Why don't we all just pretend to have 'empathy'???

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I hate these ''ASDs lack empathy'' myths. If NTs had empathy then how come we get bullied by them? (I don't mean all NTs bully Aspies but you know what I mean).

I can pretend to show empathy, and other times I can both feel and show empathy, and sometimes I don't bother at all if I am in a mood or having a bad day or not happy with that person, etc. I think more people with ASDs have more empathy than you think.

I can tell white lies as well, even as a small child I remember telling a white lie to get myself out of trouble or to even save someone's feelings.

I feel what the other person is feeling. It's another reason that I can sometimes avoid people. If they are unfriendly or very hateful I can feel that hate washing off them in droves. It is a really heavy negative unpleasant feeling and I don't like keeping their company. If someone feels friendly however I find them easier to spend time with or talk to.

I can also feel when someone is upset (whether with them in person or talking to them on the phone or even by text message) even if they try to hide it. I can sense it as I feel what they are feeling. This can upset me and can interfere with my interactions with others at times. If I am in a bad place emotionally myself I am not always able to carry others emotions on top. Also I may have trouble ending relationships for example if the other person becomes upset so it can put me in a difficult position sometimes because I actually feel their pain on top of my own.

Also their feelings can be catching. If someone is in a bad mood when I walk into a room I will often come out of the room in a bad mood myself even if I walked in there in a good one. It can be a right downer sometimes and its why I like to stay away from very negative people.

I don't mind with people who have had a hard time and just need a little tlc...even if I don't know how to help I will try to find out. If its someone I know well I will tend to know what they need because I know them. With a stranger it is a little harder to know how to respond though so I tend to err on the side of caution and ask questions rather than do the wrong thing.

I can sometimes avoid humanity because of my over sensitivity though (its emotional as well as physical) because I can't always cope with its pain and negativity on top of my own. It hurts me as I actually do feel what they are feeling as well as what I feel. It also applies if someone stubs their toe...although in that instance i don't feel the pain physically as much as I feel it in my mind.

Its why when someone does something painful on a movie I will say ouch. My over sensitivity will also lead me to cry at the TV....I'm a weeper. Any sad or romantic scene and I'm off with the teary eyes.

I sound harsh online but I often need to protect myself in this world. People are not always nice and I can't always cope with them. Actually I feel more than people think I do.

Its why I always wanted to help them. I could feel their pain and I wanted to heal them and make their pain go away. I was the same as a child. It was never about being superior, it was because I could so painfully feel what they were feeling.

It's also why I like it when people get excited about something or genuinely smile. It's so rare in this world and it is such a beautiful thing to see. I love it when someone babbles on in an excited manner over something...its soooooo sweet and adorable. And I get to feel that too.

But it also makes groups difficult for me. If a group of people are bitching about someone and then that someone walks in and they are all nice as pie, I don't know where to put myself. I feel awful because I know what the other people were saying and I just want to run away and hide rather than put up with it. I avoid that too.

I have so much difficulty with people in so many ways its a pain.

Intellectually I can't relate to them. I like to think broadly. I love learning new things. I like to explore and combine what what I know. I prefer understanding and hate just rote memorising facts. I think in an usual way and have a tendency to spot things others miss (so I was told by my tutors). I am not afraid to ask questions or explore areas other people fear to tread, even if only by thinking them through. I have trouble finding intellectual peers.

I developed oddly in that I was more advanced for my age than I should have been which made me different. Again I had trouble finding intellectual peers.

I am over sensitive emotionally as outlined above. I am also sensitive physically but not enough to stop me from doing things. I find noisy crowds uncomfortable and distracting but not so painful that I can't put up with crowds for a few hours if I really really want to do something like go bowling or ride a roller coaster at a crowded theme park. My sensitivity just makes me more aware of everything going on around me, although I can become tired from processing it so working at a bowling alley would not be an option for me (a few hour long visit in one thing...being there every day...a headache and exhaustion).

I used to need routines when I was medicated and when I was physically ill due to brain fog and processing issues...those are wearing off and my need for routine is becoming obsolete. Those pills affected how my brain worked, they even affected my ability to feel empathy. 2 years after coming off them and its coming back because i have started feeling what others are feeling again and it went dead fora while, especially after being on them for many years. I did like some routine as a child but only in the sense that I liked to watch my favourite tv program at the same time each day. I would not have a routine at bedtime or in other ways though. At bedtime I would hide behind the furniture so my parents couldn't get me out. I liked to go to bed when I was actually sleepy not at some daily prearranged sleeping time. In the end they let me fall asleep when I was ready on the couch and would carry me up to bed once I had dozed off. I was a little bugger in that way.....stubborn, knew my own mind. I even requested that my parents let me select my own clothing as they kept buying material I was uncomfortable in. I got my own way on that one too.

