Do you sense people's vibes/energy

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It means that other people's emotional states have a profound effect on your own emotional state. You feel other people's emotions even though you might not consciously regocnise what is happening.

Then your owm emotional state is a tangled mess of your own emotions, other's emotions, your reaction to the emotions of others and usually some old memories of painful past experiences are triggered somewhere there as well. No wonder so many of us just want avoid other people, and especially negative people because of the emotional havoc it causes inside us.

What can also happen that we start to subconsciously pick-up the personality of other people. I know that I picked up some parts of my ex-girlfriends personality because after our break-up I noticed that I had developed better social skills (in essence I often found myself imitating her or channeling her), also I picked up some attitudes towards relationships which is not necessarily a good thing.

Everything that has been written in this thread is absolutely awesome, it all makes so much sense!
It helps me to understand what I'm dealing with and for the first time I feel that I have come to a place
where I actually fit in.
This phenomenon of hyper-empathy with the inability to immediately find the appropriate reaction to any
highly stressful and confusing situation, how can this be misdiagnosed as having no empathy at all?
It just doesn't make any sense.
I am considering to see a psychologist to get a proper professional diagnosis and also to ask a few pointed questions
about this strange misunderstanding.

My husband just said that he often observed that in social situations I am often so absorbed in a certain mental focus, that I
completely miss what is going on around me, but whatever I am focused on, I get completely right.
So he reckons that I don't have "broadband empathy" and that the problem is just in this intensely narrow focus of attention.

I have never been satisfied with the labeling of things, especially in this realm of the unreal, as positive or negative. For me, to be more accurate, I would have stated that as:

"just want to avoid other people, and especially AGGRESSIVE people"

I have self-analyzed to a point where I know for certain that I have a hyper-sensitivity to aggression.

Of course the word aggression is another type of abstract constructed label, but I feel that it has fewer layers of abstraction and is much more consistent than the word "negative".

I think that FAR too many people call something negative when it is simply the consideration of an alternate viewpoint than the most commonly accepted one.

Aggression can be directly related to and described in terms of physics, though it is not physical itself.

It's a product of deception and semantics.
Most emoting of feelings is acted out within layers of deception, so that is what is expected.
We do not do that properly.


On the other side of this coin are the psychopaths who are such good actors that they can fool others into thinking they have lots of empathy when they really feel nothing at all.

It all lies within the terms of how "empathy" is defined. Emoting and feeling are obviously two very different things.

I believe it is likely that psychopaths had very much to do with how empathy is defined clinically, even if not directly.

Sure, I agree. Words are limited. I don't have any attachment to the word negative. Just trying to communicate my ideas.

I actually think that words and language can be very dangerous for aspies. Dangerous, in the sense that we start using internal monologue inside our heads, and having imaginary conversations. When this happens to me, I feel like s**t.

Our thoughts should be more abstract, we already know what we are thinking, no need to verbalize it to actual words and sentences. It is almost like we are stuck in neurotypical social mode all the time, hyper-vigilantly preparing to communicate verbally. Maybe the reason why some are so exhausted after talking a lot.

Therefore I have ventured into meditative practices to silence the internal monologue. When my mind is silent it truly feels like bliss. And herein lies the key to good social performance as well. When the mind is silent, it's easy to just react naturally, it's easy to feel happy. And people (NT or AS) like happy, stable people.

That is a very insightful bit of metacognition.
It is keeping our main thought process out in the more controlled region of conscious thought where we consciously choose and compose the algorithms we use and how memory information is filtered and accessed. We think within our learned languages, and mostly ignore our intuition.
It takes great mental effort/fucus, and is slower than intuition. It is very tiring.

I don't think the mind is ever silent, but just seems that way when our conscious thought is silent. Meanwhile the subconscious is effortlessly doing its talking in the brain's native language.

I don't trust intuition and the subconscious very much because I believe that is where the hive-mind software resides and wields its power.

The will of the hive is carried out by individuals who are simply doing what they feel is right at the time.

