Why do autistic people experience heightened emotions and extreme empathy
Living with autism can feel like living with unpredictable explosives. Many will be surprised to know that this is as true for the autistic person as it is for anyone sharing a bond or space with them. Self-awareness, sometimes through effective counselling, can lead to some level of understanding and predictability, but autistic people and their families will still find themselves blindsided from time to time by situations that seemed either completely benign or turned out to be outside of their control.
Autistic people often experience heightened emotions due to a variety of neurological, psychological, and sensory factors. Though Autistic people often look cut off from others lacking emotions or, alternatively, prone to extreme outbursts, they actually experience a range of extreme emotions including empathy. Here’s an exploration of why this might be the case:
Neurological Differences:
Autistic people’s brains are wired differently so that there are variations in how emotions are processed and experienced. Heightened activity in areas of the brain associated with emotion processing can amplify emotional responses. They often feel more intense emotional experiences which can be overwhelming leading to them feeling flooded and shutting down emotions to protect themselves or having seemingly uncontrolled emotional outbursts.
Hyper-Sensitivity:
Imagine having to make rational decisions and go about daily life in a fast car during a thunderstorm with 100 000 ants crawling around inside your clothes. May autistic people feel that they are functioning against this kind of back drop. The heightened sensory sensitivities many autistic people experience to sounds, movements, temperature, sense of touch etc can extend to emotional sensitivity. They often feel emotions more deeply because the intense processing of sensory information means that they are already overloading before even starting with emotional inputs from the environment they are in. This potentially makes emotional experiences, both positive and negative, more intense and overwhelming.
Alexithymia:
Alexithymia, a condition where people find it difficult to identify and describe their own emotions which is not unusual among autistic people. This doesn’t mean they feel less; in fact, they might feel emotions very strongly but struggle to articulate them leading to an internal buildup, which might be experienced as overwhelming. The result is once again the potential to either shut down and withdraw emotionally, or have an outburst, both of which my seem inappropriate to the situation.
Empathy Variability:
Autistic people often feel the emotions of others deeply even if they struggle to understand the social context or nuances behind those emotions. While there is a stereotype that autistic people lack empathy, many actually experience hyper-empathy where they experience empathy to an overwhelming degree. They might be highly attuned to the emotions of others and feel those emotions very strongly to the point of experiencing distress from the pain or suffering of others.
Autistic people often have a heightened sense of justice and injustice as a result leading to outbursts of emotions seemingly unrelated to their experience or disproportionate to what others are feeling watching the same film, reading the same book, playing the same video game etc. While cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another person’s perspective) might be challenging for some autistic individuals, affective empathy (the ability to share another person’s emotions) can be very strong.
Difficulty Regulating Emotions:
Emotional regulation can be more challenging for autistic people. They might have difficulty managing or controlling their emotional responses, leading to more extreme expressions of emotion. This can manifest as intense emotional reactions to situations that might seem minor to others.
Social and Environmental Stress:
The autistic person will typically want, and thrive on, routine and predictability. Constantly navigating a world that feels overwhelming or confusing can lead to higher baseline levels of stress and emotional intensity. Everyday interactions like asking for a price on an unmarked product, crowded public transport, someone double parking and holding up traffic etc that others might take in their stride can be exhausting and emotionally taxing. This becomes exaggerated when sensory discomfort is combined with forced unforeseen social interaction and unpredictable outcomes making scenarios like delayed trains extremely difficult to manage.
Passion and Intensity in Interests:
Autistic people often have special interests that they pursue with great passion and intensity. This can offer the autistic person a safe space where they have knowledge and can organise their life experience. It also offers a point of contact and potential interaction with the autistic person however it can be a two-edged sword as there can be very strong emotional reactions related to these interests. Devaluation of or deprivation of access to these interests can lead to negative outbursts or total loss of trust and withdrawal. The deep engagement with their interests can also heighten their emotional experiences when they achieve successes or face obstacles in these areas.
Understanding these aspects might help you live with autism whether you are a significant part of an autistic person’s life, suspect that you are on the spectrum or are autistic yourself. Accommodating the needs of autistic people by providing support and creating environments that meet their sensory and emotional needs is generally easy when approaching it from a place of understanding that each person is unique, respecting autonomy and boundaries and using compassion.