Anyway my routines at one point interefered socially but that is wearing off now and they are no longer such an issue.

I am very intensive and passionate about my interests and I have more than one, but they are starting to merge now. For example:

Arts and crafts (mostly cross stitching and needlcrafts), museums and paleolithic nutrition as well as learning various musical instruments (flute, violin and piano).

Now my brain wants to do some paleolithic inspired art work and to visit museums for both inspiration and to practice my sketching techniques so I can create my designs with it. So I will take it where it wants to go and see what happens. I usually just follow my brain in that way, I used to academically...it usually seems to know what it's doing. And I don't fear failure so that frees me up to be experimental.

Anyway my interests can annoy people as I am usually more into those than general socialising and social chit chat.

Also my introverted nature can have an impact as I don;t like to have too many social commitments and can limit my social contact for that reason.

Also people stress me out...and I don't always deal with stress well. Especially as people have been abusive towards me.

All that can combine to make me look less empathic than I actually am.

Oh and I found some flint stone in my back garden and have experimented briefly with it. If you chip it off correctly you can form quite a sharp edge that really does cut. Yes I know we know that as our ancestors were doing it for thousands of years, but there is nothing quite like having a go yourself.

I may learn how to forge flint stone axes/cutting tools properly. Be handy if I ever get stuck for utensils if I ever went camping...

^^^
That's what empathy is by definition.
Empathy is "feeling what the other feels".
I can't do that. I don't remember ever feeling what someone else was feeling in any time of my life.
Other people's mood don't affect me, either. If someone is in a bad mood, even if I can recognize their bad mood, it doesn't affect me at all.
This doesn't mean I have no emotion, of course, or that I feel nothing for people.
For example some days ago I had a horrible nightmare in which some people kidnapped children and gouged their eyes out. I was horrified and in a terrible mood for the whole day and when I told my mother about the dream I cried. Once I heard on TVs about tortures and I cried that time, too. Another time I saw something about children that were paralyzed or had uncurable diseases and I cried as well.
But I couldn't feel what they were feeling. I was horrified by all those terrible things but I could never thought something like "what would I do if I were them?" and I have never thought "I know how they feel".
That is called "sympathy", I guess. I'm not sure.
I want to give the impression that I am violent/strong/unemotional to protect myself but I am actually just a weakling that feels like crying at those things. I think I am pathetic when I do that.
Still, I have no empathy because I can't feel what the other is feeling.
Empathy is a mixed word from the Greek: "en-" (that turns into "em-" in front of the p) that means "into" + "-pathìa", from the root "path-" that indicates suffering or emotion. Therefore the literal meaning is something like "suffering into the other person", aka "feeling what the other is feeling".
Sympathy is made up by "syn-" ("sym-" in front of the p) that means "together" + "pathìa". The literal meaning is something like "suffering with the other person" but it's not the same as "feeling what the other is feeling". You suffer with them in the sense that you see what has happened to them and you feel bad for it; you suffer while they do it as well (this is why it is "suffering together"). But you can't feel what they are feeling.
Here it is, I think the root of the words explain it better. For the ancient Greeks "empathy" was very different from "sympathy". If it wasn't, they wouldn't have had two different words.

What bumble has described is pretty much what my mother is like (she's NT). Or better, what she was like. She used to be very empathetic when she was younger, and she also used to be influenced by other people's moods as well. This caused her a lot of stress around people. She claims that feeling what the other is feeling is stressful. Now she is less empathetic, both because her empathy was too stressful and because she has had bad experiences with people.
This all caused social interaction to be way more stressful to her (NT) than to me or my father (not NTs).
My father is pretty much like me, with the difference that he can control his emotions better and he doesn't cry.

But I do have empathy for others.

I think we ought to remember to define what we mean when we use words like "empathy". It can mean multiple things, and if one person thinks it means one thing and the reader thinks it means another, there can be some crossed wires.

Empathy can mean:
--Feeling what you see someone else feeling. Mirroring emotions.
--Wanting someone else to feel better or wanting to help them--compassion.
--Deciding to act in ways that help others--altruism.
--Reading and interpreting others' emotional communication correctly.

They seem like they are very similar things, but they're not--for example, a sociopath can read and interpret others' emotions just fine, but s/he does not particularly want to help them, nor does s/he act in a pro-social manner. On the other hand, an autistic person can be completely clueless about what someone else is feeling, yet still want to help them, and want good things for them.

