Hyperempathy or Hypervigilance?

Apr 01, 2026

Is My Hyperawareness of Other People’s Emotions an Autistic Trait or a Trauma Response? Both?

Some Autistic adults identify as having hyperempathy, an extraordinary sensitivity to other people's emotions and needs. They describe it as embodying, or physically taking on, other people's emotions as though they are their own feelings. They feel and respond to others' cues and needs, perhaps to an exceptional degree. If you are a highly sensitive person, you may recognize this intense form of empathy.

Empathy can be a beautiful thing. It's good to attune to the needs and preferences of the people we love. An important part of being in a relationship is considering and caring for other people. How could an abundance of empathy be a sign of danger? How could responding to the needs and preferences of others, actually be suppressing our own needs and causing us to go into burnout?

Is what I feel for others hyperempathy? Or is it hypervigilance?

Hypervigilance is a trauma response. As I understand it, hypervigilance is an exhausting nervous system state of constant semi-activation, where we are focused outward, towards other people, obsessively anticipating and reacting to others' cues. Instead of listening to our own nervous system, feeling our own feelings, and meeting our own needs, we are focused outward, on our partner, parent or friend, monitoring their regulation and responding to their desires, over our own. Some abusive personalities actually demand this hypervigilant centering and service from us. It costs our nervous system dearly to maintain this state. Hypervigilance has a serious impact on our mental and physical health.

Hypervigilance may look much the same as hyperempathy, like an intense focus on other people's emotions, but it is not an Autistic trait, it is a survival response to relational trauma. Hypervigilance is usually not a broad awareness of everyone's emotions all the time, it's a narrow focus on the emotional regulation of one or two particularly demanding people in our lives. Hypervigilance is an extreme sensitivity to the needs and moods of others, as a means of preventing future harm or upset. Our brain has decided, if we never relax, nothing bad will ever happen again. We mistakenly believe that if we never stop serving and performing, no one will ever leave us or hurt us.

For Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent adults who socialize uniquely, how can we tell which we are experiencing, hyperempathy or hypervigilance? When is our intense awareness of our parent, friend or partner's feelings actually a sign of real danger instead of emotional closeness? When is hyperawareness a signal from our bodymind that the person is unsafe? Are we just being empathetic to their needs and preferences, or are we shapeshifting to keep them regulated, so that we don't get hurt or bothered? Is this attunement or harm reduction? Are we being a good friend or codependent?

Whether or not your hyperawareness is a sign on covert abuse, is something to discuss with your therapist and/or trusted friends. As always let me say loudly, I am not a mental health professional. I am an Autistic adult who has found that emotional abuse literature doesn't often translate to Neurodiverse families. I am interested in how these concepts apply to people who do not process emotions or socialize exactly like the neurotypical people described in these books. This article is essentially a long list of journaling prompts I have pulled from a variety of sources, and I use them as tools to untangle my Autistic hyperempathy from my CPTSD-induced hypervigilance. Take what is useful to you. Other resources at the end.

Do you frequently find yourself:

Making the choices they want you to make
Trying to avoid upsetting them
Over preparing for seeing them
Doing exactly what they want you to do
Working hard to keep them calm
Just giving them what they want
Putting on a pleasing performance
Monitoring their moods
Anticipating their wants and needs
Pouring bottomless love and attention into them
Doing excess mental, emotional, physical labor
Making their life easier or more functional
Not asking for anything
Not correcting or disagreeing with them
Gentle parenting another adult
Managing their nervous system regulation

For some masking Autists, the above list may not be a sign of an abusive relationship with one individual. It could be how we've been trained to socialize with everyone. My culture pressures us to mask in this way, to suppress our authentic needs and interests for the comfort of others, but are we also experiencing emotional abuse from an individual, from our parent or partner? What if it's both masking and a response to abuse? Let's unpack it further.

Can you see what is not there?

Hypervigilance indicates emotional abuse, but what if you can't see it clearly? Sometimes covert abuse is revealed by it's absence. When it's present, the energy feels like your "normal". But. When it goes away, you notice. When you have space away from this person, do you feel better than you do when you are together? When you are away from them, do you feel more like yourself, calmer, more comfortable, more capable? Do you feel a lift in spirits if they have to cancel plans with you? How does your body respond to their arrival or departure? Does your heart fill with dread when you hear their car pull into the driveway? Does your body fill with stress chemicals at the sound of them approaching? If home alone, do you jump up and start performing for them, when you hear their keys in the door? Do you feel a rush of relief or relaxation when they go away again?

The relief and freedom you feel away from this person is a strong indicator that being with them feels threatening to your bodymind. Sometimes you are not dysregulated. Sometimes our bodies are in actual danger.

How do people under coercive control feel and act?

There is a tendency for emotional abuse literature to focus on the actions of the person using abusive behaviors, but what about us? How do victims of covert abuse think and behave?

