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In college, I volunteered for a program to teach second-graders to guess what their peers were feeling based on flashcards of facial expressions, petting therapy dogs and imagining how they felt, and all kinds of reciprocal communication skill-building exercises. The program was called “Empathy Matters.” Those who had been signed up were the kids identified as having “behavioral issues,” bullying classmates, and seeming from the outside to not care about others. I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint why this apparently good cause did not sit well with me until many years later.
I am an autistic person who leans toward the “hypo” end of the empathy spectrum (yet another spectrum within the spectrum). And I am one autistic person, so please keep in mind while reading that your experience or that of your autistic loved one may vary. When I share this, people often ask how I can be a therapist if I don’t care about my clients. I am writing this to explain that that is absolutely not what this means. I care deeply; I just care differently, in a way that affords me objectivity and easy access to the ability to hold space for others’ feelings without them having to hold mine. I can and do imagine what it would be like to experience my clients’ feelings (though this is a privilege not all hypo-empathetic people have) but it is extremely effortful and leaves me drained, so I have to be careful to counterbalance with restorative activities and rest, just like a hyper-empath might after taking on others’ emotions without meaning to all day.
I find myself, as I do in so many spaces shared by allistic and autistic brains, wanting to add the disclaimer “This is meant as an explanation, not an excuse for harmful behavior,” but another part of me is angry that that doesn’t go without saying, that knee-deep in the neurodiversity movement, we’re still needing to say, “Not that autism is an excuse!”
Anyway, I always feel nervous sharing about the less fun, quirky and more highly stigmatized aspects of the neurodivergent experience but this one in particular I know is a tough pill to swallow for folks whose needs in relationships haven’t jived with the capacity of the autistic folks in their lives. I think it feels better for us to assume that someone WON’T rather than that they CAN’T because the latter is limiting. But sometimes that is reality. Let’s also remember that a “full range” of empathy is a neuro-normative expectation and holding it in higher regard than a more limited range simply because we’re taught that’s what’s good is ableism in action. But we can simultaneously hold that hypo-empathy can be a barrier to many relational needs being met, and in some relationships, that can be an impasse.
So let’s start with the basics:
What is empathy?
Cognitive empathy: The ability to make inferences about what people believe, know, and may be feeling
Affective or emotional empathy: The experience of feeling what another person may be feeling, as if their emotion(s) were contagious
Motor empathy: The unconscious mirroring of body language or facial expressions of another person
Compassionate empathy/empathic concern: The experience of feeling moved to help others
In my experience, people tend to be referring to either affective or compassionate empathy when they use the term “empathy” colloquially as shorthand.
Autistic empathy
Many online resources report opposing things about the autistic experience of empathy, ranging from “autistic people tend to have high emotional empathy but no cognitive empathy” to the polar opposite.
The reason for this conflicting information is that - surprise - there is no singular autistic experience of anything, including empathy. As the saying goes, if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.
That being said, the concept of “theory of mind” posits that autistic people have diminished capacity for understanding that others think/feel/process differently than they do. While this is often posed as a problem needing repair, I think of it as:
1) A quick way to explain one experience, in which someone has lower cognitive empathy and is more likely to be perceived negatively as self-centered, rather than disabled, and thus suffer social ramifications, and
2) ...more likely to compensate via efforts to understand intellectually what they can’t perceive emotionally by asking questions, imitating socially acceptable responses to others’ feelings, and masking.
Stereotypes and responses to stereotypes
Historically, autistic empathy has been understood through an ableist lens, leading to the generalization that autistic people could not access emotional or compassionate empathy.Efforts to teach these types of empathy through compliance-based skill-building were part of “therapy.”
In neurodivergent-affirming spaces, well-meaning advocates and clinicians often respond to outdated assertions about all autistic people being hypo-empathetic by offering alternative hypotheses, including:
Alexithymia (in short, the disconnection between emotion and bodily sensations) can look like being cold and unfeeling from the outside, but autistic people actually do feel plenty!
Actually, autistic people have so much empathy that it’s painful and impairing to our quality of life.
