Can You Have Too Much Empathy?
Turns out my being "a radio receiver for everyone else's emotions" tracks with my mild autism diagnosis.
Just a quickie about my evaluation through The Sachs Center, which I was able to complete a week after my first session was interrupted. I received my results, and it turns out I’m at the low end of the autism spectrum, Level 1.
I’m not surprised, not at all upset. Instead, I feel validated, relieved, and hopeful that it will help me be more accepting of my differences—and maybe lead me to new strategies for navigating life as a weirdo among normies. It’s sometimes so useful to be able to name something, especially when you’ve had long-held suspicions about it.
I’ve begun delving into the specifics of the evaluation and the recommended literature. I don’t see myself seeking any kind of specialized treatment, but, as was recommended to me by the neuropsychologist who tested me, I’m considering finding a therapist trained to work with neurodiverse patients.
One thing that came up in our conversation was what I now understand to be my “hyper-empathy.” When the neuropsychologist noted it in my results, I asked if that was unusual; I’d always had the impression that autism made people somewhat unfeeling, or impervious to other people’s emotions. He said that’s true in many cases, but that, especially in patients who had a fair amount of childhood trauma, it can go the other way. He explained that this is an aspect of autism where new research is changing the way the field thinks about and evaluates patients.
When he suggested choosing a specialized therapist, I immediately thought of a prior shrink who pointed out that I was like “a radio receiver for everyone else’s emotions,” and tried to help me become less like that. I think it will be interesting to find someone who isn’t so much interested in making me less that way, but instead in helping me understand that part of myself, and how to work with it, not against it. (I have no idea if that’s even a thing, or if I just made it up, but I like the sound of it.)
It also made me think about the many different lenses through which I’ve tried, throughout my adulthood, to understand and treat this part of myself. Is it that I’m a co-dependent? An “Al-Anonic”? A people-pleaser? A busybody? “A radio receiver for everyone else’s emotions,” traumatized by shit that went down in my childhood? A submissive personality? Slightly autistic? All of the above?
Considering these many lenses contributes to my skepticism about this latest one. There’s been quite the rash of diagnoses lately, which leads me to wonder whether autism and neurodiversity aren’t the latest flavors du jour, and whether a few years from now there will be another, possibly opposing school of thought that catches on. Of course, it’s also quite possible that instead of it being a case of over-diagnosis, new awareness is just bringing more people—like me—out of the woodwork.
In any case, I don’t see this diagnosis significantly changing my life, but who knows? I’m just beginning to make sense of it all, and right now I find it more interesting than concerning.
The adventure begins! (Or continues!) What’s been most interesting to me watching many friends get adhd and asd diagnoses — and in turn tell me that neurodivergent people tend to flock together, nudge nudge — is shifting my perspective from binary You Have It / You Don’t to picturing a four-quadrant graph, with the x and y’s of your choice — degree of sensitivity, empathy, hyper focus, distractedness, language, whatever! — and everyone lands somewhere. Sometimes that spot on the graph means extra tools or medicine or support are warranted. Heard that from a trained professional and think it’s super cool. It really highlights the diversity in neurodiversity for me.
Your search for a new therapist, one who wants to help you become more you reminds me of something I learned from a meditation teacher long ago that sticks with me. That the goal is actually to become more sensitive not less, to be able to feel and trust what you feel and trust that you have the capacity both to feel it and respond in a way that is useful to yourself and the betterment of the world. Remembering this has reset my trajectory again and again, but I do often need the reminder. Thank you for your post and I wish you the best on your search.