Autism ACTUALLY Speaking Interview: Garry Burge 

Nice interview!

I have a similar experience -- after diagnosis at age 48 I began to look for other adult Aspies to form a support group. Living in Connecticut I could only find one. He and his wife and I met for several weeks, using guidelines from Tony Attwood's book. This was great, but that was ten years ago, they have moved away, and I have not found any other adult Aspies in this area. Now that we have a pandemic, a good group at Yale in New Haven has gone virtual, and is available to everyone on the planet, if they can manage the time difference. It is called CASY (Community Autism Socials at Yale), and it is on meetup.com. This has been a good source of support for me. They have lots of interesting events, and I have even led some. Maybe I will see you there someday, Nathan!

With lacking empathy, it depends on how you define empathy. The classical definition was always the ability to tell how other people are feeling, with no reference to whether or not you care. A more modern definition seems to be caring about the feelings of others, with little to no reference as to whether you can actually tell how they're feeling. For many with Autism, the former definition is quite true, but the latter most certainly isn't (though it can admittedly look that way). I wouldn't be surprised if the definition used by medical texts is the former definition; referring to one's ability to detect people's feelings in the way most normal people do rather than how much one cares about the feelings of others.

AMAZING sad my neighbour has autism