Male Centric Autism Narrative and Undiagnosed Autistic Women

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Hey! Empathic, naive, hypersensitive, female, autistic, That's me! I'm also diagnosed.

I think I'm one of those you are talking about. Except that I've been diagnosed.

I am extremely empathetic, definitely autistic (I've been evaluated twice - well three times but the first one came back with complete nonsense (really nonsense like saying I cannot do any math while I was doing calculus), was very naive for a long time, I'm much less so now than I was. I however don't have much anxiety and never have - I suspect I was identified early enough that my approach of "logic!" didn't start having problems, and I could develop it into more organized analyzing of how people think as a young teen. (And definitely wasn't girl-ish). Oh, and I'm extremely hypersensitive to everything.

However even with the lack of anxiety, the first diagnosis I was given was social anxiety.

I was identified at age 13, because I was being bullied so much. Trying to react to others bullying me was why I was diagnosed, not because of me doing anything that caused teachers to suggest an eval. I had teachers suggest ADHD before this point, but that was generally because I was so bored in their classes and my pediatrician could trivially say I didn't have ADHD.

Because you seem to want information about people like this:

As for how I act as highly empathic: I feel other people's upset. I end up curled up crying because others are upset. (Of course, combining this with alexithymia is interesting, and alexithymia and living in a house with someone who is suicidal while being like this is especially interesting; I could only leave bed if she was out of the house but couldn't identify any of what was going on in the moment.).

I put more into making things better for others than anything for myself. I do this to a problematic degree because I end up starting bothering them sometimes when they're close enough to me as I can't identify that it's getting irritating. I also end up not doing enough for myself. But I make things better for others and doing so makes me feel better.

When someone is sad I'll either comfort them or end up crying because it hurts so much that they're sad. Or end up doing both. Or end up doing both and feeling better because I helped. Or because I don't know them at all and won't go help a stranger feel horrible and not be able to function and end up stimming a lot more because of trying to regulate my body at all in other ways and still not manage to keep functioning very well.

As for the crying for toys getting hurt and unable to watch sad movies stuff - I still cry or meltdown when my electronics get hurt. I personify my electronics and can't deal with them getting hurt. A tiny scratch you can't see on a tablet screen is not something I can handle - I won't be functioning for at least an hour. It took me until I was about 15 to be able to read a book where a character dies at all in it, no matter how minor. I still have a hard time with it sometimes. If a character died of natural causes in a book when I was 10 I would end up crying in my parents arms unable to sleep without crying myself to sleep.

My behaviors show empathic a lot. It's really easy to see someone curling up in tears because someone in the next room is stressed over a paper, and when I can't handle that stress I will end up in tears. I was there this morning, crying on my bed wrapped up in a blanket and I couldn't tell you what the breaking point was.


I however also cannot identify the difference between tired and upset, the difference between excited and happy, what my own emotions are to any meaningful degree. I have been told all sorts of social "rules" which I don't even remember because they make no sense to me. I am socially someone who doesn't interact with people because I don't want to offend people, but I'm very not knowledgable of any of what I should do. I almost was kicked out of a high school because of not asking for help because I didn't know how to or to ask for help.

Socially I suspect what I look is immature.

^ That is very interesting to me.

Thanks.

i think i wasn't diagnosed as a child because i am naturally quiet, so every personality characteristic that i have is not readily visible.

I think there's a big difference between self-reports of empathy and what the NT world describes as empathetic behaviour. Curling up crying in the next room because someone else is upset isn't how I would define empathy. For me empathy is expressed with action - and that's not an empathetic action. If I were the person stressed out about something in the next room your retreat to cry under the blankets would seem extremely selfish and add to my stress. That ain't empathy.

It seems to me that the way autists describe themselves as empathetic doesn't much match 'real world' empathy, so I'm not sure if this is really a disqualifier.

I think even males who fit into this type would be under diagnosed. i'm a male who would fit this kind of description, and while my late diagnosis was the only option as aspergers was not a thing when I was a child, I wonder if things would have been different if I was a child today.

I was a very quiet, timid child, I never wanted to upset anyone so never displayed any disruptive behaviours. I struggled my whole life but because I was so hypersensitive I couldn't even admit that to anyone, I was too uncomfortable with people knowing how I feel. As I got older I went through a process of trying to appear I was they way I was through choice, difficulty making friends - i'm going to pretend i'm just a loner who doesn't need friends, lack of relationships - i'm going to pretend i'm asexual etc. so because I was never any trouble at school or at home, and when I started experiencing problems later on I would not let anyone know they were problems, there would probably never have been a moment that would have justified an assessment.

