Indeed. I have been formally diagnosed as autistic, and I have been (since I can remember) empathetic to the point that emotional pain would become debilitating.

Case in point, the stories and lessons I heard in church every Sunday. I was raised Baptist, and a standard teaching among Baptists is that most humans ever born are burning in hell, experiencing intense pain, being tortured by God.

I first realized that when I was 8 or 9 years old. I believed what I was taught, and my reaction was to curl up and shut down. The thought of all those people suffering so intensely caused me so much pain I couldn't sleep, didn't want to eat, and stopped taking joy from life. All I could hear was the screams of the burning. (It didn't help that somebody in our church decided that showing people a scary movie that included scenes of hell was a good idea ... even for children.)

I've never stopped feeling sick to my stomach when I think about Christianity. Some people say my aversion to Christian theology is disrespectful, but it's actually based in intense empathy. Of course, since most Christians treat queer people (like me) like shit, I empathize for persecuted queer people. I feel so much pain for them. But my strongest hostility toward Christianity stems from my childhood empathy crisis about hell.

I'll never forget the extraordinary emotional pain I lived through for at least a couple of years. I could never understand why people who went to the same church I went to didn't suffer the same way I suffered.

I'm pretty sure it's because most of them were not autistic like me.