you need, so sounds like 15 yr old you did great!
@@rebeccacrow9427 thank you. I'm glad these days phones have calculatorsand theirs websites I can use to work out gradients and such. Luckily it never stopped me becoming an Architectural Designer later in ki
Life.
Not being able to express empathy very well doesn't equate to not being capable of it. While sociopaths are known to fake it very convincingly.
I had someone tell me i was rude and gross for faking autism and that i was a sociopath i was trying not to cry because i realized some people think i am faking my care for others feelings i care very deeply i just sometimes dont look the same on the outside when i go about listening and supporting i also get very excited when conplimenting people my eyes brighten up and my voice gets high and loud and people have thought that to be a facade but why would i waste my time to make you feel good about something i think is ugly it is so confusing they say be yourself and then when i am they either say stop being so awkward stop being so expressive you are acting and you are changing personality like girl you told me to i felt bad for making you uncomfortable so i tried to change my manuerisims and talking pattern to seem okay for everyone else ughhh maybe i am a sociopath😓😤
@@DexSpencer The -path suffix denotes a pathology, ie harmful to the prefix. Do you harm people's social lives?
The main times I've been accused of having a lack of empathy, I've found that it has almost nothing to do with how I'm feeling or how much I understand the situation, and everything to do with my outward responses to it not aligning with social expectations. If someone else is upset, I care, I feel vicariously distressed in a similar way to them, I want to fix the situation so that they feel better - normal empathy things. But being around intense emotions, especially when someone is expressing them intensely in your direction, maybe raising their voice, maybe acting erratically, is pretty overwhelming for me and triggers shutdown responses in an attempt to self-regulate and cope with it. So, while I might be doing everything in my power to help, I come across as very cold and apathetic, because I suppose I'm over-compensating for the elevated emotions around me. Conversely, this trait is often praised in actual emergencies when staying calm, dealing with practical necessities, problem-solving, etc are beneficial. Essentially, I treat people having an emotional crisis as just as much of an emergency, but apparently they hate that, go figure 🤷♀️ lol
I don't always pick up on when someone is upset, but sometimes I'm also purposefully not acknowledging it as I don't know if it will upset them more, or I'm not sure how to comfort them - so I go for the neutral option of 'don't make it worse', unless they mention it to me, because I don't know how to help them (which I want to do) in that situation.
ETA: I also empathise really strongly if the cause of the feelings is explained/obvious. I dwell on this sort of thing much more - say a lightly injured work colleague, I will worry about for ages - literally to the point of them/other people thinking it's odd I'm still asking if they're ok, when obviously to everyone else/themselves they are fine.
Your videos make me so happy hope everything is going good for you 💗💗💗😊
Thank you - you too! 💛
My brilliant, funny, big-hearted AuDHD daughter has made me reevaluate my own ASD non-diagnosis. I gave up because the feedback I got was like "you can't be autistic, you're too empathetic!" and other stereotypical crap. My daughter's struggles mirror mine in ways that make it painfully apparent that I should have gotten assessed about 30 years ago.
Tbh tired of hearing people defend "no, we have empathy!" Maybe some of you guys are but a lot of us aren't. Like, to the degree that it harms our life bc we can't tell what anyone's deal is. But I'm not ashamed of that? I'm low/no empathy and I'm still a good person.
This was a fantastic and well researched video. Like many of the other commenters here, I really appreciate the focus on the issue of empathy and the erroneous conclusion that autistic people have some deficit in the development of theory of mind. However, I’m left uncomfortably unsettled by the way Paul Bloom and his book were dropped into the script for this video as a kind of supporting literature in that section.
I do understand that there are considerations that need to be made in order to keep videos to a manageable length and in the context of a video like this there isn’t necessarily the space for expressing an enormous amount of nuance around every little detail; that being said, a choice was made to specifically reference Bloom after mentioning the idea that empathy can, at times, lead to negative outcomes. Against Empathy was picked as opposed to just citing an example or some other supporting literature maybe specifically related to the context of the toll hyperempathy can have on autistic people. By choosing to evoke his name and his book in particular and without context for that choice I can’t help but be immediately apprehensive given the potential for some kind of implicit endorsement of Bloom and his ideology to be lurking in there somewhere.
