Autistic people can be insensitive to the feelings and needs of others, but this usually occurs when they cannot fully perceive these feelings, not because they wish to cause harm or to be unkind. They have every capacity to love and feel emotional pain, but not the wiring that allows them to easily understand how to interact and have relationships. They may have difficulty imagining what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes—sometimes called “mind-blindness”—but they do not lack sympathy for those people’s experiences when they become aware of them.
