I need help with emotions.

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I am having a problem that is causing me a great deal of stress---so much so that even typing this thread---my hands are lightly shaking.

I have problems with empathy---of course most of you can relate to that. But, every so often, something happens, and I get too caught up in the emotions. That is happening now.

A person I know of is on trial for a serious crime. The community knows that it is a misunderstood instance that has caused him to be on trial. But, nevertheless, he is fighting for his freedom as prosecution makes him look like a villain. I am too caught up in this. I cannot stand the thought of him going to prison if found guilty. Now my emotions go into 110% overdrive. It isn't fair what is happening to him. But I barely know him. Why am I so taken by this?---others here that know him like I do just seem to be going on about their lives. But I have been going to the news to see what is happening in this week-long case and just thinking about it causes me anxiety and stress. Has this ever happened to you? How do you deal with it? I believe that if I were in the courtroom when the verdict is read I would be ready to collapse. But yet when my wife's first cousin died this past Sunday, I am lightly affected. I should be affected by it though, but why am I not? This is one of the things I went to therapy for and couldn't make progress on---at least not much anyway.

I do have problems with empathy, and on closer inspection, it seems that when I do show emotions and feelings towards something it's usually because I can relate to those circumstances. My uncle passed away about 3 months ago. I didn't feel a thing. We weren't terribly close, but we were not absolute strangers either. If I am watching the news and I see kids in war torn countries, will no shelter and little to eat, I know that I should feel something, but I don't, not really. I don't think it's because I feel those kids are unworthy of my emotions, but rather that my mind is not imaginative enough to understand something which for me is foreign. If I see a documentary about someone with social problems, then I can immediately relate and thus feel something, even on a small scale.

I'm not really sure if this could be said about your position, but something about this person on trial I would assume has some significance to yourself whether consciously or sub consciously. Maybe if you could find out what that is, then maybe your anxiety might go away. I'm sorry that's not the greatest advice in the world, but it's all I got.

I hope you feel better, I know how terrible anxiety can be. Good luck.

Thank you I_wanna_blue. The person on trial is a former student where I teach---so even though I don't know him well, I know him as a student---and he is a good guy. I think that what may upset me the most is my 99.9% knowledge that he is innocent in this confused thing that happened, and I hate to see a prosecuting attorney warp the evidence. Whoa! Maybe that's part of it---I hate to see the truth twisted and facts made to look like something else. Could this be something to do with our autistic minds' being so truth oriented? Funny, after posting this thread, I felt some relief. Then I absorbed into some house plans, and though I still feel upset about this situation, I feel a lot better and haven't been thinking about it as much. We are mysterious aren't we?

I'm the same way. I think another part of it is that we're very protective and also we tend to root for the underdog. You may not have known him that well, but I think that knowing him as a former student at your school is probably sufficient. In a way, all the teachers kinda have a responsibility for looking after the students, at a minimum intellectually, but oftentimes personally as well. He may have graduated or left the school, but in a way that doesn't really change how you as a teacher/mentor view him. Once a student, always a student, to a certain extent. Maybe perhaps it's like the parental instinct kicking in, something that would not kick in in the event of the death of your uncle.

Thank you Stinkypuppy---that does make sense. I suppose I do feel this responsibility for him as I did when he was a student. I appreciate the comments here---it does help.

This has been me for most of my life, and it bothers me a lot if I think about it. My mother has on occasion shown total lack of understanding at how I can go on about injustice and suffering of people in the news I do not even know, yet when it comes to the suffering of family members... I cannot express anything, and at times, cannot feel anyrthing, as if a wall comes down over any feelings. I am not sure why it happens. In my case, I read the news regularly, and can end up in tears reading of terrible crimes being inflicted on another, or injustices. But when my own grandmother died, I was trying to force myself to feel something. I didn't even cry.

I have tried to work it out.. it is almost as if it is safer to allow ourselves to feel for people who are at a distance. Maybe it is some sort of subconscious self protection mechanism, in the case of bad things happening to close relatives. Someone suggested that in the past, as I am sure it isn't that we don't care, don't feel for closer relations.

I have noticed a similar behaviour, to a degree, in NTs. If you noticed the huge outpouring of grief when Princess Diana died, and when recently Michael Jackson died... these people were crying and getting hysterical over someone they did not know at all personally. And I sat there wondering... did they react this badly to their family members dying?

I'm the same way. I can get really torn up over injustice and I always feel for the underdog.

Thank you all, what you have said makes sense. I am going to check the news and see if there have been any updates since the case is expected to end by the end of the week. I think it is the anxiety over injustice. I expect the truth to be accepted and I do not like it when the truth can be distorted to influence others to believe differently. I will keep you up to date. I am still real anxious about this whole thing---therefore I haven't been commenting much on it.

It's competition (a natural mechanism) applied to a situation that should be about truth and nothing else. People performing their jobs like athletes competing in sporting events shouldn't be part of the judicial system with such a huge impact on someone's life.

I have a cousin that has been in prison since he was like 20 years old. He's at least 40 now. AS wasn't a diagnosis back when he was having issues as a child. He had problems his entire life. He was diagnosed as Schizophrenic as a teen. I suspect he may actually be autistic, but that's irrelevant to what happened. He had a diagnosed mental condition that was never even mentioned in his trial. He was found guilty of murder and has been in jail since. Him and a girl with some mental problems had a child. Something happened and the child wasn't breathing. He tried to do CPR to save his child and was convicted of murder.

[ I think that what may upset me the most is my 99.9% knowledge that he is innocent in this confused thing that happened, and I hate to see a prosecuting attorney warp the evidence. Whoa! Maybe that's part of it---I hate to see the truth twisted and facts made to look like something else.

Then stay far away from the legal system because that's exactly what it does, as often as possible.

PaganMom