At the risk of grossly oversimplifying things, Bloom basically posits that emotional empathy is individualistic, myopic, and tends toward long term harm. Conversely, he constructs cognitive empathy as the ‘rational’ way to guide moral decision making because it seems to serve the most utilitarian benefit (at least according to his model). There is a ton of nuance that I’m missing out on there but that’s an okay summation of the main thesis for the purposes of a UA-cam comment.
There are many points that Bloom makes in Against Empathy that are potentially valid and should be considered but, from reading articles written by people who enjoyed and internalized concepts from it, it seems many people are coming away from Against Empathy having only understood the text insofar as ‘Emotional Empathy = Wrong and also Bad’. This limited but common understanding should concern those of us who are autistic because it underlies so much of how allistic / normative society constructs our own internal autistic experiences as somehow inherently flawed or wrong.
The article “The Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis of Autism: A Theoretical Approach to Cognitive and Emotional Empathy in Autistic Development.” is referenced later on in this video citing the article’s conclusion that many autistic people have“...a deficit of cognitive empathy but a surfeit of emotional empathy.”. If we suspect that emotional empathy is a significant part of the autistic experience then any author or ideology that essentializes emotional empathy as part of a harmful and inherently flawed system of decision making should be viewed critically by autistic people. Make no mistake, Bloom does definitely construct emotional empathy to be inherently wrong. That is abundantly clear when he says things like “When you’re done with this book, you might ask what’s NOT wrong with [emotional] empathy.” and describes emotional empathy as being “...biased, pushing us in the direction of parochialism and racism…” and as “...favoring the one over the many. It can spark violence; our empathy for those close to us is a powerful force for war and atrocity toward others.”. And I’d agree that there is a degree of truth to the harmful potential that can come from incomplete applications of empathy and of the weight that high levels of empathy can put on a person; however, if we understand emotional empathy to be so closely related to the autistic experience (as I do) then constructing it as inherently irrational, parochialistic, and potentially violent means constructing the autistic experience as inherently based on those same flaws. Sometimes it certainly can be. As many people here in the comments probably know all too well, being autistic can feel inherently irrational and violent but that isn’t all there is to it and even if Bloom’s ideology were rock solid we can’t trust allistic society to take the kind of concepts Bloom is discussing and apply them appropriately.
Additionally, this is a text that has the stink of the “rational skeptic” community about it (plus the quote on the cover in the picture used for the video is from the Daily Telegraph so that should be cause for immediate discomfort). There is a lot of essentializing and presupposing of ideas about the universality of human knowledge and what it means to be ‘rational’ in the book. While Bloom does have many interesting and valid ideas about how to avoid individualistic pitfalls in systemic policy making it is the misapplication of ideologies like his that put up so many barriers to being understood by a society that normalizes a universal, neurotypical ideal.
I’m probably worried over nothing but for me it’s an unsettling thing to see a book like that cited without much context.
A very clear and well-thought explanation of your stance on that book/author, and your concerns around it. Thank you.
@@carolinejames7257 Oh wow! Thank you. I figured people would see it as too much or silly but it felt like it was worth mentioning.
I know what you mean with the “stepping outside the bubble” thing in the intro. I was listening to a podcast that referenced someone with antivax beliefs and the podcaster said “just for the record, vaccines don’t cause autism, so please get vaccinated”. And I was sitting there thinking “No they don’t, but if they did, why would that mean you shouldn’t get vaccinated?”.
Yeah, the mindset is baffling. Like, you'd rather have a kid in an iron lung? Covered in necrosing pustules? Drowning in their own fluids? Autism is WORSE than that?
I'm not planning on having any kids, but being the parent responsible for taking care of even the most high-support manifestations of autism doesn't scare me a tenth as much as bulbar polio.
I mean that sounds like something to seriously consider if it was real. It'd be altering someone's brain and potentially affecting their quality of life. I feel like it's not that hard to see why that's seen as a negative
Part of the dilemma that sparked the anti-vax movement is that there are always some ill effects from vaxes. They can be extremely rare, but physiology being highly varied, there is almost always some risk in any medical...anything. So there will always be some calculation of the benefit-risk ratio, and this gets spun. Vax resistance also gives people a false sense of control, because vaccines are something they can refuse. But most of the malign substances we have in our bodies - microplastics and PFAs for example - we did not put there ourselves, they are environmental pollutants.
