Never formally diagnosed but I had similar difficulties to yours and it had been brought up to me multiple times that I probably had some form of ASD.

I am a dev and probably had quite similar experiences to yours in meetings in my first couple office jobs. What made a profound difference for me was adopting empathy as an intellectual practice. I have never once "experienced someone's feelings as if they were my own" so I long regarded myself as being naturally deficient in empathy, but it also didn't seem very important to my engineer mindset.

The habit I cultivated was to simply compile lists of rules, not written, just in my head. Things to say, things to not say, and how to say what you need to say and when. How people react, etc. It meant paying close attention and making guesses in a way that did not come naturally to me at first. It took a lot of effort to build up these habits. I did not realize just how self-focused and self-centered I was as a human being.

After doing this for a while, without really trying, general principles emerged from my compiled rules. These, combined with my efforts at paying attention to people, really turned things around for me in a profound way. People really began to warm up to me, and most importantly, my interactions almost completely stopped being surprising and painful, due to me knowing a lot more about how to get along unselfishly. I avoided learning this for a long time, because I think I assumed I would end up spending my days just pleasing other people. A silly worry in the end.

The rules I compiled were an important middle step. It was applying the rigor and attention I usually reserve for interesting codebases or videogames, to getting along with humans. In hindsight it is perhaps not so surprising that with diligent effort I acquired a skill, but I cannot overstate how much I wish I had done this sooner.

I don't want to oversell it. It wasn't that I became an amazingly charismatic wunderkind, yet for the impact it made on my life, I may as well have. With great effort, in my mid 30s I reached the social starting line where most people (from my perspective at least) were lucky enough to begin.

It could be that I only managed this because my autistic behaviours had a different root cause or milder expression than someone else's. It could be that some forms of autism are purely viral and other ailments merely resemble it. In short, I don't know that anyone else can benefit from this, but am inclined to think that many could.

Also, FWIW, I wouldn't attach too strongly to this idea of "me" that you mention. I have had similar feelings in my journey, and the answer I found was to trust that whatever nebulous merit exists in this "me" concept, it will survive my efforts to improve myself towards a more healthy sociability. Your "me" might be holding you back.

Incidentally, per the main topic, as a result of my other health issues gut flora had entered my radar and I've encountered a lot of similar, potentially promising, claims about the brain gut connection. I personally think there's something important there to be found but we haven't had the right studies done to really sort it out. If this study was an important step in that process, great I guess, but like others have said, I would have preferred they had done a more useful study on the subject, that would propel our knowledge further, faster.

For all the mystery surrounding ASD, one thing I feel absolutely certain of, is that it is causing a lot of suffering that will become unnecessary once it is more thoroughly understood. The sooner the better.