Ah, this fucking attitude. I had the same thing from my first therapist.
"I thought you might be autistic, but your IQ is too high..."
"I'm pretty sure that's not how that works."
"It is, I'm the expert."
(I didn't believe him, but had no other options for therapy at age 17.)
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I'm definitely not neurotypical, but I've no idea if I qualify for aspergers or something else or if I'm in some liminal area.
Considering new diagnoses are invented all the time, and neurology is hugely idiosyncratic, I wouldn't be surprised if there is no diagnosis available.
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I have highly abnormal empathy, but it's not specifically autistic AFAICT. Pulls in a lot of disparate directions.
I'd actually love to know if there's a diagnosis that fits, as I have a very confused profile of extreme hyper/hypofunctionality relative to most people.
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Do you have a thread of characteristics you experience? I'm also curious about what you're describing.
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No, but I'd be very happy to write out a few here.
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As you prefer - I'm not qualified to comment, but have an interest in personality disorders and the "high empathy" point you mention happens to be resonant for me personally.
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Let's start with social stuff.
I'm fairly socially inhibited. Have a lot of anxiety traits. Hyperreliant on verbal ability.
Cause of anxiety: I have trouble with social fluency. I understand social rules implicitly, but get overwhelmed by density of info/second guess a lot.
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This may be partly due to upbringing, as I've been making major improvements in these areas over the last years and don't seem to have base-level issues with functioning.
Apart from the lack of socio-emotional latent inhibition. I have to look away from faces when talking, e.g.
When I'm not anxious, I tend to be hyperextroverted to the point of being a nuisance to people who can't deal with high energy.
I'm talkative, intense, very larger than life, sort of effortlessly/unintentionally taking up space.
I can turn this off, but it *wants* to be on.
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That's mostly it for explicitly social stuff.
With empathy, I am ridiculously sensitive to sensory inputs and information about people in my environment, and constantly modelling people intuitively. I wasn't even aware of this until earlier in my 20s, but I have always done it.
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I'm eyecontact-blind. One of the subscripts I run is "look at one eye, blink every 4-8 seconds, glance away every 30sec or so. Don't just tunnel into a single focal point."
Experimented with it in therapy: I would rather stare off to the side of someone unmoving.
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