My baby photos show a rather dramatic change in my first six months of life, and at one point I looked to see if I would have gotten any vaxxes that early, because if I hadn’t, that would be a good debunking point. Well, yeah, the polio vaccine is given that early, so I couldn’t disprove anything that way. I think I got it in the second year it was made standard, and even if I thought it had something to do with my changes, I’d still be glad I got it. Polio was a devastating disease, smallpox too. And I avoided measles and mumps and rubella, but a chicken pox vaccine wasn’t out yet, so both my wife and I got that
as kids. I haven’t gotten shingles as a result, and have now got the vax for that, but my wife got shingles in her eye before she was old enough to qualify, and could well have lost her sight. She had long lasting posthepatic neurologia as it was, which was very unpleasant. I’m not interested in going back to the days of no vaxxes.
@@tinygreencreature5167 my point is that in my bubble, “autism” doesn’t have a negative valence, so I just thought “she said a wrong thing” not “she said a scary thing”.
I hate it when people step on worms on the sidewalk it's just so cruel and even though im really bad at seeing red flags in ppl I would immediately be turned off from that person a bit
Spot on again, Meg. Thank you for this. Just a thought: Maybe girls don't get recognized as well because it is expected of girls to be shy and less outspoken than boys. So, boys internalizing their struggles would be more noticeable in comparison to the stereo-type and/or be noticeable when they externalise their struggles with aggression in combination with testosterone. So the underlaying problem would be what you use as a comparison. If that comparison is stereo types, you're using the wrong measurement. I would dare to say that the ratio is at least close to 50:50.
thats only including two genders tho
I think for me, how good I am at being empathetic depends on the situation I'm in. If it's a social situation that I'm directly involved in, it can be more difficult for me to put myself into someone else's shoes, probably because my brain is so busy trying to figure out how I'm supposed to act, what I'm supposed to say, etc. If someone tells me that they're feeling bad or if it's super obvious, I'll definitely feel bad for them and try to help (though my help in those situations usually boils down to offering practical advice which is not what most people want or need to hear when they're upset) but if it's more subtle, there's a good chance I won't notice it and I may inadvertently act in a way that would be perceived as unempathetic. On the other hand, if it's an abstract situation, someone telling me about an interaction they've had with someone else, me witnessing other people's interactions without being directly involved, etc. I find it a lot easier to put myself in their shoes and imagine how they're feeling.
24:21 Oh yeah that's my perspective too. The worst place I have EVER been in my entire life... was a mental health ward. Humiliating, overstimulating, not taking care of my specific health needs, frequently experiencing sensory overwhelm. I'm lucky I was "let go" from that hell on earth. Lucky.
I feel like mental health wards and such are just made to completely destroy and dehumanize the individuals at this rate. There's nothing "individual" or "helpful" about those, most of the time at least. They just ruin people. And nobody gives a crap about the people in there, they're just dumped in there, most of the time against their will, to simply dispose of "trouble" they're causing, to not have to help or take care of them, to essentially just get away with neglect because "they're mentally insane anyway". It's so ridiculous
I'm very glad you got out of there though. Hope you're in a better place now :)
I'm autistic and I have very low empathy. Can you please not conflate empathy with sympathy and compassion? No, having low empathy doesn't make me evil or unfeeling, it's an actual autism symptom, not everyone shares it of course, but it's still a symptom. I come off as having low-empathy because my empathy is genuinely really low, not because I can't process my empathy and express my emotions. Compassion is understanding someone's pain, sympathy is feeling bad for someone's pain, empathy is feeling someone's pain. I have sympathy and compassion, but extremely little empathy. The misconception is "all autistic people have low/no empathy", not "low empathy is an autism symptom", that one is true, just not everyone has it, either having normal empathy or hyperempathy instead.
Hot take: psychopathy is not a useful diagnostic categorization. What appears to be psychopathy is far more likely a complex range of observed behaviors derived from various combinations of neurodivergence and trauma-inducing experiences.
Or put another way, it’s lazy deficit-based psychology.
Its a not a diagnosis anymore for that reason. Its antisocial personality disorder
@@draalttom844 yes. It’s better but still problematic in similar ways, I think.
@@shapeofsoup its not doctors who shame people with personality disorders
Nah. Actual psychopaths are a real thing. And it's a neurological condition of the prefrontal cortex, not a psychological one.
Now, what _is_ true is that the police and prosecutors have had a tendency to refer to people as psychopaths based on no actual assessment other than the psych they paid looking at them from a distance and going 'yeah sure', because they know public perception is heavily biased against psychopaths and it makes juries more likely to convict and judges more likely to hand out harsher sentences.
