15/06/2026
I did a car boot sale yesterday. I took my garden parasol. It was gonna be hot and both Fae and I don't do well in the sun. An older lady and her son set up in the pitch next to us and as I sat in the shade, I turned to see the older lady sitting in full sun. My thoughts IMMEDIATELY went to... I should offer her some shade, maybe I should let her use the parasol, maybe I should move closer to her and let her share...
I felt bad for having shade and she didn't. I realised yet again how easy it is for me to abandon my own needs in favour of other people's. How I was feeling guilty that I was able to be comfortable and she wasn't.
The instant desire to help someone else and prioritise a strangers needs over my own was noticeable and I had to calm the feelings of guilt and remind myself that it was OK. It was OK that I had come prepared, that I had something to bring to make the job more bearable AND that Fae needed that shade as much as I did.
Thankfully that voice of reason is developing and asking me to stop and recognise that I'm important too, even if I've never felt like I'm important to anyone. I'm important to me. My needs are important and if I find myself in those situations, I am allowed to let it be, to not be the person to offer, jump in, or go without. It takes a lot of mental effort though! and a shaking off of the guilt or shame.
It's OK to prioritise myself and in fact now, it's more important than ever. This post explains it all so well.
The Autistic Experience of Feeling Everyone
There’s a long-standing myth that people with autism lack empathy; however, the opposite often occurs.
Many autists experience hyper-empathy. This isn’t always apparent to others because many of us don’t show what we are experiencing on the inside.
People with hyper-empathy can feel intense compassion and emotional connection not only toward people but also toward animals, plants, fictional characters, and objects.
Some examples of hyper-empathy can include:
• Becoming overwhelmed by suffering we cannot fix
• Difficulty saying “no” even when we don’t want to do something
• Feeling sorry for someone who bullies us
• Tuning in so deeply to the needs of others that we temporarily lose ourselves
• Feeling responsible for other people’s feelings
• Feeling a compulsion to help someone even when it’s not in our best interest
• Struggling to enjoy ourselves when someone nearby is upset
• Staying in harmful relationships because we understand the other person’s pain and feel sorry for them
Many of us feel the emotional states of the people around us so intensely that their feelings become layered into our own experience. In those moments, it can be difficult to tell where our emotions end and someone else’s begin, which is why we may not always feel fully ourselves unless we’re in solitude.
When I’m with someone, my attention can become completely absorbed in them. My nervous system attunes so deeply to theirs that it feels as though their emotional world becomes my own.
I don’t simply recognize that someone is anxious, sad, angry or uncomfortable. I can feel it inside my own body. My chest tightens, my energy changes, and my thoughts become unsettled. I can walk into a room feeling completely fine and leave carrying a huge emotional weight that wasn’t there before.
This happens even when the other person hasn’t said anything. A subtle change in their voice, posture, facial expression, or even their breathing may be enough for my nervous system to detect that something is wrong. Then, before I consciously understand what I’ve noticed, my body begins to respond to it.
This kind of nervous-system attunement makes autistic people extremely sensitive to the emotional atmosphere. We may automatically match the state of the person beside us, even if they are not fully aware of what they’re feeling.
Their anxiety can make us anxious, their agitation can make our bodies tense, and their sadness can drain our energy. Our nervous systems begin responding before they’ve even said anything.
For some autists, this sensitivity is connected to the intensity with which we process information. We often notice details others overlook and take in more of the environment than we can filter out.
Many autistic people learn to watch others closely because society’s unspoken social rules don’t come naturally to us. We monitor facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses and body language to understand what’s happening and respond appropriately.
For autists who’ve also experienced trauma, this sensitivity can become intertwined with hypervigilance. We may have learned that detecting the smallest change in another person’s mood is necessary for emotional safety.
When someone is upset, I can care so much that instead of responding in the socially expected way, I may freeze, go quiet, or need to step away. From the outside, it looks like indifference, and this is probably why the autistic stereotype of being cold and lacking empathy developed.
However, what we feel and what others see can be two completely different things.
Our internal emotional experience doesn’t always translate into visible social expression. Inside, our nervous systems might be overwhelmed and need to temporarily shut down. Autistic empathy is so misunderstood because most people measure empathy by how well someone performs it.
Autistic processing can also be slower, particularly during intense or socially complicated situations. While the interaction is happening, we might be busy managing sensory information, interpreting language, reading the other person, and monitoring our behaviour.
Other times, the emotional significance may not fully reach us until later, when we’re alone, and our nervous system has had time to calm down. A delayed response is not an absent response. It’s just taken a different route to get there.
For those of us who deeply absorb other people’s emotions, empathy also frequently comes with the risk of losing ourselves.
When I’m focused on another person, their needs, emotions, and perspective can become so prominent that my own temporarily disappear. I become more aware of what they’re feeling than of what’s happening inside me.
Only after I’m alone again can I return to myself. I usually need silence and solitude to separate what belongs to me from what I’ve absorbed from others. I need time and space to locate my feelings beneath everything I've taken in and allow my nervous system to regulate.
This is one of the hidden costs of hyper-empathy. Attunement can create profound intimacy and understanding, but without boundaries, it also leads to self-abandonment and relationships in which the autistic person becomes responsible for regulating everyone around them except themselves.
Constantly absorbing other people’s emotions can be so draining that we need significant time alone to recover. The stress of carrying those emotions also contributes to somatic symptoms, such as headaches, stomach aches, muscle tension and back pain.
The problem is that many people assume empathy only exists when it’s expressed in a familiar, socially expected way. However, it’s important to understand that even when it doesn’t show on the outside, many autists feel what the people around them are experiencing so deeply that it becomes debilitating.
Our empathy might not always show through our facial expressions, words or body language, but what we feel internally can be extremely intense and overwhelming.
Lia Diane 2026
Divergent Soul
