Inter-species mirror touch synaesthesia

on feeling too wide open sometimes.

I’ve come to one of my woodland hideouts. It's a ten minute walk from the house. From the council woodland footpath I take a right along a deer path, my feet not as nimble as theirs. I have to be careful not to slip down the steep slope as I duck under holly boughs. Just a minute or two and I’m at my tree. There’s not too many places flat enough to sit, and the deer have had the best spots, their beds scratched into the steeps. It would be rude to sit in their beds, so i wedge myself on a flattish bit next to a large oak. I have the same requirements as the deers; somewhere not overlooked by humans, that gets the sun and has a view.

It’s the same spot where I drafted Coming to our senses: how neurodivergent children can teach us to broaden the spectrum of education. I find it hard to think if I’m overlooked, I often don’t like to be perceived by other humans, especially when I’m trying to get quiet. Here I take off my shoes, bury my feet in the delicious leaf litter, and can suddenly hear my body and feel my thoughts. It’s delicious to not be interrupted or called upon. I can sink deeply into myself and the ancient woodland soil.

Of course I am overlooked and perceived. The great tits are doing their alarm calls. I’ve encroached on the woodpeckers as they thrum their trees. I feel the glide of the rooks' shadows sweep the woodland floor like fish below me. I open myself to the worlds around me and ask them to see me as I unclench my jaw.

I remember in my twenties telling a friend I was at art college with why I found it hard to walk down a busy street. “I feel like I’m feeling the emotions of everyone else walking past me, like I have no skin, like I’m mopping up other people’s feelings and it’s exhausting.” She knew exactly what I meant and so in our free time we roamed the quiet moors and woods together. She disliked maps or having a plan so we never quite knew where we’d end up. (I carried a map and compass in my bag in case we got lost - I’m a bit more of a control freak than her.)

I’ve recently learned the term hyper-empathy. In a 2024 study 78% of autistic respondents said that they experienced hyper-empathy. One respondent reported “I absorb other people’s emotions, and I almost know how people are feeling before they are aware of it themselves”. Contrary to harmful stereotypes of autistic folk lacking empathy, the study concludes that the autistic experience of empathy is much more complex than suggested by the empathy deficit narrative.¹

Of course it could be hyper-vigilance and a ptsd sculpted neuroception that causes a constant scanning of the human landscape for threat, making me aware of subtle facial expressions. Whether neurotype or learned behaviour, it’s perhaps a chicken and egg question. Morgana Clementine explores this really well in Is it my neurodivergent wiring or is it trauma?

In human landscapes I’m not just scanning for threats, I’m feeling all sorts of emotions leak out of people; calm and excitement and many subtle flavours of human experience in other people as I walk past them in a crowd. Here in the woodland nook I’m happy to open up and feel the vibes. I’m more comfortable processing the woodland vibrations of ant, spider, bluetit, woodpecker or fungus.

I once went to an event where there was some kind of mindfulness in nature exercise that encouraged people to intentionally do similar to what I am doing under the tree: open up our senses and notice. After there was a Q and A where I asked “do you have any tips on closing down your senses afterwards? because it feels really hard walking back out into town all wide open.” The poor woman looked very confused and didn't know how to answer. I threw her a rope and said “oh, it’s probably just me”. Thankfully someone else in the audience piped up “I get that too, I know what you mean.” This was before I had any idea about neurodivergence. It makes more sense now. I feel like I’m a sea anemone, wide open or tight shut or peeking out.

I’m wondering if I have mirror touch synesthesia. Apparently it correlates with heightened empathic ability. ² And perhaps it can apply between species. I’m still on the hunt for how to explain my experience where I could see in damselfly vision, in my minds eye, when the damselflies were landing repeatedly on my forehead as I floated on my back in the lake, and I could feel the whole lake and the shape of my body in polarised colourful three dimensional outlines of light, as if transmitted from the damselfly into my forehead andbody in beautiful ripples of light. If anyone else has any other explanations, or similar insect visions, please get in touch, I’m so curious about it. Also, does anyone else see ultraviolet beams of light coming off of the foreheads of moths, spiders and butterflies? It can’t just be me?

