One of my favorite pastimes is playing tabletop role-playing games like D&D. For those of you who don't know what that is, think cooperative storytelling, a bit of a cross between a board game and improv acting--everyone creates a character, one person describes the setting, and, using rules for interacting with the world, we tell a story. It's ( Read more... )

I think Simon Baron-Cohen's "cognitive/affective" empathy model is wrong and leaves out important parts of the perspective of an autistic person trying to observe an NT's experience of the world.

In reality, there are not two, but four elements to empathy.

( Elements of Empathy )

I have the emotional control of a six-year-old. Fortunately, I also have the emotional maturity of an adult.

Yes, they're different things.
( Read more... )

As a child, I used to be frightened, to the point of diagnosable phobia, of human corpses. Even the thought would send me into a literal panic.
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When I was two and a half years old, I first understood what death meant.

My father had recently died, and my mother had told me, "Daddy is dead," as a way of explaining it. At that point I was still using other peoples' words to make sense of my world; so for a long time, I repeated, "Daddy is dead," to myself, over and over. My first memory is of ( Read more... )

I have a different sort of empathy ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I was sent by the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation for a vocational evaluation. The evaluation itself consisted of a lot of aptitude tests, achievement tests, and personality and interest surveys. This isn't really about the evaluation itself, which showed what I already knew (I'm well suited for a career in science, technology ( Read more... )

This will be an emotional rant. You have been warned.

I am extremely idealistic. Lately I have been very discouraged with the world in general... It seems like everyone I meet is either selfish or doesn't have enough self to be selfish. Why do we have these ideals in our heads, of how we could be; and yet nobody comes close to ever living up to them ( Read more... )

OK, so I'm a self-injurer--mostly recovered, now. Automatically people will gasp and shudder when they hear that, but, tell you the truth, it isn't as "bad" as people think it is; it's just socially unacceptable, dangerous in a minor way, and an ineffective way to cope with emotional problems.

I used to cut myself; I started when I was in my early ( Read more... )