One can be very empathic in one sense, and not in another. I prefer to specify which type I am thinking of--emotional mirroring, compassion, altruism, or emotion-perception skills. There are probably other related skills, such as knowing how to comfort someone, how to communicate your knowledge of their state of mind, or how to put yourself into someone else's place so as to see things from their perspective. It's a complex set of skills and it's not uncommon to have some skills from that set but not others.

So, being interested in the lives of annoying vacuous people motivated by money and sex is empathy. I don't have any empathy for soap opera characters. I'd get a lot more joy seeing them tortured.

I am sick and tired of reading stuff written by NTs labelling people on the spectrum as empathy free zones.

These dumbwits fail to distinguish between empathy as a feeling (most ASD people have this in spades, sometimes particularly for animals and the oppressed) and as a behaviour (we don't tend to act it out in hugging, and other behavioural gestures).

I am empathetic and "act it out" by verbalising support and encouragement. I don't have to pretend.

There's tons of empathy expressed on WP. Empathy is demonstrated by the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, imaginatively, and relate genuinely to what another person is experiencing. You see that here on WP all the time.

Happy birthday Marshall!

Are you interested in anyone's life on a daily basis? Do you know what is going on with them emotionally? What they are doing right now? What their interests are, and what they want to achieve? ... and the whole story of their lives? ... and they are into you the same way... texting all day long? Involved and interested? ... and when you run into them by accident, can you tell how they are feeling before they say anything? This is my little point about empathy.

Last edited by tall-p on 02 May 2014, 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not particularly interested in "normal" people. They're too boring to comprehend. I think I can empathize better with "crazy" people.

I may not empathize a lot with people's emotions and know what they are feeling or feel what they are feeling, but I try to behave in a prosocial way, such as helping others on various things here and there, and that seems to be valued by others, even if they think that I am not a big empathizer, and oblivous to most social signals.

Being badass has nothing to do with it. If we were able to simply choose how to interact with "empathy" and other people then we wouldn't exactly be autistic.

I second the boring part. Crazy can upset me though as I like my quiet sane life.

Actually I don't mind normal, its ego obsessed and socially obsessed that bores me to tears. The only thing they seem interested in is themselves.

I'd like to hear more conversations about conservation, history, art, science, philosophy (I love philosophical discussions), nature rather than hours and hours of 'Well then jane said this to me and jack said that to which sarah responded with something else and then jack farted and we all laughed".

Hmmm hm. All I can do is stare at them at this point...nod and smile nod and smile like noddy the dog. noddy the dog. blah.

or

"Someone is having an affair with someone (humans have affairs, I don't like having affairs myself but I know others do this, people need to get over this now as I am fed up with having to demonstrate fake shock) and (of course) they would never have expected if from that person (usually the way, if its a known playboy it stops becoming gossip worthy after a while) and how shocked they are...and..."

or

"Another celebrity is in rehab"

They need to get over that too. Celebrities are human they s**t piss and fart like the rest of us. Get past it already. They are human. They do human things. They just have good managers and lots of press is all. Once in a while they may also actually be talented but this is rare in the mass market culture where anyone with the right advertising and promotions team and digital editing can become a megastar.

Now on to something more mentally challenging....at the very least I'd rather go kayaking or something.

I don't like false emotion. It reminds me of how people used to employ professional wailers at funerals. My instinct is to try to cheer people up when they are faced with a personal tragedy. I don't even know if this is the right thing. For example, I have a friend whose wife died, and he went through this period of self imposed "mourning" because it was the thing to do. If that happened to me, I would want to try to cheer myself up straight away. Do they want this? Or do they think that they are being virtuous by deliberately being mopey?

Virtuous. They think they need to mourn in order to grieve correctly and show respect for the person.

Personally I prefer someone who cracks a joke, makes me laugh and takes my mind off it. I adore funny people who make me laugh. What i often find is people give you cliches and consolation...depressing or what? Depressing...that was a rhetorical question I don't need anyone to answer.

I'd also rather remember the person fondly and all the things that made them so special and make something to commemorate that. Such as when my mother died. I bought a special cross stitching kit that said 'A mother holds their childs hand for a while but their hearts forever". I was going to stitch it and put it somewhere i could put flowers under it (my mother loved flowers) to remember her by but alas life distracted me and it's still sitting on my to stitch pile. All the same i like to remember the annoying old bugger (and she was loony tunes and drove everyone nuts but she was my mum and I loved her) fondly as well as thinking about the more humorous side.

All this maudlin morose stuff isn't for me.

But some want to appear more appropriate.

I'd still rather someone made me laugh. I like funny stuff.

You can't fake cognitive empathy.