EMPATHY IS MORE THAN WORDS

Marshack offers series of toolkits for improving neurodivergent communications in this nonfiction guide.

The author, a psychologist and marriage therapist, opens this book by defining some of her terms: the “Empathy Triad” is the convergence of empathy, context, and conversation; “NeuroTypical” refers to people “who generally can express the elements” of the Empathy Triad; “NeuroDiverse” narrowly defines people with some kind of “Empathy Dysfunction”; “NeuroDivergence” describes the relationship between “NeuroTypical” and “NeuroDiverse” people. In these pages, Marshack outlines the results of her “deep dive” into the subject of empathy, which led her to define her concept of “Empathy Dysfunction (EmD)” and create her “Empathy Dysfunction Scale (EmD Scale).” When discussing the dynamics of “NeuroDivergent” relationships, the author draws on her long experience as a counselor to flesh out her concepts, always with the almost-unreachable goal of what she calls “Radiant Empathy,” an empathy “so pure that it's off the chart (or EmD Scale).” Marshack details her “7-Step Interface Protocol” for helping people in “NeuroDivergent” relationships, often citing examples from her own life story. For example, she observes that “NeuroDiverse” family members seldom call other people by name and reflects on her own experiences with this exact trait: Her autistic mother never used her name, nor did her autistic former husband or her autistic daughter. These personal anecdotes, in addition to dramatic accounts of therapy sessions (“Nancy escalated,” she writes; “Her voice trembled, and she had tears in her eyes”) go a long way to compensate for the book’s jargon-heavy and abbreviation-choked narrative. Her blizzard of terminology can make large chunks of the text overly dense reading, but her life advice is hard-won and written in clear, direct terms. When she talks about a toxic personality trait (“The Transactional Trapper,” for instance), she writes bluntly: “There is no honor among these people, and it is not admirable to take them on. It is foolish … It is much better (safer and wiser) to hightail it out of the relationship.”

A terminology-dense but heartfelt look at the role of empathy in neurodivergent relationships.