To Feel or Not to Feel: Where is the Empathy?

At 15, my Summers were full of sunbathing with friends on trampolines, bike riding, and trips to my best friend's cabin in Gaylord. Care free and full of nature, spending most of my time outside - doing as I pleased.
Around 8 am on one of those lazy Summer days, my ignorant bliss met my best friend's voice sobbing on the other end as she told her father had died of a heart attack in his sleep. I never heard that kind of pain in anyone's voice before - she was shaking, her nose was running, and she could hardly form intelligible words. We had planned to leave that morning and go to the cabin with him that day. On the other end of the line I was silent, I stared blankly at the wall and held the phone to my ear as I listened to my friend cry. Her sister grabbed the phone and begged me to get there as soon as I could.
I found my friend crying hysterically and  hyperventilating on her front porch. The house was engulfed in grief as her mother and all seven of her siblings walked in and out of rooms, lost. It was completely heart wrenching. I had no idea what she was going through, but I was there. There to listen, to cry, to hold. I was there. I was strong. I was proud of myself.

20ish years later another best friend lost her mom. After losing my own mother the year before I knew exactly how it felt and what she was going through yet I could not be there for her or attend the funeral. I was not strong enough to deal with the empathy that I felt.

Much of my life through my 20s I seemed cold, logical and calculated. I recall not understanding some of the things that made others sad or angry, but clearly I had some level of empathy that did nothing but increase over time with life experiences.
Anybody with autism has heard the claim that we do not experience empathy and it's a hurtful claim (so many negative connotations due to the whole sociopathic aspect of it).

Is this learned? Is it conditional? Is there a varying depth of empathy as Psychology Today claims? Doesn't it display a lack of empathy to blanket label autistics like this?



Taylor, Steve, “Is Autism Really an "Empathy Disorder"?” Psychology Today, 17 May 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201705/is-autism-really-empathy-disorder.

The cloud

My parents died in 2017, following a rapid decline in health the year prior. Maybe someday I'll tell you more about that. But for now, I'll tell you that the resulting depression has been debilitating.


I pull my legs jerkily through the thick and murky air as I stare forward, eyes unfocused with a definite sadness behind them. The cloud has been raining down over me in a deluge today-like most days-however it never shrinks in size or changes from the darkest shade of grey. Thick and bulbous with lobes like a mammatus cloud, ever present, ever drenching the world around me. Through a haze I see objects, people, they move out of my way as they notice my struggled gait. I'm at Target, I'm with my sons. I'm trying.

I cried. Oh I cried like I have never cried before. Day, night, at work and at home, even in public sometimes...dramatically I cried. I wailed. I screamed. In the shower, on my bedroom floor, on the bathroom floor, at my desk at work, driving in my car. That kind of pain wasn't something you can just set aside and deal with at a better time. I have never felt that kind of pain.

I have worked at concealing the depression. It mostly involves not dealing with it. Sometimes I wake and my first literal thought is 'I don't want to be here'. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to the thought on repeat. Eventually I shove myself out of bed, tilt my head to look at the cloud above me, and hope that the storms won't be so bad today. Maybe someday it will be white with the silver lining. I know my kids should be that silver lining. Right now it's a light stone hue and the slightest sliver of silver lining is easily swallowed most days.