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2:56pm May 2, 2012

extraterrestrial26:

So I follow memes like autisickitten and aspie-wolf and while I relate a lot to what they post, I can’t relate to the ones that mention being insensitive, not understanding how someone’s feeling, or being SUPER LOGICAL. I can’t because I actually empathize with people A LOT and I have A LOT OF FEELINGS. Does this make me… not autistic? Are there other autistic people out there who empathize strongly and have lots of feelings?

It doesn’t make you nonautistic. It just makes you unlike the people who fit all the trendiest theories and therefore get listened to more. (And the ones who fear not fitting the theories and do their best to blend in.) I don’t always get certain social details, but logic is quite hard for me, I have plenty of feelings, and so much empathy it can be its own form of overload. I can seem insensitive sometimes but mostly that’s a clash between my perceptual system and other people’s, not that I don’t care. (I wonder if some who call themselves insensitive are just people who’ve been wrongly called it until they believe it?) I’ve known a LOT of autistic people and people who don’t fit that mold are not even rare. I have theories as to why the ones who do fit that mold are the only ones most people ever talk about (and they even sometimes get suspicious if the rest of us are Really Autistic ™) but I’m tired and don’t have the energy to put difficult things into words.