One of the biggest misconceptions about autism and autistic individuals is that they lack empathy. The truth is that they often have an even stronger sense of empathy than the rest of the population.
A common stereotype is that autistic individuals are in their “own world,” emotionally cold and distant, and generally uninterested in relationships with others.
This leads to the diagnosis being missed until adulthood in children who are social, warm, and naturally extroverted.
Through this text, I will introduce you to the different forms of empathy and how they manifest in neurodivergent individuals, particularly those with autism.
Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand the thoughts and feelings of others. It is based on recognizing emotional communication through body language and facial expressions (both voluntary and involuntary expressions, such as microexpressions).
There are two main types of empathy: cognitive and emotional/affective. Although they are considered opposites, they complement each other.
Cognitive empathy helps to understand how we or another person feels and what they might be thinking, wanting, or believing. It develops as early as infancy through face-to-face interaction and involves the development of nonverbal communication (gestures, tracking facial expressions, focusing on people) and understanding it. This is supported by the development of joint attention, recognizing emotions, and the development of theory of mind (symbolic thinking).
In the autistic population, the development of this skill is often slowed or impaired. As a result, some well-known traits of autism emerge, such as underdeveloped personal nonverbal communication and understanding of others, difficulty reading social cues, a literal interpretation of communication and jokes, and a lack of understanding of sarcasm.
Intelligence, an interest in psychology, and good observation and people-reading skills can compensate for some deficiencies in cognitive empathy.
In emotional/affective empathy, we feel what the other person is experiencing, as if their emotions are “contagious.” As highly sensitive individuals, autistic people are often overwhelmed by the emotions of others and find it difficult to distinguish them from their own, especially if cognitive empathy is underdeveloped and there is a lack of ability to recognize and name their own emotions (alexithymia).

The misconception that autistic individuals lack empathy actually applies to psychopaths. Psychopaths virtually lack emotional empathy but have high cognitive empathy. This is because they are born with half as many mirror neurons, which help in understanding the emotional states of others. Additionally, it has been shown that in psychopaths, centers associated with pleasure are activated when witnessing violence.
Autistic individuals, on the other hand, tend to have high, though often selective, emotional empathy and relatively low cognitive empathy. The reason for this is that they have twice as many mirror neurons, which also contribute to the phenomenon of double empathy, which I will explain more about later in the text.
However, there are two other forms of empathy that are not often discussed, namely compassionate empathy and motor empathy. Compassionate empathy, also called empathic concern, involves understanding a person’s situation and feeling sympathy for them (drawing on both cognitive and affective empathy), as well as a spontaneous desire to help if needed. For example, as a psychotherapist, I cannot allow myself to be overwhelmed by emotional empathy and cry with my client. Instead, the client needs to be seen, understood, advised, and guided.
The paradox for autistic individuals is that they can feel emotional empathy but may not act compassionately, and vice versa. In other words, it is possible for someone to feel sympathy for us and want to support us, even though they don’t actually understand how we feel or haven’t experienced what we are going through.
Motor empathy is an automatic empathetic response in the form of unconscious mimicry of another person’s facial expressions, body language, or speech. Yawning is a form of motor empathy. A segment of the neurodivergent population has this form of empathy very strongly, and they can completely mimic the accents, speech patterns, and movements of others, which makes them excellent actors and stand-up comedians.
Interestingly, psychopaths show a lack of motor empathy when it comes to negative emotions.
How do all these forms interconnect?
I will try to explain this to you through an example.
Let’s say your friend just ended a bad relationship with her boyfriend. Affective and emotional empathy allows you to feel your friend’s sadness and want to cheer her up by offering the perspective that the breakup is a good thing (compassionate empathy). However, this is where your cognitive empathy falls short. Cognitive empathy would understand that your friend is feeling the pain of loss, rejection, sadness, and disappointment, and that offering a future perspective at this moment will not be supportive.
This type of empathy often falls short in autistic individuals, who may struggle to allow their friend to remain in a bad mood, as they often block and avoid their own uncomfortable emotions. Additionally, your subjective perspective and feelings come into play, where you’re likely happy that your friend will no longer have to deal with that person and believe that she will eventually be fine. You understand that the situation is tough for her and want to help her (compassionate empathy), but you cannot offer proper help if all the previously mentioned types of empathy are not properly engaged.
If you have affective empathy, you will display expressions of concern and subconsciously mimic her body language (motor empathy), which contributes to your friend feeling that you are there for her and that you are showing genuine empathy.
If affective empathy is lacking, your cognitive empathy can compensate for it, and through compassionate empathy, you will still be motivated to offer support. This may include consciously (subtly) mimicking facial expressions and body language to make up for the lack of motor empathy.

Double empathy
The phenomenon of double empathy comes to the forefront in interactions between neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals due to differing expectations. For example, the lack of nonverbal communication commonly seen in the autistic population (reduced facial expression, lack of eye contact, stimming, monotone voice) may be perceived by a neurotypical person as a lack of interest or even as teasing or flirting if motor empathy is expressed (unconscious alignment with the person’s body language). This is why autistic individuals are often initially perceived as cold, distant, uninterested, or judgmental (the so-called “resting b* face”). In therapy, a lack of tonal variation in the voice when discussing emotionally charged situations may be misinterpreted by the therapist as a lack of connection with one’s emotions or the absence of those emotions.
There is another moment when neurodivergent individuals struggle to empathize with others’ perspectives, and that is when they are in a hyperfocus or flow state (a specific interest). During this time, they become less sensitive to anything outside of the object of their hyperfocus or flow.
Here is an example of a conversation between a neurotypical and an autistic person:
Neurotypical: “I had a tough day at work today.” (Social cue – ask me what happened, I want to talk about it)
Autistic: “Oh, me too, my manager just wouldn’t leave me alone. What bothers me the most is when…”
Neurotypical: “I can’t believe you’re TURNING the conversation back to yourself AGAIN! It’s always ‘me, me, me!'”
Autistic: “I don’t understand, I just wanted to tell you that I know how you feel.”
Neurotypical: “You don’t need to tell me how I feel!”
Furthermore, an unwritten rule for autistic individuals is that everyone talks about what they want to talk about (“If I wanted to talk about it, I would have”). On the other hand, neurotypical individuals believe it is impolite to talk about things unless asked, and questions are seen as a sign of interest (“If you were interested, you would ask”). This often leads to conflicts in relationships, where the lack of questions is interpreted as a lack of effort or interest in the relationship, leaving autistic individuals confused by the anger of their neurotypical partner or friend.
In conclusion, in order to show empathy in all aspects, you need to be able to:
Understand the emotional states of others (cognitive empathy).
Feel what the other person is experiencing (affective empathy).
Have a tendency to help (compassionate empathy).
And subconsciously respond to what you understand and feel (motor empathy).
If you’d like to better understand yourself and others and receive support in navigating your neurodivergence, feel free to contact me for psychotherapy and/or coaching here.