Still Another Autism Falsehood

GDoc (PDF 450Kb/ePub 95Kb) GDoc2

Important Caveat: I describe my own experiences, insights, perceptions as an autistic (actually auDHD autistic + ADHD) person, but they are my own unique ones. There is no “one size fits all” with autistic, ADHD, or neurodivergent persons. Every neurodivergent individual is their own person, so keep that in mind dear reader.

I have written before [Gilre 2024] about being autistic, and having emotions, and the difficulty with emotions as an autist. Also I have written about [Gilre 2025b] the autism falsehood that an autistic person has zero feelings or emotions.

But to be more specific, there is the falsehood that an autistic person has no empathy, and without empathy no feelings or emotions. My discussion and examination on this topic is to “connect the dots” to all three ideas.

The one big falsehood about autism is that an autistic person, an autist, has zero empathy, no emotions, or feelings. An autistic person is an “android” that looks and seems like a human being, but is an “autistic person” that is cold, aloof, and indifferent.

A refrigeration unit or an iceberg in the temperature extremes in the ocean of life. This falsehood is harmful, unhelpful, and a big lie in the autistic world. An autistic person is a human being, not a psychopath that has no emotions, empathy for other human beings.

An autist has a different, unique heart and mind that responds in unique, unexpected ways in terms of feelings, emotions, and empathy. That difference that is unique is often perceived as no empathy and no emotions as an autist.

One unasked question is simply “What is a feeling, or an emotion?” We, the human beings of the human species, often talk of emotions and feelings--love, hate, anger, fear, but what are these emotions? What is hate? What is love? What is anger? These questions about emotions and feelings, the search for and understanding of an answer can be a very deep, complex philosophical question--far beyond the scope of the essay.

One definition [Gilre 2025b] for an emotion (using a Google AI search query) is:

“An emotion is a complex, rapid reaction to personally significant events, involving a unique subjective experience, physical changes (like a racing heart), and outward behavioural expressions (like smiling or frowning) that help you understand and respond to your world, acting as a vital system for survival and communication. They are quick, often unconscious, messages from your brain and body, preparing you for action, with examples including joy, anger, fear, or sadness.”

Consider some aspects of the definition:

• Emotion is a complex, unique subjective (individual) experience, including physical changes, and “outward behavioural expressions.”

• Help you (the person) understand and respond to the world.

• A quick, often unconscious message from your (the person’s) brain and body.

As an autistic person, I myself often ask that...what am I feeling, what is the emotion I am experiencing? I often experience and perceive an emotion in terms of physical effects. I am anxious, so I am hyper-vigilant, sensitive to sounds, touch, and I feel cold sweats, butterflies in my stomach, and a frog in my throat. Thus, the physical manifestation of emotions and feelings illustrates the presence and experience of emotion.

The song [Skifs 1974] “Hooked on a Feeling” captures and explains what an emotion, a feeling, is--something we feel, experience. An emotion or feeling is not a thought to think, process, or understand, or an idea to ponder. Although emotions and feelings can impact the thoughts, perceptions, and thinking process.

The ability and capability to “feel” a feeling is in the expression, how the emotion is demonstrated, and manifested externally. Externally, in words, actions, statements, physical reactions...how a feeling translates from the internal emotion, and then, as felt, feeling the feeling comes out externally. This externalisation is what others perceive, see, understand, and react to an emotion or feeling.

One of the biggest insights I had in college was in a psychology course, where I had the realization and comprehension that human beings only feel emotions of others as we empathize with them. I do not feel someone else’s sorrow, grief, but I can empathize and experience their emotion of grief and sorrow as I perceive the emotion.

Thus, we have emotional responses to other people’s feelings and emotions. Thus, empathy in that context is to perceive and react with our own emotions and feelings to another person’s feelings, emotions. And not just other people, others can be other living creatures--such as cats, dogs, and other animals, not just pets.

The problem as an autistic person is that often my feelings and emotions are “strange alien perceptions” that are difficult to comprehend. There is an emotion, a feeling being felt, only how that emotion is expressed is not hardwired, and there is an expectation in our culture and society that an emotion translates and is expressed in the same consistent way as “everybody” does.

I still remember when the night nurse told me my mother had “passed” (died, was dead...), my emotional response was a sense of relief, and then I laughed. In retrospect, it was more a hysterical laugh than something I found some humor or amusement in, laughing out loud.

Hysteria is often defined as an exaggerated and inappropriate emotional response or reaction in a psychologically extreme situation. The coming death of my mother was known to me; I had taken care of her in her declining years of health. Yet, even knowing this, the eventual outcome still did not change my emotional response; the feeling was intense, overwhelming.

I can also still remember the nurse’s reaction, a micro-expression of disapproval. Even in that very intense emotional situation where I was overwrought with feelings, there still was that “expectation” of an “appropriate” emotional response.

But I did not care, nor do I still...I saw the disdainful, disapproving facial expression, but the expectation was a false emotional response. I respond as I respond, not as someone thinks I “ought to” or should.