The areas of brain affected in psycopathy are not depending on trauma-induced experiences. A sociopath is made, a psycopath is born.
The lack of guilt and shame is not induced. Don't justify their actions. They are bad people knowing the suffering they are causing.
25:14 "Both underestimating and overestimating an autistic person's capacity can be pretty harmful" Oh yes, I got stories of things I experienced in my life which are pretty terrible and some traumatic, when I was overestimated and underestimated.
Even in present day, I am being over/under estimated by some individuals who control my access to things in life like money, and I'm being denied supports I want/need because I am over-estimated and also under-estimated by those who have the power to provide/deny the supports.
I could go on for hours, but I might have to stop because retelling these experiences could drive me into a meltdown, and fighting against these misjudgements also puts me into a meltdown. I wish people wouldn't misjudge me, especially those who are in charge of getting the care I need.
"We're not all learning maps off by heart, some of us are playing The Sims."
Me, whose special interest is literally the Sims franchise: "I AM BEING DIRECTLY CALLED OUT."
Okay but genuinely there are *so* many autistics in the Sims community, especially for the older games, you could toss a stone and hit like five of us, it's lovely honestly lmao.
I first found out that I was a savant before I found out I was autistic. I have the ability to learn things at faster rates and never to forget a skill that I learned. For the longest time I always told everyone that I was just a savant but people immediately assumed that it meant I also had autism. It made me mad because I was being grouped into something that didn't describe me. After coming home from my first semester of college, my mom told me that I also had autism and didn't want to tell me until I was old enough to understand.
My sister is a dentist and has some autistic patients. One was a little girl. At her last visit, she had learned that my sister's dog was very old and sick. The next time she came in she asked my sister, "Is your dog dead?" My sister has enough knowledge about autism to know that this wasn't some messed up question coming from a psychopathic little girl; the little girl wanted to know how the dog was doing, but just didn't use the same phrasing a neurotypical would use. The little cared enough about her dentist's dog to ask about it. To me, that is not a lack of empathy -- quite the opposite.
I don't know if I am autistic or not. (There are some signs I might be, but also signs that I'm just different in some other way.) But I know that if someone isn't expressing their feelings in an overt way, I will not be able to tell how they are feeling. If they do tell me, I can absolutely understand and I can feel the same thing, and then react accordingly. I can't read people very well but have strong feelings of sympathy where I can feel what they feel once I'm aware of it. This also can be troublesome though, as I'm very aware of all the suffering that happens in the world, so I feel it too and it hurts a lot to the point where I am depressed and feel unworthy of my own relatively comfortable existence.
the cognitive/emotional empathy distinction is new to me. i was just now writing about how i experience the feelings of others, and this fits exactly. i am not diagnosed with autism, but i suspect that i may be autistic to some degree. this does confirm it somewhat.
i feel the 'vibe' given off by people and spaces so strongly that i become physically disturbed. when i enter an environment that is full of people stressed by hostility from authority, i become physically unwell. when i enter a trauma healing space, i can feel that a 'vibe' of safety pervades even the air itself.
meanwhile, i am incapable of reading the explicit discursive facts of any individual person's current feelings. when someone is upset with me, i need them to tell me explicitly in gentle terms so i do not cry and become triggered. when someone is... attracted to me, i can feel that something is going on in them but i cannot verbalize even to myself what it is unless they lay it out in great detail with great care.
i think this is interesting.
Unironiclly tho when I was like 3-4 my older neighbour (she was about 8) told me that if you cut up a worm it lives and turns into two worms bc worms have multiple hearts so I spent an afternoon with said neighbour cutting up worms bc I thought I was making more and increasing the worm population till my mom found me and told me I was actually killing them, I cried a lot after that
Sometimes I think I have too much empathy, I just don't express it the same way.
Some neurotypical people will complain that you “lack empathy” when the actual issue is that they hate empathy and just want sympathy. They want to be the only one to feel the way they do and if you express empathy they will get mad that you have experienced a situation similar enough to empathise with them.
