For a long time, from my HSP and neurotypical perspective, I misunderstood some autistic people as lacking cognitive empathy.
By cognitive empathy, I mean the ability to imagine or understand another person’s perspective. Not feeling with someone. Not caring. Not compassion. That is affective empathy, and it is something different.
I mean the capacity to think: How might this affect the other person? What might they need? What might they be experiencing?
A simple example.
An autistic person is cooking and leaves all the kitchen cupboard doors open. They are absorbed in the task, perhaps using the open cupboards as part of their visual organisation. They know where everything is. They are in the flow of cooking.
Then a neurotypical person walks into the kitchen and bangs their head on an open cupboard door.
From the neurotypical perspective, it may look like this:
“How could they not think of me? How could they not realise this would affect someone else? They have no cognitive empathy.”
But this may be too one sided.
The autistic person may not be thinking, “I don’t care if someone bangs their head.” They may be thinking in a completely different way. The cupboards are open because they are still being used. Their attention is on the cooking. Their system may not automatically register the shared space in the same way. They may not predict that someone else will come in at that moment, move in that particular way, and experience the kitchen as hazardous.
That does not automatically mean a lack of cognitive empathy.
It may be an example of what is called the double empathy problem.
The double empathy problem, first proposed by autistic researcher Damian Milton, suggests that misunderstandings between autistic and non autistic people are often mutual. The difficulty is not simply located inside the autistic person. It arises between people who experience, process, communicate and prioritise differently. Further reading from the National Autistic Society.
Although the idea was first developed in relation to autistic and non autistic people, I think it can also help us understand misunderstandings between neurotypical people and other neurodivergent people, including people with ADHD. Someone with ADHD might leave cupboards open because of working memory, distractibility, task switching, visual reminders, or being absorbed in the momentum of cooking. Again, this may be interpreted as thoughtlessness or a lack of cognitive empathy, when it may be more about attention, executive functioning and different ways of organising a task.
So in the kitchen example, we might ask two questions, not one.
Did the autistic person understand the neurotypical person’s likely experience?
And did the neurotypical person understand the autistic person’s way of thinking, organising, attending and moving through the task?
That second question is often missed.
The traditional deficit model says:
“The autistic person failed to understand the neurotypical person.”
The double empathy model says:
“There is a gap in cognitive empathy both ways.”
The neurotypical person may not understand why the cupboards were left open. The autistic person may not understand why this feels so obviously inconsiderate or dangerous to the neurotypical person. Both are working from different assumptions about what is obvious.
This is where things can go wrong.
The neurotypical person may assume selfishness.
The autistic person may feel unfairly accused.
The neurotypical person may think, “I shouldn’t have to explain something so obvious.”
The autistic person may think, “Why are they reading intention into something that was never intended?”
And suddenly the issue is no longer cupboard doors. It is shame, blame, hurt and misunderstanding.
The double empathy problem does not mean impact does not matter. If someone keeps banging their head on cupboard doors, that matters. Shared living requires care, adjustment and agreements.
But it does mean we can move away from pathologising one person.
Instead of saying:
“You have no cognitive empathy.”
We might say:
“When the cupboard doors are left open, I can bang my head. Can we find a way to make the kitchen safer for both of us?”
And the autistic person might be able to say:
“I didn’t realise that was happening. When I’m cooking, I leave things open because it helps me track what I’m doing. Let’s work out a system.”
That is a very different conversation.
It keeps responsibility in the relationship rather than placing all the deficit in one person.
For HSPs, this matters. Many of us are highly attuned to tone, atmosphere and impact. We may notice things quickly and feel them deeply. But that does not always mean our interpretation is correct. We can be deeply affected by someone’s behaviour and still misunderstand what is driving it.
The double empathy problem invites humility.
It asks us to pause before deciding, “They don’t care.”
It asks us to consider, “Are we missing each other?”
That does not remove the need for boundaries, requests or practical agreements. In fact, it makes them more important. But it helps us make those requests without turning difference into defect.
Sometimes what looks like a lack of cognitive empathy may be a mismatch in attention, expectation and communication.
And sometimes the most caring thing we can do is make the invisible visible.
Not:
“You should have known.”
But:
“This is how it lands for me. How is it for you?”
That is where mutual understanding begins.