The Double Empathy Problem: When Understanding Goes Both Ways

Exploring connection, communication difference, and repair through an Internal Family Systems lens

The Quiet Language of Recognition

There are moments when I walk into a room and feel so anxious but then I catch the eye of someone who feels familiar before I have even spoken. It is almost like I have a heat seeking radar, finding a point of connection and safety. And then the feeling of relief. The sense that I will not need to mask here.

Neurodivergent people often seem to find each other in this way. It always fascinates me that when we do connect, how easy communication can be between us. Communication can flow in many different forms such as shared references, humour, sharing pictures or memes (a language my meme-sending part knows well), or a quiet kind of attunement where you simply feel understood. I notice that when I am with other neurodivergent people, conversation often has its own rhythm. There is space for pauses, tangents, and shared silence. It doesn’t matter if we interrupt or speak over each other (which I do a lot). We can jump between ideas or exchange ideas following different and multiple rabbit holes and still feel fully understood.

But in less neurodiverse settings, that ease can slip away. I notice my body tightens as I start to work harder to follow the flow. Conversation moves quickly, full of cues that are easy to miss. The same qualities that feel natural and connected in neurodivergent spaces can suddenly feel exposed, uncertain, and too much.

There will be a sudden shift in the air, a look, a pause, a silence that lands heavy. The feeling of being other descends. Of being wrong because your timing, tone, or expression did not match what was expected. I definitely have parts of me who have learned to scan for those moments before they arrive, and I really know the oh so familiar sinking feeling when my communication goes wrong.

For a long time, those communication ruptures were described as deficits, part of a social communication disorder, a lack of empathy or social skill. But research on what is called the double empathy problem has offered a different view. It suggests that communication breakdowns between mixed neurotypes are reciprocal, arising from both sides struggling to understand one another across their differing communication styles rather than just a one-sided deficit. In this piece of writing, I want to explore how the ‘Double Empathy Problem’ and Internal Family Systems can help us to understand communication differences and the possibilities for repair both between and within ourselves.

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The Double Empathy Problem: A Shared Struggle to Understand

In 2012, autistic scholar Damian Milton introduced the term double empathy problem (DEP) to describe the mutual misunderstandings that can occur between autistic and non-autistic people (Milton, 2012). He challenged the long-held view that social and communication differences in autism were signs of a deficit within autistic people themselves. Instead, he suggested that these moments of disconnection arise between people, from mismatched expectations, worldviews, and communication styles.

In this framing, empathy is not something one person has and another lacks. It is a relational space that can falter when two ways of being and communicating collide. What we call social difficulty may, in truth, be a two way struggle to translate experience across different perceptual and cultural worlds. This links in to the dialectical misattunement hypothesis (DMH) which proposed that various psychiatric and developmental conditions are not a disordered function of individual brains but a mismatch of interpersonal dynamics (Bolis, Balsters, Wenderoth, Becchio, & Schilbach, 2017).

Over the past decade, research has offered growing support for Milton’s idea. Research such as Crompton et al. (2020a) and Crompton et al. (2020b) found that autistic people often communicate smoothly and naturally with one another, building strong rapport and shared understanding. The challenges emerge most clearly in mixed neurotype conversations, where each side’s cues, pace, and interpretations differ.

Other studies have shown that non autistic people can also misread autistic communication. For example, Jones et al, (2023) found that even outside observers could detect this two way mismatch, while Cheang et al. (2025) demonstrated that empathic accuracy depends heavily on whether communication styles align. Together, these findings affirm that the so called deficits are often relational rather than individual.

Reflections such as Milton, Gurbuz, and López (2022) and Davis and Crompton (2021) have helped shape the next wave of thinking, suggesting that social understanding requires mutual adaptation rather than one way correction. The focus is shifting from trying to make autistic people “fit in” by correct their ‘deficits’ to one of creating spaces where communication differences are recognised, respected, and supported.

