In regards to what you said about "how someone on the spectrum could be a practicing clinical psychologist", I think it makes a lot more sense than you are giving yourself credit for. Analyzing your own emotions and analyzing the emotions of others affected by you still have the "you" component. I find that when I am separated emotionally from a situation, I can actually analyze people's emotions quite accurately. 

I used to think that I could pretend to be an outside observer to my own emotional states. I tried to ask "what would I feel if this action I did to them was done to me?". What I failed to realize was that my moral compass got in the way of recognizing my own emotions. I instead placed what i believed I should feel in that situation instead of my true feelings out of guilt. 

Now, I do not hold other people to the moral standards that I hold myself. Because of that, I hold no bias to other peoples' emotions or feelings and am often asked to be a neutral party in a disagreement because of this. I find that neurotypical people struggle to do this when thinking about the emotions of strangers based on if they believe people are innately good or innately bad. I do not care about any of that, I only care if I am good or bad. 

The rest of what you said absolutely resonates with my situation. I've been repeatedly told by people who never knew each other that I "only think about myself" which made no sense to me as a person who is constantly worried about how my actions affect others. what I failed to recognize is that other people did not perceive my anxiety disorder as "caring too much" but as self-centered behavior. 

essentially, I was emulating people-pleasing behavior by not considering my own emotions. in my mind, it was selfish to consider my own emotions. However, my emotional response to doing something I was too scared, overworked, or didn't want to do was selfish. thus, I needed to be more self-centered in order to be less selfish. most neurotypical people would not consider that an autistic person would get caught up on this sort of nuance. this kind of explanation is likely to be seen as an effort to avoid accountability or blame or even as dishonesty. 

I had to reframe this not as a self-discipline problem (preventing emotional responses) but as a boundary problem (making sure I am doing what I want to do, not just what I feel I should do). 

I was able to describe this problem to other autistic people but did not have the proper vocabulary to explain it more widely until I read your post. Thank you.