In reality, because there is no singular autistic experience, jumping in to “correct” negative judgments of hypo-empathetic folks rather than questioning why hypo-empathy warrants judgment at all further alienates people with this experience.
Moralizing of empathetic differences
Where did we learn that high empathy is good and low empathy is bad? Likely in part from misinformation and misuse of the word. It’s common that high empathy is conflated with compassion and low empathy with lack thereof, similar to the increasingly popular (and ableist) misuse of “narcissistic” to mean abusive. But this is a gross oversimplification that implies empathy makes or breaks a person’s character, determines their capacity for love and kindness. Are we assuming that because someone cannot naturally access empathy with ease or doesn’t have an abundance of it at their disposal that they can’t access it as needed, just with greater effort and energy? There is so much more complexity to hypo-empathy than “You’ve got it or you don’t.”
There is nothing inherently better about a person who has an easier time understanding or connecting to others’ emotions than one who struggles because it is an issue of neurology, not values or priorities.
Understanding hypo-empathy
Low empathy is not the same thing as not caring. There are plenty of ways to express care for another person that are not dependent on empathy, including:
Prioritization of justice: “You should not be in this situation; that’s not right; I’m going to help you fix this.”
Connection to personal experience: “I remember when something similar happened to me, and this is how I felt about it and/or handled it.” or “If I was in their shoes, I would not want to receive the kind of support they’re asking for, so I can’t bring myself to give it like that.”
Compassionate masking: “I think this is what would be helpful for them to hear, based on patterns I’ve noticed, so I’m going to say that for their benefit.”
There is nothing inauthentic about these alternative expressions of care. If they feel misaligned with your relational needs, it’s worth reflecting on why.
Indications of hypo-empathy
How do you know if you or a loved one is hypo-empathetic? In my personal and clinical experience, this is one of those labels that people go their whole lives hearing whispers of but not identifying with (not unlike autism itself). As with any neurotype, there is a set of indicators that can be externally observed by others (the sort of thing that ends up pathologized in the DSM) and a set that is internally experienced only by the individual.
From the outside, a hypo-empathetic person who is unmasked, either by choice or by burnout, may present with a blunted or flat affective range; have rare, incongruent, or nonexistent episodes of tearfulness where they might be expected; and appear unaffected by others’ emotions (e.g. remaining flat in response to being told their actions hurt someone). When you watch a trial on TV, for example, and you feel the defendant deserves their sentence because they “aren’t even showing remorse,” that is one of the reasons the justice system is inequitable for autistic folks - they may feel remorse without expressing it or they may not feel anything because they lack the emotional empathy but have plenty of cognitive empathy. What other assumptions do we make about people who cause harm and don’t react in the socially acceptable way?
Internally, you might be hypo-empathetic if you know the others tend to cry in response to a trigger but feel indifferent and then juggle intrusive thoughts about what that means about you. You might be hypo-empathetic if you have the thought, “That is sad” without an accompanying somatic or emotional experience of sadness. You might be hypo-empathetic if you have a desire to help or comfort someone but feel blocked by a lack of understanding of their feelings or anxiety about guessing incorrectly.
Hypo-empathy accommodations
Explain how you’re feeling and why as well as the intensity of the emotion and any of your own prior knowledge about what kind of timeframe you expect to need to ride it out; what might be helpful; and what to avoid.
Re-assure that the individual doesn’t need to understand to be supportive.This does not have to turn into you comforting the person you’re seeking support from. It’s okay to directly state that you don’t have the capacity to explain how you need them to show up, as long as you’re prepared to accept that they might do so in a way that is out of alignment with your needs. That being said, if they express distress about their inability to meet your emotional needs, you can ask to table that conversation for a less pressing moment. It is not okay, however, to assume their intention is to center themselves and “steal the show.” This is an example of a common autistic experience that leads to misperception trauma.
Clearly state expectations and avoid personalizing the individual’s need for guidance (e.g. “You just being here is enough” or “I’d like a hug right now”). Reject “If they wanted to, they would; If I have to ask, it’s not authentic” mentality.
If you are someone who has needs that your hypo-empathetic loved one cannot meet (e.g. initiation, certain types of affection) make efforts to meet them in another relationship.
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