As I wrote before, the cultural and social expectation of an emotional reaction and response creates that implicit “Emily Post guide” to a given situation, and there is an emotional response that is required.

This unwritten rulebook, a playbook of emotions and feelings, is only known when the emotional reaction is the “wrong” one; wrong in that the emotional response does not match or meet another person’s expectations.

Once, in a Doctor Who episode [Chris 2025], the Doctor’s companion, Leela, was in Victorian England, and a British doctor was explaining the social ritual of afternoon tea.

Part of the ritual is to be asked, “One lump (of sugar) or two?” And the appropriate response, and expected, is: “One lump.”

Leela then asks: “But what if I want two lumps?”

The British doctor then explains how that is not appropriate or correct for afternoon tea.

Finally, Leela tells the Doctor that the social ritual of afternoon tea is very complicated.

The excerpt of the conversation...

LITEFOOT: And then, for example, I would say ‘one lump or two, Miss Leela’. To which you would reply, ‘one will suffice, thank you. ‘ Now, do you follow?

LEELA: Supposing I want two?

LITEFOOT: Oh, no, no, no, no. One lump for ladies.

LEELA: Then why do you ask me?

DOCTOR: Come along, Leela.

LEELA: Professor Litefoot has been explaining to me about tea.

DOCTOR: Really?

LEELA: It’s very complicated.

This example explains the social ritual, and the “Emily Post rulebook” where you only learn some social expectation of emotional response as a rule, when you break the unwritten, unstated rule, or worse--you question that rule with the simplest question: “Why?” or “Why do we have to ask when the answer is already expected?”

One important realization I have understood is often it’s often not a situation, a scenario that I am afraid of itself. The real fear is the emotional response I have to that situation, and often it’s the perceived emotional response of another person. Remember, we do not actually feel, experience another individual’s emotions or feelings; it is our own perception and response we feel and experience as emotions.

The problem is not only a fear of my emotional response, an unwelcome feeling, but also knowing to expect that emotional response. I know my own reactions and responses, especially in emotions, and emotions and feelings are felt; they are not something we can “not think about” to control them. Hence, much anxiety stems from the known emotional response or the feelings in my reaction. I can suppress the expression and articulation of the emotions and feelings, “hide” them under a facade of control, coldness, and indifference, but internally, I become a boiling sea raging with emotions and feelings.

I often avoid persons or situations, as a topic or subject comes up that triggers emotions and feelings. An example is I had a “friend” (now I realize it was a false friendship, toxic, and I was the one keeping the relationship going...) who liked to yell, shout, and rant--to get their way. This was a classic “control through temper tantrum,” and I feared the outburst, the making of drama, as it made me uncomfortable.

Yet then, once I realized this person was, firstly, not a true friend, but a user, taker, and manipulator, the next temper tantrum they had, I refused to react to my own perceptions and the fear and anxiety it triggered. This person was...aghast and shocked. I did not do what they wanted; in fact, I told them they were no friend with that kind of response, like a spoiled brat. Of course, the friendship ended, but so did the fear and the anxiety this so-called “friend” triggered.

Often, I simply remain calm and will ask what the problem is for the person. Or more simply, tell them I have no time or patience to handle or resolve their melodrama. Once, when someone who was an acquaintance started the drama, I said very sarcastically but calmly:

“You have me confused with someone that gives a f*cking damn...”

End of relationship, but also the end of much anxiety, fear, and drama. True friends are like gold, rare, priceless, and to be treasured. False friends are like lead paint, nice facade and veneer, but slowly toxic.

Another realization of mine is that often, I fear and am on tenterhooks with anxiety simply because others have the great expectation of an “appropriate” emotional response.

Yet I then feel the feeling of rejection, invalidation, the “wrongness” in how I genuinely respond and react. But somehow it is “inappropriate” to have experienced that emotion or feeling.

The phrases:

• “That’s/It’s not funny.”

• “That’s a rude thing to say/ask.”

• “You offended/shut down that person.”

• “You are such an insensitive/offensive/jerk.”

These phrases are the “great expectations” (deliberate allusion to the Dickens classic novel...) of feelings and emotions. Thus, there is a more palpable fear and anxiety about emotional response in social situations.

I often will talk much with verbosity and loquaciousness without saying anything, becoming a “chatterbox” but that is to stay on a topic or subject I know and can discuss, but also to avoid the unexpected conversational comments, remarks that become landmines when I respond “inappropriately” as the comment or remark has an expected response, or the “great expectation” of some feeling.

One example is when I share a common experience to empathize, to relate, but I do not express some superficial emotion or feeling. The great expectation is to say “I’m sorry” or something else...but then why make the comment or remark, with that expectation?

Once, a toxic work colleague that constantly invalidated me in a “standing call” (which I soon cancelled, toxic person and caused much anxiety...), which was his way of feeling superior (later another colleague said he was a malignant narcissistic tattle-tale), and also went to corporate human resources.

He reminded me of the kid on the playground who runs to the teacher, reporting every “cuss word” or expletive. He got really upset when he went into condescending, arrogant lecture mode.

