Technicolour Emotions

On Hyper-empathy and Alexithymia

I’ve read a lot of things about emotions, in my life. I mean, as a psychologist but also clearly because emotion has been something that has been a big part of my life. Or, rather, big emotions have been a big part of my little life.

I never equated this with autism until I read about hyper-empathy. Prior to that, the general understanding of autism is that autistic people have an ‘empathy deficit’ (don’t you love that deficit language). And that is generally what is portrayed in representations of autism - that autistic people are unemotional. Driven by logic not feeling. That, I think, is still the prevailing expectation of autists. But more recent research has shown that simply is not true. This understanding has, in fact, completely changed. While there are some autistic people who don’t have a strong emotionally empathic response - there are others who feel empathy very deeply.

Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash