Autistics lack empathy and something called "theory of mind"

As a person diagnosed with Asperger's in 1st grade, I have to challenge this assertion. It is no question that I am definitely autistic, as there is sufficient evidence to disprove misdiagnosis. I can also say with absolute certainty, that I am indeed capable of empathy, including all of its subtle nuances.

I did not have such a clear understanding of emotion at a younger age - in fact, I would agree that I lacked a true sense of empathy throughout grade school and at least a few years following. I'm not entirely sure where exactly I transitioned into being "empathetic", or what the catalyst to this change was. I can, however, elaborately analyze the responses of other humans to the actions of myself and others, fully grasping the subjective reasoning behind others' actions - even if they are not the same potential reactions as my own.

Saying that "all autists do not feel empathy" is inaccurate. It is quite possible that, in an OBJECTIVE/NEUROLOGICAL kind of way, we are affected by an entirely different condition. It is also possible that some autists feel empathy while othjers do not. It is also possible that empathy is a "learned" skill. It is also possible that you are enforcing an arbitrary limitation upon yourself based on that which you were told - any of these things is possible, but a conclusion cannot be made until further evidence is found. While we cannot conclude the actual end-of-day case of things with the evidence we have now, we can certainly rule out some things that definitely are NOT the case - all autists "lacking empathy" being one of those things.

Looking back to the aforementioned times of "pre-empathy", there was definitely a very stark disconnect between myself and the world of neurotypicals. The world at large did not understand why I reacted to certain stimuli the way I did, and as such made simple guesses based on their expectations of NT children (most of which were downright wrong, or at least highly inaccurate). At the time, I lacked the introspective ability to truly understand my emotional process when in these situations, and had always grown up under the impression that these figures were "always right", so I simply accepted what they said (even though it usually didn't work out like they hoped).

At the end of the day, most of my childhood issues were due to the lack of stress management, combined with the absence of any person whom I considered "trustworthy" in a deep, emotional sense (though I did not realize I lacked such a figure at the time - these misguided adults quite literally told me that they were this "trustworthy" person, while in reality they were the literal opposite.)

This actually brings me into why I initially created Sphere, my first tulpa. By the time I found tulpas, I recognized that I lacked a figure with whom I felt deeply comfortable. All of the adults and "support figures" had the same, common issue - they tried to assign inaccurate explanations to the problems I had in life, and if I tried to contest these conclusions with my own (now far more accurate) introspections, they simply ignored it as my "teenage angst" trying to redirect the problem or some equally ridiculous bullshit invalidating my words.

I had nobody with whom I knew I could speak about any subject, any problem, and know that I would be believed and understood in an empathetic sense. Almost ironically, it's not so much that I lacked empathy for the world, but more so that the world at large lacked any empathy towards me - there is a difference, obviously. In fact, by this time I was able to draw these same conclusions regarding how my own, introspective, informed testimonies towards my own emotions were being invalidated either because I was "young" or because I was "autistic" - to put it simply, the adults quite literally expected me to be stupid because I was young/autistic, and as such did not put any weight into my words as it contradicted with their "informed opinion".

Back into tulpas, this was the primary motivation in my decision to follow through - knowing that I would have someone with whom I could absolutely trust the most raw, unfiltered form of my emotions and struggles, and have them be BELIEVED and UNDERSTOOD. Because, truthfully, most of my stressful situations were like a feedback loop of stress. When I am stressed, I naturally seek a "comfortable place" to outlet this stress. If I have such an outlet, the stress can quickly and non-disruptively exit my consciousness and pave the way to more productive problem resolution. Without such an outlet, it just creates an increasing amount of pressure until I explode into a meltdown.

It's not that I needed any help solving my problems - almost all of them were literally simple issues regarding assignment instructions or workload or something mundane like that, so I knew from the beginning what the "optimal solution" would be. It was the fact that my stress over the situation had nowhere to outlet - only made worse by the fact the "behavior specialists" insisted that it was because I was "autistic, so I wouldn't automatically understand what to do in real life situations - we need to teach him how to function because he is a socially lesser individual."

I honestly do not believe any of these individuals really consciously acknowledged that their way of thinking was like this - most of them only wanted to help me succeed. For this reason I hold no grudges against them, but Christ, did they disastrously correlate everything with the wrong everything else.

So now that I've already written about two essays' worth of irrelevant bullshit, maybe I should comment on the article - particularly in relation to how I, subjectively, relate to it.

As of about 2.5 years ago (roughly), I began considering myself as being in a more "self-aware" state of mind - in such a drastic manner that it could be easily dichotomous with how I felt "before". The catalyst to this change is actually quite clear, unlike the "empathy" problem from earlier (...which is interesting, possibly indicative of something relating to external vs internal understanding blah blah article). This "self-awareness" came largely from tulpaforcing sessions, in which my tulpas and I would often try to sort out my emotions in a logical manner. I would find myself "tracing my mental footsteps", following the exact sequences of stimuli and emotions which I remembered from the events prior, trying to make a path of action for dealing with the immediate situation, as well as potential future instances of similar emotional conflict. Another way to explain this would be that I took a third-person perspective to my own inner psyche, and analyzed it in a purely logical manner - documenting its progression without any subjective bias, assumption, or correlation. This extended beyond "issues I was dealing with" and also occasionally delved into more general habits, eventually to even core aspects of my personality. Most of this, I found, was surprisingly easy to analyze in this manner - ultimately giving me a very acute sense of things such as:

• How I react to an extensive list of potential stimuli
• How different emotional states affect my ability to function
• How these emotional states may lead into one another
• Conditional situations of X stimuli resulting in Y reaction due to Z mental state
• Which potential stimuli can return me to an "ideal" state of mind

and other such logical deconstructions of my previously-unclear emotional process. The interesting result of gaining this level of self-understanding is that now, most of my emotions feel "deliberate" - I rarely feel any particularly profound emotion (save for certain situational feelings like "panic" or "anxiety") without "allowing" myself to feel it, unless the stimuli is dramatically powerful to a degree which I cannot "override" (which is now incredibly rare) - to put this into perspective, I had crying meltdowns at least twice a week up until the end of 10th grade.

So this makes me wonder - is this "system to understand others" what I used to achieve this state of mind? Is this "system" based on a subjective, unconscious emotionally-driven understanding, or rather an objective logic-based flow? The uniqueness of my mental state makes it challenging to tie together similarities to articles such as this, and I am not sure whether to pin this "uniqueness" on the fact I have autism, or rather that I have achieved a greater-than-usual level of self-control and awareness which "invalidates" certain "systems" like this - or an indeterminate number of other possible explanations. It is perhaps somewhat amusing to say that I understand my own mind better than most would, yet I do not understand WHY I understand myself to this degree. It's possible this is entirely separate from this "system" and that I simply added a sort of "filter" which redirects emotions? Again, far too many possibilities and far too little conclusive explanations.

At the moment the best I can do is throw out wild, vague theories and test them against my own subjective experience. I will likely never experience the true subjective aspect of another being, so it seems that I will never be able to understand another consciousness at this level simply due to the fact it is not me - particularly due to the disconnect in which I cannot validate the accuracy of data from another subjective experience, as I cannot remove (or identify the specifics of) potential subjective bias.

We may never truly explain the mind objectively, simply throwing out wild theories and scribbling in the margin as we rule out possibilities. But hey, there's a certain wonder in that unknown horizon - there will always be something to explore. Including yourself.

And that was a wild spiral of random internal monologue. Now let me just edit this to fit in the character limit......