Hi all - found something interesting...

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For those who like real names, I'm Alice Suttie., however I use Dragonwyst as a nick all over the internet.

My youngest son (now 9) was diagnosed with Aspergers about 2 years ago. My husband ( ?undiagnosed Aspie?) pointed an article out to me on the internet today, with the title of "A Radical new Autism Theory" published on The Daily Beast. I'm sorry I can't put the link in, but I haven't been here long enough and made the requisite number of posts to be declared legit and not a spammer, so you'll just have to google it.

I was wondering if anyone else had come across this or if anyone knows anything about the research/observations mentioned in it.

What intrigues me is that I see this empathy/compassion in my own son and I note others have mentioned similar things here. However, my son cannot distinguish between tears of rage and tears of sadness, for example. This has led me to wonder if there is a possibility that the high functioning end of ASD is a bit like synesthesia - where people have mixed up senses and hear in colour for example. I wonder if there is that same difficulty in distinguishing one emotion from another, rather than the lack of appreciation for emotion. My son is extremely sensitive to being yelled at or to others being yelled at. He shows great compassion and concern for babies that are crying.

The trouble with emotions is that feeling them without context makes them very hard to distinguish from each other. Like many others with ASD, my son struggles with auditory processing and verbal content is often the very thing that gives context to feelings.

What do others think or know about this?

hello alice, and welcome to la cosa aspie nostra
when i was a young'un, i was a clueless clod. several decades later, i find what you say reminds me of myself, in that beyond a certain complexity of emotional variety, my brain gets confused and they all meld together, like i have been so angry at something that i have cried. i have stendahl's syndrome so beyond a certain intensity of emotion [from seeing beautiful artistic works like musical compositions, or from seeing magnanimous human behaviors], i choke up and get flushed and short of breath and lose the power of speech. i often lose it when i see somebody else hurting. i can't stand to see suffering. i can't stand intense emotions in other people, and when i feel them i feel i am burning up inside, a most unpleasant feeling. i hope that all made some sense.

Concerning that article, it kind of makes sense to me. What makes even more sense is if it's a combination of "not feeling enough" and "feeling too much." Like with sensory issues, where the tuning isn't quite there, and some things are overwhelming and some things just don't make an impact.

If that is the case, then making emotional adjustments could make a huge impact. Like not making your kids wear shirts with irritating tags sewn in, if there is an emotional trigger, avoid them until your child has mastered less triggering situations, and help him or her to transfer those skills to harder relationship issues, or make corrections to make it easier to handle. Like talking in a car, where there is less eye contact expected. That totally makes sense to me.

I'm glad that the misconception that people with AS lack empathy is slowly dying, however I don't think it's correct to assume the opposite, that those with AS are extreme empaths, is correct either.

It's true that AS, at it's root, is a processing disorder, and people with AS may, at one point in their life, have issues with hypersensitivity, but this hypersensitivity is usually limited to touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. In addition to that, many people with AS, either as children, and sometimes into adulthood, need a lot of alone time, or relatively so anyway, because social situations are just stressful, not so much because we are in tune to the emotions of others, but just because it takes a lot of energy to process everything that's going on and we generally need to be alone to collect and organize our thoughts.

I'm sure there are some people with AS who are extreme empaths but I don' t think more so than those in the general population, and I'm sure some people with AS lack empathy as well, but again, I don't think more so than the general population.

I think most people with AS have a level of empathy similar to that of NT's, but there are a few things that might inhibit expression of that empathy.

1. The person with AS might not realize a situation warrants empathy, due to miscommunication issues.

2. Many people with AS (not all) are not naturally expressive, and may have mild facial hypotonia or a naturally monotone voice.

3. The person with AS may understand the other individual is upset over something but may not understand why they are upset over it (much as NT's don't understand why people with AS get upset over certain things) and may act much as an NT does towards someone when they feel a person is over-reacting.

I do believe people with AS are naturally more altruistic...at least as children, than NT's. I think children with AS generally have a desire to be good, and do what they have been told is the right thing (children with AS often cling to very literal concepts of right and wrong). This does not mean the child minds all of the time. A child with AS may not mind for various reasons, but the point is, they have the desire to cling to particular ideal convictions instilled in them.

This is interesting, sure resonates with me anyway. Here's a link to a more detailed article about the Markrams' research.
Global Family Doctor
I think this presents some interesting evolutionary questions.

thanks for your thoughts on this. It will be very interesting to see what gets discovered about autism over the next few years now that there is so much focus on the topic.

I agree very interesting topic. I was told when my son was born that he would have no capacity for empathy ...but

while going through my divorce i was crying one day when he came home he asked why and I said mommy is just sad, everyone gets sad sometimes.. He hugged me and went to his computer and then he peeked around the edge and said

"I just feel so bad for you mom"

was it empathy? I think for sure it was a level of empathy, he felt bad that I was sad... I'm not sure that he could have (especially at this age) understood the sadness unless he'd directly experienced it himself but he definately did sympathize with my being sad.