Autism

For many people, being described as "highly sensitive" or an "empath" has felt deeply validating. It finally gives language to a lifetime of feeling emotions intensely, noticing subtleties others miss, becoming overwhelmed by sensory input, or carrying the emotional weight of the people around you. For some, however, these experiences may reflect more than personality. They may represent a neurodivergent way of experiencing the world.

Unfortunately, graduate counseling training on autism has historically been limited to the point of clinical negligence, leading most clinicians to miss it (or dismiss it). This is especially true when it shows up in the highly sensitive population, adults, women, or high masking individuals. As a result, people are often assigned more superficial diagnoses, such as anxiety and depression, which did not respond fully to therapy or medication.

Research over the past few years has significantly expanded our understanding of autism. Rather than simply involving empathy deficits, autism is increasingly understood as involving differences in empathy. While autistic people have long been stereotyped as emotionally detached or lacking empathy, many describe the opposite experience. They feel too much.

You may question whether autism fits your experience because you don’t identify with common stereotypes in the DSM. As research continues to evolve, we are being forced to update our clinical framework. As such, autism is increasingly looking like:

  • Feeling emotions intensely throughout your body

  • Deep compassion for people, animals, the natural world, or even objects

  • Enjoying relationships while becoming exhausted by social interaction

  • Becoming deeply distressed by conflict or witnessing suffering

  • Feeling like you're “too intense” or  both "too much and not enough"

  • Frequently feeling misunderstood by those closest to you

  • Sensing the emotional atmosphere of a room before anyone speaks

  • Feeling profound distress around injustice or unfairness

  • Noticing countless details while sometimes missing the larger picture

  • Developing deep, enduring interests in personally meaningful topics

  • Living with "anxiety" or "depression" that hasn't responded well to therapy or medication

  • Feeling like your nervous system is easily overwhelmed or dysregulated

Sometimes the missing pieces of self-understanding include neurodivergence. Recognition of this helps clinicians support the foundation of your experiences so treatment addresses the whole person rather than isolated symptoms. Neurodivergence is not mental illness, it’s part of the natural diversity of  being a human. Likewise, trauma is not mental illness, it’s a nervous system under threat. Therefore, treatment is about developing a deeper understanding of your neurodiversity and nervous system, reducing shame, building sustainable ways to regulate sensory and emotional overwhelm, strengthening executive functioning when needed, creating supportive relationships, learning to identify needs and ask for help, and discovering that many qualities previously viewed as weaknesses may also be some of your greatest strengths. If you've spent your life wondering why the world seems louder, faster, more emotionally intense, or more exhausting than it appears to be for everyone else, you are not alone. There may be a more complete explanation than you've been given. Sometimes healing begins not with changing who you are, but with finally understanding yourself.