Seen through this lens, the double empathy problem aligns naturally with the neurodiversity paradigm. It reframes differing communication not as a personal flaw but as a meeting of minds shaped by culture, language, and neurotype. Misattunement then becomes an opportunity for curiosity, for learning how to stay in relationship across communication difference rather than turning away.

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An Internal Mirror: The IFS Lens

When I first encountered Internal Family Systems, I was struck by how much it echoed the same principles that the double empathy problem describes. Within each of us, there are parts that communicate in very different ways. Some are articulate and confident, others silent or mistrustful. Some express themselves through words, others through sensation, tension, or imagery.

It is easy for these parts to misunderstand one another. The protector that tries to keep everything safe can misread the exile’s inability to communicate. I have a manager part sees any emotional response from a part as chaos, or is shocked that I have a non-speaking part who can strike me mute in therapy. Misattunement between the different communication styles of parts happens inside us as much as it does between people.

IFS therapy invites a different kind of listening. It teaches that each part has its own truth and its own way of communicating that truth. When we bring curiosity rather than judgment, something begins to shift. The non-speaking part might communicate in writing or image, the withdrawn hiding one peeks out in silence, and a quiet understanding grows within the manager where there was once confusion.

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When the Double Empathy Problem Lives Inside Us

I have come to notice that for many neurodivergent people, the double empathy problem is not only something that happens between people. It very much happens inside me too. I can feel it in my own system. Parts of me learned early on to mask, to adapt, to pass as typical in order to survive. They are devoted protectors, shaped over years by the need to keep me safe in a world that expected me to fit, to be fluent, to be understood on someone else’s terms.

Alongside them are other parts of me that never wanted to hide. They are direct, intense, sensory, playful or don’t use spoken language or words to communicate. They communicate through movement, rhythm, images, or a quiet kind of knowing rather than through the social scripts my masking parts memorised. I notice how easily these parts can feel dismissed or silenced, sometimes even by my own more typically presenting parts who are trying, in their own way, to protect me.

When I come up against my own internalised ableism about what communication should look like, the misunderstanding inside can be painful. I can feel the tension between parts. My masking part worries that the freer parts will bring embarrassment or rejection, that being too much or too visible will cost me connection. The freer parts feel angry and sad, sensing betrayal or loss, frustrated that they must keep shrinking themselves to survive. Both are trying to protect me, but they are not speaking the same language.

There is also a very specific shame I carry about my relationship with words. In therapy, of all places, I can lose my ability to speak. My mind goes blank, my mouth stops cooperating, and language drains away just when it feels most important to be articulate. I am painfully aware of this when it happens. I feel exposed. Embarrassed. A part of me insists that I should be able to talk here, that this is literally what therapy is for, and judges me harshly for failing at something I am supposed to be good at as a therapist.

At the same time, another part of me is flooded, overwhelmed, doing everything it can simply to stay present. The loss of words is not a choice. It is my nervous system protecting me. But knowing that does not always soften the shame. Inside, it can feel like an internal double empathy problem, a gap between the part of me that longs to be real and expressive, and the part that stays safe in silence.

These are some of the hardest conversations I have with myself. They do not resolve quickly. The work is slow and careful. It asks me to help my masking parts know that their vigilance was wise, that they did not fail, and that they no longer have to carry the entire burden of belonging alone. It also asks me to bring gentleness to the part who loses her words, to recognise that silence is also communication, and that meaning can still be held even when language disappears.

Little by little, as these inner relationships soften, something new begins to emerge. A system that is still careful, still shaped by difference, but more open. Less ruled by fear. More able to let its many languages exist side by side.

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Bridging the Inner and Outer Worlds

The more I listen inside, the more clearly I see the same patterns reflected outside. The moments of mis-attunement that happen between my parts often mirror what happens in my relationships with others. A slight misunderstanding, a pause that stretches too long, a shift in tone. These moments can stir the same protectors who learned long ago how to manage the ache of not being understood.