I would agree that girls who fit this type are even more likely to fly under the radar, as quietness, sensitivity are more expected of girls.

I think the future understanding of autism is going to be fascinating. My personal theory is that the current understanding is (understandably) shaped by those most problematic and therefore likely to end up under clinical observation. But that this group is overrepresented, and that the underlying pathology manifests in a variety of different ways (perhaps just simply by interacting with different personalties) that are currently under diagnosed. It will be an interesting situation politically, where to draw the line on what counts as autism, the medicalisation of personality etc.

I just looked up the symptoms of Rett Syndrome and I don't think that's actually what she has, though it might be. Apologies for accidentally misleading people. I just know she has a genetic condition rather than idiopathic autism.

If these children can assign thoughts and feelings to others such as characters in movies or toys, then they have some degree of social cognition and empathic response, which means that they have milder social traits of autism than other children who don't show these behaviors, so it is reasonable that children with milder autistic traits and lack of behavioral/funcitoning problems wouldn't be noticed or assessed or diagnosed as frequently than others.

I wouldn't consider crying over all kinds of things to be showing empathy, they seem more like emotional dysregulation.

As far as I'm aware, most autistic children have a lot higher degree of social cognition than presumed.

Since toys don't actually have emotions, of course not, but it's "empathetic". I'm getting really annoyed with this conversation.

It seems what op is describing is some autistic children having milder social or general autistic traits than others, having less behavioral problems, and having less functioning problems, so they are not being diagnosed as early as others. This seems just like spectrum of autism. If a child is not presenting as autistic early, then that child won't be noticed, assessed, or diagnosed early according to current diagnostic practices.

No, that is not what I'm saying. They aren't more mild overall, they are actually more severe in some ways, they just present differently. I'm talking more about a personality difference than an autism difference, but keep in mind both groups here are on the mild end. You are just reading cognitive empathy when I meant affective empathy.

Last edited by Ganondox on 04 Jan 2015, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn't talking about showing empathy, I was talking about being empathic. They're different statements to me.

As for showing empathy, I do that too, its just much harder to describe because language is hard. But what I'm describing is not emotional dysregulation. It's that I feel other people's emotions, and when you're living with a household of people who are depressed, yes, that leads to crying at times that people don't understand.

I don't understand people's emotions, I can't read facial expressions and tell you what emotions they are. But I feel emotions and they become mine. And I react as if they are my emotions. This happens whether they're positive or negative emotions. People being happy makes me happy. People being sad makes me sad. It's another level of things being thrown at me, is what it feels like, and when I'm alone is the only time that I can just be separate from all the stuff coming from everyone else.

Showing empathy, showing compassion, that's things that I don't know what is abnormal, or what is worth mentioning, to the point where I struggle with describing it. I just assume everyone is like me to the point I cannot describe what I am like. I can't pull words out without questions to answer. People use those words to describe me though and I assume they're accurate, if its so frequently used. I however wasn't thinking that was being described, and don't find that as interesting to describe. And I don't have memories of when I was young to remember how I developed skills.

I do know that by the age of 3 I was the politest kid in preschool. I kept getting awards for it.

I know, for me, I always get confused by this concept of empathy and social cognition.

Let's take an example. I recently watched the Mockingjay movie with my daughter and started to tear up when the people in the hospital (in District 8 ) used the three-finger salute (as a sign of dissent against the capitol). This happened as well when watching Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

Was I feeling the emotion of a singular individual? I don’t believe so. Was I feeling the emotion of the group? Perhaps. Or, was it simply the storyline with the background sound track that overcame me? I have no idea. But I do know these types of scenes always cause me to tear up.

Does that qualify as having some degree of empathy and/or social cognition?

That might be another interesting thing about me - I wouldn't react at all to a situation like that movie. It's a movie, its just a story. That doesn't have emotions. I wouldn't relate to their characters, or their groups, or their anything. Horror books don't scare me, horror games don't freak me out. Everyone can emotional after something, and I'll just be like "I don't know why". With the exception of death. Death is the only thing I react to in stories of those sorts of things and I reacted to that one extremely young and extremely strongly.

But what is this presentation more specifically?
I am still unclear about what this kind of girl is supposed to present like.
It seems that if they had empathy that they couldn't show in recognized ways, then they wouldn't present much differently from other autistic children who lacked the empathy in the first place.
If they showed normal empathy at a younger age, but fell behind in understanding others as they and their peers got older, then it seems that is the autism spectrum effect, that they have more mildly affected socially and they are noticed as autistic later.
If they were polite, obedient children without functioning problems beyond normal childhood problems, but appeared shy and submissive and not obviously lacking in some social/communication/cognition area, then adults would think they were shy and submissive, but otherwise normal.