Meg, you needed a “maths” counter in the corner of this video 😂
It does sound weird to me lol but also I kinda love it.
for me it was weird at first bc the english i learned growing up was the US version but also my first language is spanish, in which it's called 'matemáticas', so also plural. why _is_ it singular in american english anyway? it's a bunch of different disciplines
@@maroonai no idea. Probably something arbitrary lol
kind of off-topic but really not. a danish person, who is into etymology of words, found out the reason americans say Zee instead of Zed is there was this nursery rhyme where they need a rhyme for Me
I just want to highlight something you said that touched me very deeply actually! When you're talking about when you have a disability and others think you have to make up for it with a special talent to make up for it to have value in this world. You put words to what I have struggled with all my life! Having autism and other learning disabilities I've struggled feeling like I have value. But as you said, you have value for just being a human on planet earth. This gives me so much to ponder. Such a short little segment but so profound to me. Would you consider making an entire video on that? I think that's such an important message that needs to be spread!😊
22 MINUTES AGO OMG !! your channel has been so helpful to me, im in the process of trying to get diagnosed and ive shown my mom loads of your videos loll
But like. Real talk?
I used to have a much better memory back when I was awful at synthetizing, and distinguishing the important ideas from the details.
I would memorize entire speeches and lessons and I was in 15 years old repeating verbatim what a teacher told us when we were 8 - because the class at 15 was on the same subject, so I could bring it back, but it would have been completely useless to me otherwise - crucially, I would have been unable to recall that lesson outside of the context of a classroom.
Now I don't remember as much as I used to, but the information that I do retain is much more useful to me in most of my life.
Big memory is a coping strategy. It's the brain trying to brute-force solve the problem of not understanding what you're perceiving. In my experience.
“We’re not all learning maps by heart, some of us are playing the sims”
Okay, flawed example, you can’t convince me there’s not many people with the sims as a special interest who can’t recreate the entirety of Willow Creek by heart
/j
😂💛
When I was reading about the monotropism theory I was like "wait, you're saying everyone doesn't work like this?" and it really explained why some people discounted me as cold or aloof in social situations. That paired with the fact that I am very much in the hyper empathetic end of the sliding scale, which makes me cry very easily at seemingly no reason which of course was a thing that would get me shamed and reprimanded, so the survival solution to that was to be very stoic and unreactive.
It's so insane that society forces you to develop survival strategies to its irrationalities and then moves on to blame you for those changes you make for other people's benefit as well. "You lack empathy and theory of mind. You're cold and calculating, and don't care about the people around you."
I’ve seen another autistic UA-camr talk about a third type of empathy, compassionate empathy. She felt she was strong on emotional empathy, good on cognitive, and had a hard time with compassionate. I feel like that’s my profile too. Some of that is the emotional empathy issue: if I empathize with someone, my emotions can flood, so I am better off staying in a state where I analyze. I don’t do “I’m so sorry” well, so when that is what someone is looking for it goes poorly. I also have this tendency to just have no reaction at times, which I think is more alexithymic or ADHD-like than autistic. But the upshot is I don’t have the best skills in this area. That’s me, mind you, not all autistic people.
the segment where you talk about autistic people being able to just BE without needing to have some sort of special talent or skill was really healing to hear. ive spent so much time thinking things like "damn, i didnt even get the 'good' version since im so sh*t at everything, and the few things im good at arent useful". and ik these thoughts come from this stigma/stereotype, bc as a child i didnt view myself this way. but yeah, thank you for discussing this, im sure there's a lot of other folks watching who needed to hear that, too.
I want to add that on the topic of "genius" or savant syndrome, I have actually been told the opposite. I had a friend who honestly thought that being autistic meant that you had a LOW intelligence level. Exact words, "you don't have an IQ of 70....." 😮 I know that he was not trying to be offensive or anything else but it did bother me 😕 and I definitely set him straight about his lack of information and own ignorance! Hence why he WAS my friend!
Well done.
A psychiatrist told me that I was “too intelligent” to be autistic because I did “too well” on the cognitive testing. I’m in my 40s and the testing is aimed at uncovering possible learning difficulties/disabilities. I have not been able to figure out what that psychiatrist was trying to express.
When I was a kid, one time I snuck away while playing hide-and-seek with my sister, and went to play at my neighbour's house. I wasn't trying to hurt her, just thought I was pulling a clever trick. When I got home I was told that my sister had wandered around for hours looking for me, saying she'd given up and asking me to please come out. When my mom found me crying in my room later that night she assumed I was feeling sorry for myself about being punished, but really I'd been thinking about how sad and lonely my sister must have felt. I still think about this all the time and even now over 20 years later it's enough to make me tear up. I hate to know when someone is feeling badly, and when I'm the cause of it, it can just haunt me.