02 Oct 2009, 1:01 pm
I always take everything I see and apply it to myself. Think about how I might feel or how I might react in that situation or how I might possibly use this information to better myself even if it has nothing to do with me. E.g. if I watch a sitcom about a bitchy lady who is bossing a man around and he hates it, I try to analyze myself to see if I might have ever been guilty of doing that by accident and make a mental note to try to never come off that way.. and etc on and on with everything I see hear or read.
But as for putting myself in the situation and using that as a tool to try to uncover people's feelings and motives, that usualy completely fails. For some reason people's feelings and motives appear to be nothing like mine in any way. 
Perhaps I just have no empathy. I can't seem to understand what people think or feel. But that doesn't mean I don't care when people are upset. I am unhappy when someone, for example, feels grief of a loved one passing away and I feel terrible for them and want to help them feel better. But I don't feel or understand the grief itself. I honestly don't think I've ever felt grief in my life so it's just not something I can relate to. So I don't understand how it feels or why they feel it. But I feel bad that they are unhappy.
02 Oct 2009, 1:25 pm
But as for putting myself in the situation and using that as a tool to try to uncover people's feelings and motives, that usualy completely fails. For some reason people's feelings and motives appear to be nothing like mine in any way.
Perhaps I just have no empathy. I can't seem to understand what people think or feel. But that doesn't mean I don't care when people are upset. I am unhappy when someone, for example, feels grief of a loved one passing away and I feel terrible for them and want to help them feel better. But I don't feel or understand the grief itself. I honestly don't think I've ever felt grief in my life so it's just not something I can relate to. So I don't understand how it feels or why they feel it. But I feel bad that they are unhappy.
That is exactly me except that I have problems with over empathy. Even though I can't read emotions by using body language etc, I can feel what other people are feeling. The problem is that their feelings are multiplied by about 1000 in me which is incorrect empathy. I have to avoid angry people at all costs. It turns on and off. Sometimes I will wonder why I feel absolutely nothing in a happy or upsetting situation especially when it involves others and other times I react too strongly. Sometimes natural disasters cause me to cry for a week straight. When I found out that Eric Claptons 4 year old son died from falling out of a window I was extremely depressed for weeks even though it was many years after it happened.
02 Oct 2009, 1:26 pm
02 Oct 2009, 1:28 pm
02 Oct 2009, 1:35 pm
racooneyes
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Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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02 Oct 2009, 1:37 pm
A lot of people think of the kind of empathy where you feel what the other person is feeling when you see them feeling it, I believe that aspies are capable of this tho it may be done in a more intellectual than emotional way.
The empathy aspies can't do is being able to tell how someone is going to feel or react when we say or do something to them which leads to all the apparently inappropriate, weird and insensitive stuff we do. I think this is the main part of the whole aspergers experience. I'm not sure there's really a way round it either it's always going to be a best guess for us there's only one way to find out though
02 Oct 2009, 1:54 pm
there's only one way to find out thoughIn a way, it's a "best guess" for everybody. However, I think NTs are more likely to be comfortable and satisfied with just a best guess, i.e. what the majority of people would be expected to do in a particular circumstance, whereas AS folks tend not to be satisfied with a mere "best guess". AS folks tend to want to know the exact answer. That's why there are so many countless posts on WP from an Aspie asking, "How do I know if xyz?" and somebody responds with "well abc usually but not always happens" and the Aspie doesn't like the answer.
Last edited by Stinkypuppy on 02 Oct 2009, 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
02 Oct 2009, 1:54 pm
*sigh* i am very confused about it.
i have the occasional innappropriate emotional reactions as well. they arent too constant though. like i saw this dead kitten on the orad, and it's mom was waiting there, tapping it lightly with its foot, waiting for it to wake up. i have an extreme soft spot for cats and this made me BAWL. in public. on the street. and then on the way home a child feel face first on the ground, making an audible smack, and i started LAUGHING out loud! 
. once again, in the same public.
well, i always feel i am different. people dont think the same way i do, it seems. i can relate to my aspie friend in a lot of ways though.
but like, my close NT friends, we have a lot in common. while maybe we dont think the same way, our thinking reaches the same conclusions.
02 Oct 2009, 1:59 pm
i have the occasional innappropriate emotional reactions as well. they arent too constant though. like i saw this dead kitten on the orad, and it's mom was waiting there, tapping it lightly with its foot, waiting for it to wake up. i have an extreme soft spot for cats and this made me BAWL. in public. on the street. and then on the way home a child feel face first on the ground, making an audible smack, and i started LAUGHING out loud!
. once again, in the same public.well, i always feel i am different. people dont think the same way i do, it seems. i can relate to my aspie friend in a lot of ways though.
but like, my close NT friends, we have a lot in common. while maybe we dont think the same way, our thinking reaches the same conclusions.
I can relate to you about children/people hurting themselves, I saw a kid fell of his bike and hit the ground at high speed with his lips cut up, and I laughed, one time I saw a cat being driven apart, but I didn't mind, it was like seeing nothing happen, I didn't feel sympathy in any way, one time when a truck drove over a dog, a family memebr cried, and I said; "Good thing it didn't drive over us".
02 Oct 2009, 2:04 pm
THAT would make me scream with misery. in fact once it happened to me....i screamed in misery and started crying.
i seem to not feel sympathy for people's problems....people i dont care about. but it depends on my mood. it's wierd.
racooneyes
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Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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02 Oct 2009, 2:05 pm
there's only one way to find out thoughIn a way, it's a "best guess" for everybody. However, I think NTs are more likely to be comfortable and satisfied with just a best guess, i.e. what the majority of people would be expected to do in a particular circumstance, whereas AS folks tend not to be satisfied with a mere "best guess". AS folks tend to want to know the exact answer. That's why there are so many countless posts on WP from an Aspie asking, "How do I know if xyz?" and somebody responds with "well abc usually but not always happens" and the Aspie doesn't like the answer.
yes that too, esp. the last sentence
but our 'best guess' depends on how we can relate the situation to one we've heard of or experienced before. I might be wrong but i think an NT best guess is of the intuitive kind rather than extrapolated from prior knowledge or experience. They undoubtedly are a lot more accurate that's for sure.
02 Oct 2009, 2:09 pm
man. now i cant decide if i qualify as aspie or NT. i want to be an aspie. . isnt that wierd?
02 Oct 2009, 2:15 pm
racooneyes
Velociraptor
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 410
Location: blackeye, outer rim
02 Oct 2009, 2:19 pm
02 Oct 2009, 2:22 pm
. isnt that wierd?Based on what I've read here, I'll vote for Aspie. Start with the fact that you are confused by it all, and that your reactions are inconsistent and, by your own view, often inappropriate. I don't get confused by the concept, I just feel it, and sometimes its inappropriate, but not that often, and I've never dwelled on it. Just one of those things that "is" to me. To you, however, its something you really think about. That doesn't mean you don't feel; in fact, AS can have unusually strong feelings about a number of things. Its more that you find your feelings confusing at times,and maybe unpredictable.
Last edited by DW_a_mom on 02 Oct 2009, 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
02 Oct 2009, 2:23 pm
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