Things I don't get about bullying

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There is a specific person who I sometimes have to deal with who is like this, and I think like animalcrackers said, he truly believes that he is the victim. At first, I was indignant and would openly call him out on what he did and say it wasn't right. But I go to a school which has had a large mass shooting and several other horrible acts of violence in the past few years. I realized that I could be a target if this guy went off the deep end. So now I try to keep a low profile and I stay away from him, both physically and online. I also take note of who he is friends with and I avoid them as well.

I just don't understand where empathy comes into it.

If an elderly man or lady falls over, and a couple of people go over and help, others around look rather concerned, others notice but just walk by, and a few people point and laugh out loud, which people are the UNempathetic ones? My answer would be the people pointing and laughing.
If that was me witnessing somebody falling over, I would either go over and help them, or if there's already people there and I knew that I would be overcrowding if I too went over to help (as much as I instinctively would want to) I would still feel concerned for the person. I would mirror the person's emotions too much to stand there laughing and walking away, not caring if the person might be hurt.

But because I'm Aspie, I'm just put into the "lack of empathy" group just because of the label I have, no matter how empathetic I feel and show towards people. But some NTs can bully or just be so damn judgmental, disrespectful and thoughtless, but still be put in the "have empathy" group because...well because of the stupid "lack of empathy" thing listed down on the autistic criteria and how nearly everybody (including autistics) define the word empathy as "caring, kind, thoughtful, understanding, can put themselves in anyone's shoes".

And look how bad it's made stigma against us. People seem to think "lack of empathy" means "capable of murder". It just bothers me.

I think the ones that I have been around just might do it to gaslight the situation so that they can get away with it more easily. I usually try to avoid them too, but it can be to hard sometimes if you have to be around them.

I think I get it....you're saying it makes no sense that bullies are often considered to have normal empathy while ASDers are not?

Probably, people who think this are either using a different definition of "empathy" than you are, or believe that ASDers are all completely oblivious to other people and have literally no capacity to see or think about any perspectives or feelings except whatever they, personally, are thinking and feeling in the moment.

Many people divide empathy into two types: cognitive and emotional.

Emotional empathy might be the same thing as compassion or caring or sympathy (or at least it would result in compassion/caring/sympathy -- or pity).

Cognitive empathy (I think) just means understanding what other people are thinking or why they feel a certain way (and maybe being able to recognize/work out what people are feeling without being explicitly told? I'm not sure if both types of empathy include the recognition/figuring out part or just one of them ....and if it's just one, I'm not sure which one but my guess is it would be cognitive empathy) -- you don't have to care about others to have cognitive empathy.

To be an intentionalw bully, you have to have a certain amount of cognitive empathy to know what will hurt or upset people and to recognize whether or not your bullying behavior is having the hurtful effect you intend.....probably the bullies who are most effective at hurting other people (especially the ones who are manipulative and good at not being caught) have excellent cognitive empathy.

Cognitive empathy can be difficult for even the most caring, compassionate and helpful of ASDers. (I'm not saying you in particular lack cognitive empathy, but a lot of us have problems with it and/or have really struggled to develop it.)

I try not to open up to very many people because of this. Cognitive empathy also makes it easier for them to gaslight and make fabrications so that their actions don't look as bad to the people who witness the bullying.

Well in my 26 years of living on this planet, I have seen for myself that NTs aren't as "brilliant" at empathy as what Aspies think they are, and I don't mean just towards me, but towards each other too. Some NTs have better emotional understanding than others, but they can't get right inside everyone's heads. They're not mind-readers.

The only thing I would comfortably agree with is NTs have better skills with reading body language (a form of empathy), but even they don't always understand why.
For example:-
Worker A has spilt sugar all over the floor, and even after cleaning it up, worker B notices she is still feeling worried about it by her body language. Worker B whispers to worker C, judgmentally, "why's she still upset about it? It's only a bit of spilt sugar." Worker C also couldn't figure that out, but worker A told worker C that she's worried about all the sugar that went to waste and it could cost the company. So both worker A and worker C both noticed the body language but couldn't understand why she was feeling worried about it until she verbally told them both. But even then worker B still couldn't understand why she was worrying about it so much, while worker C was a bit more understanding. And all 3 workers in the example are NT.

