empathy= no AS?

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Genetically our wiring and thus behavioral sets are not the same. Things just work differently.

The reason why there'd be a disconnect between our ability to feel empathy or show it, watching a movie with lots of emotion or feeling for people at a distance rather than getting dragged directly in - our anxiety is over how we physically can or can't behave. Its over knowing the demands of the situation and that our neurology won't let us deliver. Its not a problem of empathy so much as other people's rather specific expectations of our outward demeanor that makes us shy away from showing it.

Yes, some aspies are a bit like Data from Star Trek and simply don't have that in them. I haven't gotten the impression from looking around here that they're anymore than a subset and nothing close to a majority.

(Empathy = No AS) = BS

Nuff said.

That's interesting.

Is there any specific reason that's attached to you for why you cry at a movie, i.e., it brings back memories of your own experiences, or do you get emotional and cry to things you haven't experienced before?

I, for example, don't mind seeing people cry; I don't feel anxiety at not knowing what to do (I know what to do). If it's someone I know, I'll console them, if not, I'll see if they're crying for an emotional reason and something that I needn't call an ambulance or something for.

I don't feel anything in fiction unless it's eerily close to something I've experienced directly (that's sympathy).

Do you experience empathy as an emotional response or as an intellectual observation? I can consider how it might feel to be in another person's shoes, but only by processing their situation and turning it into a first-person narrative.

Despite this processing, certain things are impossible for me to understand. I can almost never work out why a particular person might be crying, whereas understanding frustration caused by environment is much easier to understand.

Getting to your question - as already mentioned, there is no single factor that excludes you from the 'ASD club'. No two people are alike, and no two aspies are equally impaired, nor impaired in precisely the same ways. If you exhibit a large percentage of the behaviours associated with a higher functioning form of autism (which includes AS, naturally), then you're more than likely on the spectrum.

I would make a point of raising the subject with your therapist at the start of the next session, as tactfully as you can:

"Before we begin, I'd really like to discuss your belief that I'm not..."

Either that, or simply find a new therapist who understands that AS is a blanket diagnostic term that covers a range of 'possible' symptoms, some or all of which may be present in each person.

I'm not the original poster, but I am the same way with movies, TV, music. Especially if there is just the right combination of perfect music, perfect imagery and emotion from an actor/actress. I'm not sure if it's because I am feeling the emotion the director/producer wished to convey or if it's just my utter appreciation that one perfect artistic moment could come together like that. You know, because it can't happen in reality.

Also not the OP but I can put my own theory forward - that's pretty much what empathy is, its being able to constructively imagine sympathy beyond what you've endured or are currently enduring to the extend that you can understand the what and why of people's actions and reactions. That's actually a skill set that it seems like most people have to work on, we may have to work at it a little harder but its there and its achievable.

Its about just knowing how to a look at the specifics of a situation, being able to know what someone would have in front of them based on what you know that they know or don't know about the situation, its how people tend to gauge what sorts of actions/reactions are reasonable or unreasonable.

I should add, now that I think about it, I am the same way. I only cry for the artistic reasons I mentioned before and for that reason.

I have more than enough empathy for others.

This is exactly the same for me. I used to be extremely sensitive until a relationship caused an explosion of self awareness. Now I see emotions as extremely basic feelings only: fear, anger, guilt, embarrassment... mostly negative.



Sometimes a song will make me want to cry, but my best friend could be sad and I won't feel a thing or know what I could possibly do to make them feel better.


After a lifetime of failing to understand other people's emotions I have pretty much given up on empathy, because what if I actually manage to give myself an emotion based on what I THINK someone else if feeling, and it turns out I'm wrong?

I had one who didn't even know what it was. This wasn't 1992. It was 2008.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt139123.html

Basically there are lots of therapists "interpreting" the diagnostic criterias for Autism and Aspergers.

Now, if i went around and "interpreted" established definitions in my field of work, people would call me an idiot, so basically - what should we call therapists who "interpret" established diagnostic criterias?