Thankfully the damaging notion that autistic folk have broken mirror neurons and therefore no empathy, has been discredited and disproved. ³I would hypothesise that many neurodivergent folk, along with their super sensitive hearing, vision, and sense of touch, have super sensitive detections for other sorts of senses, frequencies and spectrums. From hearing electricity to feeling the vibrations of other species’ Umvelts, many of us are good at hearing and feeling, but it’s alot.

Others check the world wide web for news, but I feel the need to regularly scan the wood wide web. One of my favourite books is Suzanne Simmard’s Finding the Mother Tree. She is a scientist that proved out the ‘wood wide web’, following the threads of underground mycelium in old growth forest to prove that the trees really do send signals and nutrients, warnings and minerals and nourishment to each other via a symbiotic relationship with fungi. In certain pockets of ancient woodlands, I feel the hum and it strikes a chord, like a tuning fork, I begin to buzz too, becoming part of the interspecies connection.

As I leave the woods from my nook by the deer beds, hurrying home so I can tag team with my partner and let him have a bit of weekend, I see a yellow brimstone butterfly billowing out from the edge of the woods, floaty like evening primrose, and I feel as light and airy as it lifts me up.

Chewing on bitter motherwort

A few days later and I’ve had quite a shitty day and when my partner managed to take the small one out on the bike this evening, I felt stuck in freeze, hunched and scrolling. The seedlings needed watering down the hill at the allotment, so I coaxed myself out and promised myself chocolate from the shop. I was in an avoiding humans mode so I took my sunglasses to help me walk past any humans without them being able to see into me. I watered the seeds and tried to talk myself out of going to the shop, as bingeing an entire easter egg is not what my system really needs. I decided to give myself permission to go though, so I’m not being all self-controlly.

On the way out the allotment I pass the communal bed of medicinal herbs and the motherwort is starting to put on growth. It’s supposed to support overwhelmed mothers, and it’s the bitterest herb ever. I laugh to myself that motherwort is as bitter as the strung out overwhelmed mothers and maybe that bitterness is where both their strength lies. I pick a leaf and chew on it like gum as I walk. I tell myself that I have my sunglasses so that will mean I can go to the shop and pass humans. This reminds me that I accidentally left my other pair of sunglasses in the woods the other day, at the spot where I was writing, near the deer beds. I persuade myself that it will do me more good to go there and retrieve my sunglasses, and tell myself that I can snack on bitter things instead of sweet.

So instead of turning right to the shop I turn left to the woods. There’s jack in the hedge that’s also bitter, and astringent bramble tips, and rose briar leaves to chew on, and the tears come. Chocolate bingeing helps to shove things down and keep me going when there's no time to stop as a mum, but it bypasses the release, and of course letting the tears out is really what’s needed. I’m glad of my shades to hide my tear stained face as I pass an acquaintance. Apart from him I’ve the woods to myself in terms of humans. I make it to my spot, find my other sun glasses buried in the leaf litter, reminding me that it wasn't a dream that I had a dreamy time there with my notebook the other day. I’m rewound back to that moment and feel better.

I couldn’t linger long, I have to be back home before the boy is home from his bike-ride, else he will panic, but I lay in the leaf litter for a minute or two staring up at the twisty oak arms. I chew on a bit of soil, confirming that it is indeed acidic. I think of Rebecca the earth eater in 100 years of solitude. I’ve always felt a reflexive urge to bite soil or hawthorn trunks or whole hillsides, get my teeth into them.

Often when I’m falling asleep and I’ve foraged a lot of a particular plant, in my mind behind closed eyes I see the plant multiplied and dancing like a William Morris wallpaper. I wonder if I’ll be cocooned in Motherwort wallpaper tonight, her bitter embrace soothing my nerves.

As I walk home the moon has just risen hanging low above the steep hill and the bats are flying. The skycolours fade, beautiful above the sewage works.

Now it’s late and I’m kind of regretting not going to the shop to buy chocolate. I need both bitterness and sweetness to get me through this mothering lark. Ginger biscuits will have to do.

1. https://shura.shu.ac.uk/32342/9/Verrier-AutisticPeoplesExperience%28AM%29.pdf

2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6263804_Mirror-touch_synesthesia_is_linked_with_empathy

3. https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/no-autistic-people-do-not-have-broken-mirror-neuron-system-new-evidence