An introduction to the double empathy problem

From my lived experience as an Autist it has always ALWAYS been neurotypical people that have trouble with empathy and truly looking at things from another person's perspective. When I have difficulty understanding others I do research to shore up my knowledge, to me it seems like most NTs just expect people to bend to their will rather than empathize with others and god forbid they spend 5 minutes a day educating themselves.

I feel like I've solved the double empathy problem, when I encounter it, by simply abandoning the idea of having a position, or stance of my own, and dedicating my energy and critical thinking power to putting myself in the shoes of whomever I'm talking to. I'm also high functioning, and didnt find out until I was 31, so I sort of did it that way as a survival mechanism. It worked, but I hav3 a very fragile sense of self, and self worth :/

I think this should be expanded to all neurodiverse individuals. People woth ADHD have just as much trouble relating to people who are neurotypical, and we easily get dismissed because we come off as flighty. I have been fighting this battle for YEARS...ever since I noticed, at 19 years old, that my brain isn't wrong, it just works differently (although I wasn't diagnosed until I was 36). I have been asking the people close to me to meet me halfway in communication and it wasn't until THIS year (I'm almost 40 now) that I got just one of them to understand why they arent entitled to me always communicating their way. The problem is systemic and deserves to have some attention brought to it!

Thank you for succinctly explaining this, I am Autistic and the validation is most helpful ❤

Coming from an autistic perspective I noticed that I seem to sometimes perceive the executive function of non autistic people as a deficit in social communication as it involves a top down approach of looking for the key point, when my brain naturally communicates using a bottom up approach of using individual details to form a picture and so looking for the key point in my communication causes most of the picture I'm trying to convey to get lost causing a bias in how my message is percieved. Basically while in most cases using executive function is beneficial for NTs I think when trying to understand autism, too much executive function can sometimes be a deficit.

Thank you. My new support worker promised that they're "neurodiversity affirming"..... But the last thing they learned about us is Theory of Mind. There's a HUGE empathy gap. So. I have to educate him up to date. They really need it basic when coming from ToM eugenicist crap, hey. Thank you heaps for this.

Thank you for this explanation. I'm autistic and have heard folk mention double empathy but didn't know wot it meant 💛❤

Amazing video. I feel seen, I am crying.

I love the square trying to fit in a round hole graphic!! Excellent video. I will be sharing this on my discord server with my Twitch community. Thank you!

2:35 We should all just use the square hole. It seems like an easy fit for everyone.

Excellent as always, Kieron 👌

THIS IS REALLY FUCKING INTERESTSING!

Sometimes I wish we had a community that's exclusive to Autistics and NTs are now allowed in

You got it! Robot Approved!

Thankyou ❤❤❤

I think it is interesting that the colored dots being in order was labeled as the neurotypical type. Until specified in the video, I assumed the logical dots were representative of the autistic group, since autistic people communicate more straight forwardly and logically. But the video’s assignment illustrates the exact societal assumption of normativity that it was talking about

Ableism

Maybe if the whole world tells you, you're wrong. Maybe it's the whole world that is wrong. Basically, the Ad populum fallacy. If you need others to be just like you, for your empathy/understanding to work. Maybe you instead are lacking it. Empathy is viewing things from their side, using THEIR shoes. Not YOUR shoes. Metaphorically speaking.

I feel like theres a misunderstanding that the majority/"normal" expressions of emotion arent socially learnt. I find that its more culture specific and as such its easier for say two americans one with autism and one without to communicate emotionally than it would be for either to communicate with a Kazakh. Autistic emotions and communicative approuches are somewhat condition based but vary more between individual than the majority who are more emotionally and linguistically conditioned to fit with socities expectations.

That’s definitely not how levers work. 😂