I remember in that last video call, I looked down at my desk, and then into the webcam, and I was supposed to either admire his “overwork” or how “dedicated” he was.

I simply stated: “Ask me if I care?”

His response was to label me “You’re an asshole.”

I hit back with some sarcasm about opinions and hemorrhoids, and what they have in common.

At which point afterwards, he reported anything I said, even at external events, to the company’s Human Resources department. He was creating fear and anxiety by invalidating and then running to HR if you talked back.

So I ended any pretense of a relationship, and made it clear when I encountered him at external events, he was not my friend, and I reminded him of the Oregon laws about online stalking, harassment, and menacing. This person was a toxic “whack job,” but his friendships were based on his use of fear.

Now, I realize I do NOT have to meet others’ “great expectations”...I express a genuine emotional response, how I feel when I react.

One personal maxim of mine is, “Beware what you ask, I will answer.”

And people find out quickly, as I am not going to respond as they expect. If a person wants me to respond a certain way, tell me when you ask, or state something, then say, “I need a nice hand-holding comment on how it’s going to be okay.”

But if I do not care, I do not care. Do not expect me to lie and give you false empathy, lying compassion. I know it is false, and so see no point in caring, or expressing some emotion from the “great expectations.”

Sometimes, though, just to avoid having to deal with the emotionalism and melodrama, I simply do not respond, as I do not care. People take my silence as compliance or acceptance or belief, then, to their great surprise, realize the mistake.

One emotion I have is often futility, a sense of pointlessness in many social interactions. And I do fear that, as feeling futile, or how something is irrelevant and immaterial, is not a pleasant feeling.

So it is not the cool, aloof, icy logic; it is simply that feeling or experiencing emotions is fraught with fear and anxiety. As an old cliche goes: “A closed mouth gathers no feet.” Thus I feel something and experience and emotion, I just do not speak or express it, except through deafening silence.

Society ultimately must realize that human beings are not “cookie-cutter” individuals like automobiles coming off an assembly line, but unique, different, and one-of-a-kind individuals.

Autistic individuals are more likely to demonstrate and illustrate this concept or idea as human beings. Hence, autistic individuals are not “like” other human beings, in that an autistic person is not the same automobile to come off that assembly line...and it is easier to invalidate.

The invalidation is that an autistic person does not have emotions, feelings, or empathy. The falsehood explains why an autistic person is not the “same” as other human beings, and is now a stereotype.

One of the gifts of autism is that autistic individuals illustrate some of the social dynamics and expectations in the “Emily Post rulebook” for being a “normal” individual that meets the unstated expectations of emotional expression, response, and reaction by society.

What can you do? Treat an autistic person as a person, unique, having a different emotional response, and how emotions, feelings are expressed, communicated, and demonstrated.

Drop any expectations, or tendency to remind someone of the social, cultural rules by rebuking, shunning, calling them “freaks” or “weirdos,” and realize an autistic person is a human being. Have empathy for someone who has emotions, feelings, and empathy but expresses them differently. Lose the “Emily Post rulebook” and stop using it as your fakebook for expectations and requirements.

Yet… “No.”

The social expectation precludes emotional experience, feeling the feeling, which forces an autistic person to meet that expectation. In this lifetime, as an autistic individual, all I can be is who I am, and part of that is my own, unique emotional reaction and response.

If that means, as a result, that I am so different to be invalidated, well, that illustrates an implicit expectation, and a falsehood in our culture and society.

The falsehood that there are no emotions, feelings, or empathy spreads misinformation, leading to labeling and stereotyping, which curtail understanding, help, and options.

Falsehood is more harmful as it creates more false expectations in addition to the social and cultural expectations about how emotions and feelings are expressed, valid, genuine--and to show empathy.

As I often say, a person can only be who they truly are...unique, different, strange, and quite unusual in their lifetime—the variety of spice and seasonings, instead of the banal, tasteless day-to-day monotony that is life.

• [Chris 2025] Chrissie’s Transcripts Site, The Doctor Who Transcripts: “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” Original Airdate: 26 Feb, 1977, https://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/14-6.htm, October 2025. Accessed December 25, 2025.

• [Gilre 2024] Gilreath, William Fletcher. “A Most Difficult Thing in Autism: Emotions and Feelings,” Google Doc, https://bit.ly/AMDTIAEAF, July 2024.

• [Gilre 2025a] Gilreath, William Fletcher. “Yet Another Autism Falsehood: An Autistic Person Has Zero Feelings,” Google Doc, https://tinyurl.com/autismfeel, August 2025.

• [Gilre 2025b] Gilreath, William Fletcher. Google AI, Google AI Search, https://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+an+emotion, December 20, 2025.

• [Ibrah 2017] Ibrahim, Zanyar. “A Person Standing in the Dark with a Flashlight,” https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-standing-in-the-dark-with-a-flashlight-6a27CkTmYoE, February 2024, Accessed December 26, 2025.

• [Skifs 1974] Skifs, Björn (features Blue Swede), “Hooked on a Feeling,” [Song]. EMI Records, 1974. Song on Youtube!

This essay is licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

• NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.