Believing as I do, your last statement confuses me. I have had sort of the opposite type experience myself. Of course in situations like this it is often a similar experience, but the two people are describing it in opposite ways, - semantics. Just to be sure, I want to ask you if you think you may be an NT?

I ask because I believe NTs intuitively connect to the hive mind in the subconscious and that this process activates a chemical reward pathway in the brain. This would be consistent with a feeling of bliss when conscious thought it silenced.

I have experienced quite the opposite effect, where some set of algorithms were silenced in my head (say my simulated identity), thus freeing up brain resources to effortlessly ponder and solve problems. The experience was euphoric, but there was a voice in my head, though not my own.
This seems inconsistent to what you describe.
I'm not a big meditator by the way.

Thank you Olympiadis, that explains a lot. To mistake the mere display of emotions for empathy must be a legacy of the old behaviorists, who
draw their conclusions about someones inner state from the displayed actions alone, without really trying to communicate with the
person inside who is behind the actions, because such subjectivity is considered unscientific.
My own definition of empathy versus fake empathy had always been, the ability to consider/imagine the real actual needs
of another being, without the assumption that another beings needs would be the same as my own.
Or to put it another way: what I would feel, if I was in that other beings situation might be something totally different
from what that other being actually feels. I would have to walk in it's shoes to know that, or to really empathize.
Another definition for the lack of empathy is to objectify a living being into a Thing, to use it as a means to an end,
which is what the psychopaths are doing, who "helped" to define empathy as display of emotions.

Olympiadis, what you describe as the hive-mind, would be called the (collective) conditioned mind in Buddhist or Vedanta terms.
The goal of meditation is to realign yourself with the unconditioned or the pure mind, which is beyond the personal as well as the collective.
The pure unconditioned mind is also called the Absolute, the Infinite Intelligence, the Unmoving and many other names.
It is the mysterious, silent animating power which comes from beyond the conditioned world of the senses.
Acting from there is not easy, but it's a state free from any hidden manipulative forces, because it is coming from the essence of
your true self. Or this is how the mystics see it, through their direct intuitive insight.
I find the practice of meditation very helpful in many ways. It's definitely worth the effort.

Bolded part mine.

I don't know should I be flattered, since finding ways to effortlessly co-exist with neurotypicals has become my obsession. But no, I am definitely on the spectrum.

I have always had very few friends, because of lacking the motivation to get them but also because I suck at the process. Right now my abilities with women probably surpass my skills at getting and maintaining friends, though motivation plays a large part in it too.

These are not innate abilities. I have spend a great deal of time reading, obsessing, thinking and finally actually interacting with girls/women in order to arrive at my current understanding of them.

I like a very simple life, with very little disturbances or abrupt changes to it. I like having a lot of time to simply read the net finding fringe/weird stuff written by fellow "internet village-idiots". The only thing that gets me out in the real world is women. Yes intellectually stimulating discussions, and having a laugh with people irl are good, but I can satisfy those needs rather easily through the internet and sharing a few jokes and laughter seems to happen quite much whenever I'm in the outside world doing some chore.

Quite frankly your comment about me sounding NT surprised me a lot. Maybe it is because I often take ideas from neurotypical people and try to adapt them to my nature. As alluded above all my recent improvement with social skills, meditation and mindfullness have been driven by my need for physical intimacy with women. If that need did not exist I would have never bothered, instead I would have focused on my inner world.

Basically I have admitted to myself that I am a very simple man. I need only a few things. I need as much free time as possible to explore intellectual ideas or personal projects/special interests, but I also need to have physical fun time with a woman/women. I also recognized that my need for intimacy goes beyond the physical since going to prostitutes was never appealing to me (therefore I never went, and lost my virginity only as a 27-old to my first GF).

Most of my depression has stemmed from this internal conflict. Wanting women but at the same time being so handicapped to actually achieve it because of asperger's has taken it's toll. But I have persisted with blind determination. My life has changed immensely in the last 1.5 years. Also the way I see myself and what I am capable of has changed a lot. Because I have pushed through many limiting beliefs, I might appear extremely well-adjusted, at least in writing. But at the same time I still struggle a lot.