Even though there are innate components in empathy, the process as a whole is something learned. So if a NT person didn't grow up in the right family, or with the right friends, they might have an extremely reduced kind of empathy. Same thing with aspies and ND kids, it just requires more stimulation sometimes depending on the type of ND. That's how some aspies are more empathetic than some NTs, because of the amount of stimulation leading to development of empathy. Not necessarily positive stimulation, as traumatizing situations can develop empathy too.
If you take the importance of environment into account, the situation becomes much more complicated. It's very far from being binary.

Those would be the BPD/Narcissist people, as you may know. Very fun to grow up with as your mom and grandmother!

I think many just don't care. We can care, and not easily understand the other person because of misinterpretation, which looks like not caring. But, the bully understands and doesn't have sympathy. They enjoy your pain, so they must know how to create your pain.

I never believed bullies have low self-esteem. a**holes in general tend to be among people who think very highly of themselves. Our culture tends to reward them as well. Even asshole-lite people who claim to only have "high self-esteem" put me off. They often act oblivious and uncaring when it comes to others. Again, our culture rewards this.

I doubt being a good person is learned. I didn't have to be taught not to bully. Some people are just born a**holes. You can even beat the living s**t out of them every day and they will still be a**holes inside. They only learn to hide it because they learn to fear the consequences of being a little s**t.

If the sugar was already all cleaned up, it might not occur to me that Worker A's (continued) worry was related to the sugar.

Also, realizing that Worker A's worried body language relates to the spilled sugar is already knowing why -- the first level of "why" anyways.

Honestly, even if I did see that her worry was still related to the sugar, I probably wouldn't go past this first level.....I'm not sure why I wouldn't. Maybe because being upset in a situation where you spill something matches a pattern so I just accept it without finding it curious. Or if I couldn't think of any specific reasons she would be upset about spilling the sugar or could think of too many reasons -- either way, spending time guessing about it wouldn't seem useful to me; If I wanted to know to reassure the person everything was going to be okay (or even was just curious), I would try to come up with a question to ask them about why they were upset about it.



Was Worker B just having a "this does not compute" experience, where the concept of being worried about spilled sugar just doesn't make sense at all.....like as if Worker A had told her colleagues "2+2=7"?

Or was it more like Worker B couldn't relate to Worker A, couldn't imagine feeling that way herself?

One thing I do get is to be a light, joy and any other word you might use.

Example I was getting my car looked at for water in the trunk.
My fear of mechanics is like my fear of dentist. Folks that in the past have brought pain
My first bully also brought physical and emotional pain.
Back to the car.
I brought my harmonica and while waiting I improvised a blues song with my harmonica wailing between sung lines.

Humans are baboons. That's right, baboons, the ugliest, dirtiest, smelliest apes of them all.
The alpha-male balloons are horrible bullies to the young males. They steal their food, smack them around, and stress them out constantly. The alpha-males also rape the females whenever they feel like it.

I once saw this on a National Geographic episode where a group of baboons where being filmed and they were comparing it to human behavior and the negative ways stress has on them. Then one day the alpha-males all got food-poisoning and died. The young males didn't get to eat any of the tainted food because of the greedy alphas so they survived and then instead of becoming the next generation of bully baboons they were actually much nicer and gentler with the females and the younger males.

The show ended asking if we're willing to learn from a bunch of baboons.

But so many NTs don't understand why some Aspies don't like socializing, worry about loud noise, need routine, and love (for example) trainspotting instead of clothes shopping or cooking or TV. Some NTs can't imagine how daunting it is for an Aspie at a social event. But NTs who are shy or socially anxious CAN imagine and understand what it feels like for an Aspie in a social event.

I saw that special too! I think about it a lot when contemplating social dynamics.