Highly Sensitive Person vs Asperger’s – 5 Key Differences

Highly Sensitive Person vs Asperger's

Today, we’re gonna do a comparison between highly sensitive person vs. Asperger’s. 

Highly Sensitive Person vs Asperger’s

I was self diagnosed last year of having Asperger’s and it just made sense, and it just pieced my whole life together after 47 years of not knowing what was wrong with me and what was different with me. I finally had the answers. 

So in this comparison, we’re going to compare against the highly sensitive person, aka HSP versus Asperger’s. 

So basically Asperger’s is a communication and social disease. So with the highly sensitive person, let’s just go through the categories, so the highly sensitive person has lots of empathy and compassion towards others, they deeply care about others. 

They’re very sensitive about their friends and their family, and they want to hang out with everyone, they’re usually extroverted, they’re just very highly sensitive. 

Whereas the person with Asperger’s, they don’t really have empathy or compassion, they learned at a very young age or it could be the wiring, just to not trust other people, and for me I was very isolated. I was very sensitive, but I had Asperger’s. I had high functioning autism.

I thought about myself . It was very hard for me to actually have empathy and think about others. I’m still working on that today 48 years later. 

Number two, highly sensitive people have deep relationships like I said earlier, they love community, they feel everything other people feel. 

A lot of HSPs are empaths and empaths are very popular on YouTube and other avenues because they literally feel what other people feel – and it can be overwhelming sometimes.

People with Asperger’s have poor relationships and they have intimacy issues, and you know I only had one or two friends growing up and I did not like groups at all. I was very shy and I would rather just play with one person at a time. It took me months to get to know someone to actually open up and be myself. 

Number three, highly sensitive people can communicate very well. They’re usually leaders in business and in life in general they’re their social workers or counselors, but they just feel they feel a lot. 

People with Asperger’s have a hard time communicating, that’s one of the social aspects of Asperger’s as we just do not know how to articulate sometimes. But we can be geniuses when it comes to creating art, and writing literature, poetry, I loved writing poetry for many many years. 

Number four, both of these highly sensitive people and Asperger’s get overwhelmed easily, so they might have to retreat and regroup and rebuild before they go back out. 

Both of them do feel a lot –  like people with Asperger’s have high sensory, you know they can get overloaded with stimuli. Same with the people with highly sensitive people.

People with Asperger’s, you know, lights are bright, sounds can be very jarring, certain sounds can just make us very angry and upset so both of them pretty much hear that one. 

Number five, highly sensitive people can be intimate, whereas the person with Asperger’s can have a very difficult time sharing emotions and deep feelings with a loved one, or with a spouse. 

Lastly, the highly sensitive person can become codependent because they care so much about others, and they feel like they’re guilty if they don’t do something right, they’re over achievers, they’re perfectionists, you know, but they can get codependent very easily. 

You know, my fiance actually is codependent because she feels what everyone else is feeling and she feels guilty if she feels like she’s let them down in some ways. 

So she always tries to make peace with everyone, even sometimes she goes over the boundary and she has to take care of herself first, people with Asperger’s, they’re not codependent really, they can do their own thing – unless that’s some kind of weird reverse codependency. 

But Asperger’s can get along without feeling the judgment of others. You know they can care less about other people sometimes. But then again, that could be a coping mechanism, you know like a shield to not get hurt, so we put up a lot of defenses. 

People with Asperger’s have complex defense systems and coping mechanisms to keep us, you know, feeling sane, because people do really affect us, it just doesn’t show on the outside. 

Whereas people that are highly sensitive, they let all their emotions show usually. So I hope you liked this comparison contrast, Leave a comment if you’re one of these, I would love to see your comments and hit that subscribe button if you’re new here and we’ll talk to you soon. 


Erik C Johnson

Asperger’s and Addiction Resources

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