Are you capable of empathy?

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Very often, when someone else cries, I cry. I think it triggers a well of sadness that exists within myself because of the extreme degree of adversity I was subjected to throughout my life. When I was a small child it was the same or worse in that I seemed to experience other people's pain, or what I perceived as pain, which would overwhelm me to the point it was unbearable, while I was completely unable to identify, get in touch with or feel anything for my own sake or what was happening to me. I'm better now at experiencing my own feelings but is still very difficult to get to and sometimes have to be clubbed in the head, figuratively speaking, to finally get to my own feelings. When I go to a funeral however, I don't feel anything. When my grandfather died when I was fourteen, I went through an attempt at trying to make myself cry because I thought that's what I was supposed to do but I was unsuccessful and wasn't able to shed a single tear. Now, after a lifetime of painful experiences at the hands of other humans, I don't feel much for other human beings for the most part, though I still have the trigger happy response when I see someone else cry and the waterworks begin that way. But really caring about people I can't say I do. When I see animals hurt even in the slightest way, however, it feels literally unbearable to me and I almost come unglued and can't watch or look at it. It appears from my own perspective that our experiences dictate some of these things, i.e., when we have limited experiences, we experience a limited range of emotions based on that lack of experience and when we have more experiences, either positive or negative, we are affected that way and have a wider range of emotions, likewise, with biology playing a part, as well.

Yes, but I have a tendency to make people sad or mad before I realize what I'm saying - at least I can see that they're sad after the fact. But I wish I could prevent it.

There are a lot of feelings I can't discern though. And nonverbal communication tends to scare me because I don't know what I'm implying. I also considered myself a very empathetic person in the past but noticed that a lot of my empathy was based on how I felt!

I do

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I have autism.