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To me this silent mind state, especially when it happens around people, makes me just so calm and content. I used to suffer a lot from social anxiety and constantly having flight-or-fight response turned on. Therefore, when I no longer experience it, being stable and calm around people feels awesome.

About connecting to the hivemind, in a way you are right. Yet the whole idea of meditation or midfullness is to let go off all secondary judgments or reactions that one has to situations that arise in real life. Becoming emotionally unflappable. Developing the ability to choose consciously whether I want to allow myself to react in some way or not.

If other people are happy and joking around, I can allow myself to enjoy that good feeling. But if people are hostile, insecure, anxious etc, meditation/mindfullness helps me to avoid being "infected" with their feelings. It also allows me to try to change their mood, if I so choose. Though it's probably best to reserve this to close-ones, in order to avoid empathic burnout.

Really it's just enjoyin your existence. Sometimes I have had bus-drives where I just immensely enjoyed the drive and sitting on that bus. And then when I got out I would have an amazing interaction with this young girl who I had never met before. We would simply look at each other and smile. I sensed the sexual tension, and eventually asked her contact details and later added her on Facebook. After that I didn't do anything about it because she is too young. But this experience really showed me how much easier and enjoyable my life becomes when I reach these emotional states through meditation/midnfullness.

It's basically consciously allowing yourself to connect to the hivemind when you analytically see benefits in it. There is a very carnal/base instinct reason for me to shut down my logical brain, and to just enjoy the emotional experience. I arrived at this conclusion because being a logic-machine got me nowhere with women. So instead I started using my emphatic ability (which is innate) with them, and their responses improve immediately.

My question wasn't meant to flatter or insult. I saw an inconsistency and wanted to get clarification.

My deduction is that hive mind software must run in the subconscious for several reasons. It is not obviously apparent to people, and when they are asked why they behave in certain ways, they cannot explain it using logic. This suggests intuition that they sense as simply coming from themselves and never having any notion of it being the result of a larger system intelligence.

I would also deduce that if you are autistic, then you would be unable to intuitively connect to the hive mind, and be limited to running awkward and incomplete simulations of it.

If you turned your conscious thoughts off, then whatever you would then be connected with should not be the hive mind, but you would be left with only what was in your subconscious or what your subconscious connects to.

I'm trying to make sense of what happens when you meditate, but having a very hard time from my perspective.

There are several possibilities that might explain the inconsistency.
1. You are NT and I'm not.
2. I'm NT and you're not.
3. One of us connects to the hive mind at some point, and the other does not.
4. Neither of us connects to the hive mind.
5. The hive mind connection is independent of both conscious and subconscious processing.
6. There are other states of consciousness that I am not familiar with.

When I'm talking about the hive mind, I'm not talking about some primal zen collective consciousness at all. I'm talking about a highly evolved set of algorithms that use human NT brains as hosts from which to grow and spread. The algorithms would be running subconsciously and affect conscious thought via intuition, and control human behavior through emotion, - chemical reward pathways.

Sorry to disappoint as I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I HAVE to write that the ressurection of this thread has brought me back to wrongplanet! I received an email telling me someone had posted here, I got curious and came to this page to check. And I remembered why I liked wrongplanet in the first place. It's been a long time I don't come here but I miss it because people here think like me! I love the analysis, the classifications, the hypothesis and I just missed so much having this kind of discussion! I really missed you girls and guys. such insightful contributions. I am back!

Welcome back.
I only joined this year.

Hi linatet, I've only discovered this place this month too, but found so much useful information already. Lot's of cool people to talk to!
Welcome back!

I believe so. It's horrible. Like being bombarded with constant information.

Yes, in the gut. Only get "info" about people I need to know about. Whereas NT social games always point in direction opposite of my gut reaction, I've learned that my gut is always right, no matter what anybody says.

Rarely, I get a feeling about a person, and it's never good. I've learned to stay away from people I get this feeling about. Even if I can't explain why at the time, I've never been wrong in the long run.