Guys, please go check this out:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ponateoe

Hi hi! My name is Nate, and I run a lil blog on Tumblr called https://ponateoe.tumblr.com/ in which I post about being autistic, Lord of the Rings, and anything that catches my interest!

As you probably know by now, I have autism.

It’s affected my day to day life for as long as I can remember, and due to it, I need different facilities to function well.

Unfortunately, I do not have the best financial circumstances. I currently live in a Two Bedroom Flat with my Brother, Father, and Step-Mother (that’s a lot of people!). My Father is the only one who works, and he’s self-employed. However, my father is also autistic, meaning that some days he can’t work.

Worry not! We do manage to get by! But, only just; we don’t have the funds for the resources to help me in this world.

So, if you can, please donate just a little to help us build a safe bedroom for me, get a small collection of stim toys for when I have to leave the house, sensory items to put in mine and my fathers sensory room.

Any donation is welcome, even just a few pence! Also, as a thank you, if you donate to this cause, head over to my Tumblr (it’s open to anyone) and send me an anon with your favourite colour and I’ll make you a stimboard!!!

Bye bye,

Nate.

Call for Advice: Empathy

Hi there, followers and autistic people of Tumblr! We at ScriptAutistic are trying to answer one of our recent asks, and we got into a bit of a debate about a sensitive topic. We’d like to do a survey of the community before we post our answer to make sure we represent all autistic people as accurately as possible.

The topic is empathy. By empathy, we mean feeling the emotions others feel: it being upsetting to see another person hurt or upset, for example.

In one mod’s experience, it seems the vast majority of autistic people are very empathetic, even hyperempathetic, and that even behaviors that might appear to show a lack of empathy (not talking to someone who is upset, not comforting someone who’s crying, avoiding emotional situations) are most often actually caused by an excess of empathy or other autistic traits (being unable to handle the overwhelming emotions of others, being afraid of making the situation worse due to a history of social rejection, etc.). A genuine lack of empathy (being unable to feel the emotions of others) seems very rare.

The other mod has a somewhat different experience. A lot of autistic people do have empathy or hyperempathy, but not the vast majority - their experience is that around a third of autistic people genuinely have (self-reported) reduced empathy and have difficulty sensing, understanding, or caring about the emotions of others.

It seems a survey is in order. We therefore request your personal answers to these two questions:

1. Do you consider yourself an empathetic person? Please briefly describe how strong your sense of empathy is.

2. In your experience, are most autistic people strongly empathetic?

Please only answer this question if you are actually autistic yourself. We are not looking for answers from allistic people. Even if you know someone autistic, please do not speak for them. Either ask them to answer the questions for themselves, or skip answering.

You can send your answer in an ask or in a reply to this message. Thanks a lot for helping us represent our community as accurately as possible!