Questions for your journal:

Do you talk or think about them obsessively?
Do you need a lot of decompression time after seeing or talking to them?
Do you frequently melt down or shut down after spending time with them?
If something goes wrong, do you spend a lot of mental energy making plans for the future, trying to figure out how to avoid another conflict, trying to figure out a way to have a better interaction next time?
Do you rewind conversations trying to figure out what happened that made you feel so dysregulated?
Do you script future conversations, mentally rehearsing to avoid a misunderstanding or a blow up?
Do you find yourself trying to find the perfect wording or the perfect timing to bring up anything uncomfortable?
When you consider options for your own life, are you hyperaware of their preferences?
Do you find yourself dressing, speaking, moving, eating according to their preferences, maybe even when they aren't there?
Do you leave a lot of availability in your schedule for them, knowing that should they want you and not have access to you, they'll be really upset and maybe even punish you in some way? Do they feel entitled to your time, space, money, labor, body, or mind?
Do you feel guilty giving love and attention to anyone or anything else?
Do you neglect your own interests, friendships, and goals when they're around?
Are you able regulate your nervous system in their presence?
Can you create, stim, play, or find a flow state near them with mockery or commentary?
Do you suppress your own needs for their comfort?
Do you stop expressing excitement or interest in things because of their jealousy over your pets, books, hobbies, friends, or even your own children, because they hold the secret belief that THEY should be your only interest and source of connection?
Do you fantasize about a perfect version of them who treats you well? Do you believe promises about an ideal future where your needs are met, and focus on that fantasy future, instead of what is actually happening now?

Wouldn't I know if I was being abused?

Coercive control can be difficult to identify due to the emotionally manipulative person's gaslighting, minimizing, excuses and denial. They may surround themselves with people who also behave the same way. Their abusive actions and entitled beliefs could be normalized in your family or culture. We're used to it. If it's "normal," it's hard to see as out of line. Covert abuse hides under a veneer of plausible deniability. For many reasons, emotional abuse can be difficult to identify, especially for a neurodivergent bodymind who processes emotions atypically. Social and emotional differences like alexithymia or delayed processing, can effect our perception of covert emotional abuse.

Abusers can justify their actions and confuse you with mixed signals, but it's harder to remain in denial about what is really happening, when we focus on the mental and physical health effects abuse has on the victim. There are visible impacts on an abuse victim's bodymind, even without physical wounds.

Have you experienced any of the following mental and physical effects of abuse?

Addiction
Allergies
Anxiety
Autoimmune disease
Burnout
Codependency
Compulsive thoughts or actions
Confusion
Control issues
Demand avoidance
Depression
Disordered eating
Exhaustion
Feeling stuck or lost
Financial problems
Friendship failures
Gut, skin or joint issues
Hormone issues
Inability to concentrate
Infections, reoccurring
Inflammation
Insomnia
Isolation and loneliness
Irritability
Loss of interest
Low libido
Pain
Paranoia
Poor memory
PMS or PMDD
Self harm
Self sabotage
Unkindness to yourself or others
Unwillingness or inability to learn new things

According to abuse expert Lundy Bancroft, in his book Why Does He Do That?, abuse is hidden so they can continue doing it. Their emotionally abusive behavior gets them things they want, like control of your time, space, energy, body, and money. It also gets them out of things they do not want to do, such as childcare, emotional labor, and chores. They do not want to stop using you in service to themselves, and they do not want to be accountable for their behavior's impact on you or your kids. Keeping it below the level of plausible deniability, keeps them from having to be accountable for their abusive behaviors and the entitled beliefs behind them. Abusive behaviors are almost always accompanied by the secret, distorted belief that they "get to". They know they would not accept the behavior from someone else, that it would be wrong for others to treat them this way, but because of their role in the hierarchy, they believe they get to. Abusive people believe they get to abuse. In fact, entitlement and lack of accountability are two of the four pillars of abuse and will be present in all types of relational abuse. (Why yes I do have a Substack article on recognizing The Four Pillars of Abuse, if you're interested in a deeper dive.)

What I’ve learned is this, there is a kind of hurt that has lasting impact on our mental and physical health, though it leaves no visible cuts or bruises. We feel the effects of it, though we cannot point to their unkind behavior and be believed. We are emotionally blinded by normalization, love bombing, projection, wishful thinking, and intermittent rewards. We cannot always say- this is assault, this is endangerment, this is clearly bullying, this is harassment, this is an obvious violation! We cannot always know for sure the harm was deliberate and intentional. However, hypervigilance is a sign from our bodymind that something very real, and very dangerous, is happening. Our nervous system is paying close, constant attention to a very real threat.

I thought it was perimenopause. I thought that the CPTSD symptoms I was experiencing were due to my age and hormone levels. I thought perimenopause was the reason I couldn't sleep, concentrate or remember things. Guess what? I'm still in perimenopause but I sleep fine now, because I have gotten space from a person who was coercively controlling me. I feel better because I’m free from the demand that I constantly center and serve them, no matter what I'm going through, no matter what I need or want. And you know what else? I am out of Autistic burnout. My entire adult life, I have cycled in and out of burnout. Right now, I am healthier and happier than I have been in a long time.

A final thought. Have you seen those "divorce effect" videos, the trend of women posting photo montages of themselves before and after leaving an abusive marriage? You can watch how their appearance changed the further they got away from coercive control, and see them glow up to become phenomenally gorgeous inside and out. To me, those videos are such a clear illustration of the physical effects of emotional abuse.

It can be very painful and destabilizing to uncover hidden abuse in a relationship that we depend on, with a person we love. But, awakening can be so worth it.

Love,

~Katherine

AUTHOR'S NOTE: As always, I am not a mental health or medical professional. This is not a diagnostic tool nor medical advice. This is where I share my therapeutic writing practice and my research.

Katherine Aurora Callahan

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