I notice how quickly my system scans for danger in these moments. A part of me expects rupture, another withdraws, another tries to smooth things over. For a long time, I experienced these reactions as personal failures, signs that I was doing communication wrong again. But through this work, I am learning to see them differently.

The practice of staying with difference, of turning toward rather than away, begins inside. When I can hold space for the parts of me that struggle to connect, especially the parts that go quiet or feel ashamed, I find it easier to hold space for others too. I become more curious and less reactive. I start to notice the small hesitations, the uncertainty in another person’s eyes, the subtle signs that something has not quite landed. What once felt like rejection can begin to look like communication. A difference in timing. A mismatch of rhythm. Two nervous systems trying, imperfectly, to meet.

IFS therapy has taught me that the possibility of connection and repair does not begin with agreement or fluency. It begins with curiosity. The same is true of the Double Empathy Problem. Repair does not come from forcing understanding, but from staying present when understanding falters. From allowing communication to be difficult, and still choosing relationship.

For me, this work is about cultivating spaces, both inside and out, where difference can exist without hierarchy. Where communication does not need to be smooth to be meaningful. In my experience, when those conditions are present, empathy stops feeling like a skill to master and starts to feel relational and alive. A quiet knowing that even across difference, connection remains possible.

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Allowing Many Languages

At its heart, this writing is about what happens when communication difference is not treated as a problem to be solved, but as something to be met. When I loosen my grip on the idea that communication must look a certain way to count, something subtle changes. The pressure to communicate eases. The need to translate myself into something more acceptable softens.

Inside, too, communication becomes less about control and more about collaboration. Different parts, with different languages, are allowed to coexist without one needing to dominate or disappear.

Perhaps this is what all of this is pointing toward. A widening of what we count as communication. A respect for the many ways understanding can move between us. And a quiet trust that when difference is allowed to breathe, connection often finds its own way through.

Emma is a Clinical Psychologist and IFS Therapist and gently holds multiple neurodivergent labels including AuDHD. My aim is not to generalise everyone’s experience but to share how theory, research, and lived experience come together for me. For readers new to IFS (Internal Family Systems), “parts” language refers to the inner voices and strategies we all carry that help us manage life in different ways

References

Bolis D, Balsters J, Wenderoth N, Becchio C, Schilbach L. *(2017) Beyond Autism: Introducing the Dialectical Misattunement Hypothesis and a Bayesian Account of Intersubjectivity. Psychopathology. 2017;50(6):355-372. https://doi.org/10.1159/000484353

Cheang, R. T., Skjevling, M., Blakemore, A. I., Kumari, V., & Puzzo, I. (2025). Do you feel me? Autism, empathic accuracy and the double empathy problem. Autism, 29(9), 2315-2327. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241252320

Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C. V., Flynn, E. G., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020a). Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective. Autism, 24(7), 1704-1712. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286

Crompton, C. J., Hallett, S., Ropar, D., Flynn, E., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020b). ‘I never realised everybody felt as happy as I do when I am around autistic people’: A thematic analysis of autistic adults’ relationships with autistic and neurotypical friends and family. Autism, 24(6), 1438-1448. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320908976

Davis, R., & Crompton, C. J. (2021). What Do New Findings About Social Interaction in Autistic Adults Mean for Neurodevelopmental Research? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(3), 649-653. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620958010

Jones, D. R., Botha, M., Ackerman, R. A., King, K., & Sasson, N. J. (2023). Non-autistic observers both detect and demonstrate the double empathy problem when evaluating interactions between autistic and non-autistic adults. Autism, 28(8), 2053-2065. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231219743

Milton, D. E. (2012). On the Ontological Status of Autism: The ‘Double Empathy Problem’. Disability & Society 27 (6): 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Milton, D., Gurbuz, E., & López, B. (2022). The ‘double empathy problem’: Ten years on. Autism, 26(8), 1901-1903. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221129123