for the sake of understanding ourselves and how our brains work so that we can improve our family lives and our relationships let's talk about what body empathy is and body empathy is one of my favorite subjects because body empathy is one of my favorite senses body empathy is a sense much like taste sound touch smell sight I guess you could say it's a six sense but I don't really want to go there so much because a lot of people think a six sense is something that doesn't really exist body empat
hy really exists it starts in our brain and it's connected to our whole body nervous system we have nerves that are connected all the way up and down our bodies and for non-autistics those nerves are playing a role in our body empathy basically this is how it works as a non-autistic when I see anyone other non-autistics or autistics take an action some of the neurons in my brain that it would require me to take that action fire as if I were actually taking that action myself but it's not me who'
s taking the action it's my observation of someone else taking the action yet when they take that action my mirror neuron system kicks in and some of my neurons fire that it would require for me to take that action to so therefore in the observation of others taking actions I am experiencing what it would feel like inside my body for me to take that same action too and that gives me an immediate connection with the other people that I am observing and my observations can be through sight they co
uld also be through sound I could even hear a family member running up and down the stairs for example and even if I was on the couch eating potato chips and drinking soda while they were running the stairs some of the neurons in my brain that it would take for me to run up and down the stairs would be activated and in that way I would have an immediate empathy for the person running up and stand the stairs I would immediately know something about what their experience at that moment in time is
like I would be connected to them because of the actions of my nervous system and my body empathy I wonder what my life would have been like if when my kindergarten teacher was teaching me about the five senses if she had also taught me about body empathy and let me know that I had this sense that allowed me to experience other people's actions with them inside my own body I think I might have been able to become more aware of it at that time I certainly don't think that many non-autistics are p
articularly aware of their own sense of body empathy it's something that we've all just had with us since we were small babies and it's hard to imagine the world without the sense of body empathy yet imagining it without the sense of body empathy and what it might be like to be in a body where body empathy isn't happening will help non-autistics better comprehend what it's like to be an autistic and there therefore have a more accurate empathy for them rather than an empathy for them that is bas
ed on the false assumption that they are experiencing body empathy the way that non-autistics are if you're a non- autistic you have this sense of body empathy if you don't get what it is right now that's okay I'm going to get you there in the academic literature body empathy is known as embodied simulation I choose to use the term body empathy in order to help us connect body empathy with the non-autistics and contrast body empathy from emotion sharing empathy that autistics experience the purp
ose of having solid terms with clear definitions is to end confusion and help us understand our own brains and contrast them from the brains of people with Neurology different than our own so that we can comprehend each other well enough to alleviate distress and difficulties faced by neurodiverse families
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