Hi friends,

Spoiler alert for the classic Christmas film ‘The Snowman’!

I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy. I never thought of myself as an empathetic person until fairly recently. Instead, I saw myself as someone who was quite detached and unable to connect with others and their experiences.

That’s not really the case though, when I think about it.

At present, I’m really trying to unlearn a lot of the frankly toxic theories I consumed about autism when I first discovered my own neurodivergence.¹ You know the ones; the ones that start with ‘If you’re autistic, then you can’t [insert something random here]’

I won’t repeat them here because they’re a bit upsetting, although I find the irony very funny that the things some people think about autism are absolutes and seem very black and white… where have we heard that before?

One of those toxic theories is the one about autistic people being unable to experience empathy.

Speaking for myself², this has not been my experience, yet I’ve only realised that this year, having always believed that I didn’t really have much empathy for others. This belief was reinforced when I read some books about autism around the time of my assessment.

Growing up, my sense of relating to others and their lives used to swing wildly between feeling very empty inside, and feeling so much for the other person that it sent me spinning (figuratively, although yes, I did spin in circles frequently as a child. Obvs.)

Picture this, a child who would sob to hyperventilation at the end of the Christmas film ‘The Snowman’.

“HE’S A PUDDLE! WHY DID HE HAVE TO MELT?!”

Yet also a child who found it impossible to understand why another child was crying. I thought it was pragmatism.

“Why are you crying about dropping your dolly on the floor? Pick it up, give it a wipe on your clothes and move on like the rest of us.”

Inevitably, as I realised that I felt absolutely nothing for others in certain situations, the more it dawned on me that this wasn’t necessarily considered ‘the norm’. When my self-awareness developed as a teenager, I worried I wasn’t quite ‘right’. I didn’t know what that meant, only that it was a ‘bad thing’ and I hated myself for accommodating a ‘bad thing’. You see, I thought I was somehow choosing to be this way.

I’ve written previously about my experiences with alexithymia, which try as I might I can never spell correctly on the first try. This is what I incorrectly assumed was my lack of empathy. Rather than not feeling anything for others, I simply could not tell what I was feeling.

This is why a lot of the times when I cry, I have no idea why I am crying, because I don’t feel that mid-level emotion of ‘sadness’ or ‘cheerfulness’ a lot of the time.

I’m either a kind of ‘blah’ or an ‘absolutely ecstatic, raging or severely depressed’ kinda person. Not because my moods swing like that, but because I struggle to connect with what I regard as mid-level emotions. A bit sad, or contented etc. I definitely experience those, because my body registers them and reacts, but I just don’t compute it very quickly. I can, however, detect the extremes of emotion fairly easily.

Days later I will typically look back at an incident and realise ‘Oh I was a bit upset the other day, wasn’t I?’

I think it extends to my empathy for others and the emotions I experience when feeling empathy. If anything, I feel like I have too much empathy. Running out of places to keep my empathy. My empathy cuppeth runneth over-eth, as it were.

I cry at the drop of a hat (or a dolly) when someone in my presence is upset, or if I read about something terrible happening in the world. Sometimes I jump around and can’t sit still when someone else is experiencing joy. It’s these things I do that tell me - oh I must be feeling this way or that.

I have always felt for other people, it has just taken a bit of self-discovery to realise it. Sometimes I have no physical reaction, and I don’t register anything in the moment, but days later I will recognise that I felt awful for that person, or happy for such and such. It isn’t a sense of nothing, it truly is a delay in processing for me.

I wonder what alexithymia is (oh my word I spelled it correctly first time, get in). Is it the mind getting overwhelmed with all the processing it needs to do when confronted with an emotional situation in the moment? Is it some form of shutdown?

I’ve no idea. That’s one for an autism researcher, not the likes of me tapping away on a laptop with a ‘Free Deirdre Barlow’ sticker on it (which, when you think about it, is another demonstration of empathy. Free the Weatherfield One!)

All I know is there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to be, and the way you are as a person can keep on changing and evolving. You can experience empathy and not realise it. You can experience no empathy whatsoever. Doesn’t mean you’re a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person. Those are absolutes. We like them to exist, but in this instance, they don’t. Thank goodness for that.

What springs to mind when you think of ‘empathy’? Let me know in the comments 😀

Wavy News

• Firstly, thank you for sticking with me during this time of change. Here’s 10% off my Etsy shop items to say thanks. It’s literally code ‘THANKS’ at checkout.

• The new zine is coming along nicely. I’ll do a front cover reveal soon. If you want to be amongst the first to read it, sign up to my snail mail club who will receive it at the end of August/beginning of September, alongside a new sticker, print and handwritten letter. (If you subscribe for a whole year, I’ll send you a birthday card).

• I received my first commission for a scribble! Thank you to the kind person who ordered it and sent some lovely feedback:

  “I love my personalised illustration.
  What a special thing to have!”

  I’ll draw anything as long as it isn’t hateful or rude. In this instance, I was given a prompt about nature and writing, so I drew a magpie holding a pencil.

  

• My Patreon membership is growing! I’ve just written a massive post about the websites I use to make my small creative business happen, and I’ve also sent them some exclusive, unpublished poems. You can get involved here.

That’s all folks. Have a lovely week and see you next Sunday.

Take it easy,

Ren

PS - you can reply to this email if you like, I love to hear from readers!