New psychiatrist is doubting my autism diagnosis because "an autist can't sympathize" and he found me sympathetic. Can other autistics relate?
Like, can any other autistics lmk if you guys can sympathize or not? And what do you define personally as sympathy?
For me, I use sympathy instead of empathy to describe my emotions often because empathy requires the recognition/mirroring of the other's emotions and I really struggle with that, meanwhile to me, sympathy is "oh I've been through this before so I can use that as groundwork to how to assess your situation" like, the next best thing to empathy i guess? I have other forms of making do with my general lack of cognitive empathy and struggles with emotional empathy, but sympathy is a big one and it helps in a lot of basic social situations.
But yeah that comment (and other invalidating questions) kind of put me off. The guy is really nice otherwise, I think. But I dislike his approach to autism. He said I actually seem more ADHD LOL meanwhile my therapist has been saying I should look into AuDHD comorbidities...
Edit: Thank you all for your responses!! I am a little overwhelmed as I didn't expect this to get that much traction lol, but I will respond to more people tomorrow after resting for the night I think!
I just want to add a quick note that a particular thing that frustrates me and I forgot to mention is that he was so insistent on his doubt about my autism that he even tried posing a hypothetical on me. Like: "if we invented a machine that told you with full certainty whether you're autistic or not, and it told you specifically that you're not autistic, how would you feel?". I said "I would doubt the machine's build, how do you make a machine like that? I can't fathom something like that with accuracy. It would probably end up being like the lie detector." He ignored this answer and pressed for the feelings angle, but now that I'm ruminating on it I'm realizing how autistic that answer was. Lol. Anyway I'm off to sleep now.