Beyond the Stereotype: Understanding Autistic Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings. It has two main parts:

• Cognitive empathy: recognising what someone else might be feeling.

• Affective empathy: actually feeling that emotion with them.

The term comes from the German Einfühlung, meaning “feeling into.” It was introduced to psychology by Edward Titchener in 1909, and since then empathy has become a cornerstone of how we define human connection.

Do autistic people have empathy?

Yes. Absolutely, yes.

The idea that autistic people lack empathy is one of the most damaging myths ever attached to the community. It arose from observing autism through a neurotypical lens, one that assumes there is only one right way to show care, connection, or concern.

Autistic empathy often looks different, not absent. It might be quieter, deeper, or shown through problem-solving rather than soothing words. Many autistic people feel emotions so strongly that it becomes overwhelming. They might freeze, withdraw, or appear distant when in fact they are flooded by emotion.

My experience

When I was younger, I was often told I had no empathy. People called me selfish or cold, and it hurt deeply because I knew how much I felt. I could sense other people’s moods before they spoke. If someone was in emotional pain, I would feel it in my own body.

I didn’t realise that empathy can be invisible if it doesn’t look the way people expect. Only later, as a therapist and as someone who discovered I am autistic, did I understand that my empathy was never missing, it was simply misread.

When I found the concept of the double empathy problem by Dr Damian Milton (2012), it was a revelation. It explained that empathy difficulties are not one-sided. Misunderstandings happen in both directions between autistic and non-autistic people because each interprets social cues and emotions differently. It isn’t a lack of empathy, but a lack of shared language for empathy.

Different kinds of empathy

Autistic empathy can take many forms.Some people feel deep emotional connection with animals, objects, or the natural world. Others feel intense care for fairness, justice, or truth. For some, empathy for people can be complicated, it may feel unpredictable, confusing, or unsafe. And that’s okay.

Empathy doesn’t always have to look human-to-human: feeling sadness for a wilting plant or crying at music are valid forms of emotional resonance.

Research shows that autistic people often experience hyper-empathy or heightened emotional contagion (Smith, 2009; Rogers et al., 2007). They may also score high on intuition and emotional attunement when measured through non-verbal or sensory forms of empathy (Bird & Cook, 2013). Empathy can be so intense that it leads to exhaustion or shutdown- what we sometimes call empathic burnout.

In this way, empathy becomes both a strength and a vulnerability. It can fuel compassion, creativity, and deep insight, but without boundaries or recovery time, it can be overwhelming.

Part of the difficulty lies in how our society has come to perform empathy.Neurotypical culture often assumes empathy looks like eye contact, nodding in the right places, smiling or crying at appropriate times, or saying certain comforting phrases.These are signals of empathy- but not empathy itself.

An autistic person might show empathy by researching ways to help, by fixing a problem, by sitting silently beside someone, or by sending a message later when their nervous system has calmed.They may not mirror facial expressions or tone, not because they don’t care, but because they’re processing deeply, often feeling so much that expressing it outwardly is difficult.

The trouble is, when empathy doesn’t look like what society expects, it’s dismissed as absent. But empathy isn’t about choreography; it’s about connection.

Why the myth persists

Historically, autism research centred on boys and was framed by non-autistic observers who mistook difference for deficit. When autistic people didn’t display empathy through facial expression, eye contact, or words, researchers assumed it wasn’t there.

The double empathy framework helps us see that mutual misunderstanding sits at the heart of this. Autistic people often read autistic cues well; neurotypical people read neurotypical cues well; problems arise between the two, not within one side.

Empathy also depends on safety. When autistic people are overloaded or anxious, empathy may shut down temporarily as a form of self-protection. That’s not absence- it’s self-regulation.

Rethinking what empathy means

Empathy is often treated as a moral virtue, but in truth it is a human variation. Some people feel it easily, some feel it selectively, some find it painful. A few autistic people genuinely do not experience empathy in the usual sense and that’s okay too, it doesn’t make them cold or less human; it means their emotional wiring works differently, and understanding that difference is part of compassion.

Empathy should not be a performance test. It is personal, contextual, and shaped by nervous systems, not social scripts.

Building mutual understanding

• Listen without assumption. Don’t decide what empathy “should” look like.

• Accept difference. Autistic empathy may be expressed through action, silence, or shared interests rather than facial expression.

• Offer recovery time. Deep empathy can be draining; solitude is not lack of care.

• Challenge the myth. Correct the idea that autistic people are unfeeling- they are often the ones feeling so much that they are overwhelmed.

• Model compassion. Empathy grows where it is given room to exist authentically.

  
  

In summary

Autistic people are not robots! Many are some of the most intuitive, emotionally attuned, and compassionate individuals you’ll meet. The difference lies not in capacity, but in translation.

When we broaden what empathy looks like, we find that it was never missing, it was simply waiting to be recognised.

Eve True is a psychotherapist, trainer, and advocate for those who’ve carried silence too long. A late-diagnosed autistic woman, she combines lived experience with professional insight to help others understand the inner world of neurodivergence.

Through her CPD training, Eve helps therapists, educators, and organisations recognise and support autistic people, especially girls and women whose needs have been overlooked or misunderstood for far too long; her work invites people to move beyond labels and stereotypes, and toward empathy that honours difference rather than corrects it.

Eve’s broader mission is to change how we see neurodivergence: not as disorder, but as human diversity- a vital part of what makes us whole.

Website: www.evetrue.com

Socials: @evetrue (TikTok)

| Eve True on LinkedIn

References (short list)

1. Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society.

2. Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). Mixed emotions: The contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism. Translational Psychiatry.

3. Rogers, K., Dziobek, I., Hassenstab, J., Wolf, O. T., & Convit, A. (2007). Who cares? Revisiting empathy in Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

4. Smith, A. (2009). The empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism: A theoretical approach to cognitive and emotional empathy in autistic development. Psychological Record.