Empathy - not to be confused with compassion

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Grasping what makes another tick? You can do that through logical reasoning. People show their strengths and weaknesses all the time.

I think this is the reason why I have had trouble getting on with social workers and councillers as they are people with high empathy and get their self esteem from being empathetic. They try to project how they would feel and aspies dont feel the same as NTs and dont give off the typical signals so it just confuses them and makes them feel inadequate.
I have no empathy whats so ever but high compassion- and for those interested compassion is correlated with giftedness.

I am horrible at knowing what other people think, I am pretty much mind-blind. On the other hand, I am an extremely compassionate person. I can't stand it when people are in misery, just the thought that there are people that are starving, homeless, or oppressed makes me feel like I've been sucker-punched in my side.

According to this empathy test I got an EQ of 10 out of a total of 80.

http://www.glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/Emp ... tient.aspx

i read this a couple times with a frown.

yes, if i grasp and feel another's pain then i care about them. i don't see how it could not be so.

people who i can logically understand but feel nothing for, well, i don't care about them because i don't feel for them.

Is empathy necessarily co-morbid with NTism? I think not.

Ok

Taking empathy as the ability to identify closely with others and have a deep understanding of their feelings,the ability is going to develop
to a greater level in proportion to the extent of our varying experiences
and social interactions with others.
Whether it's done by intuition and/or logic,NTs are likely to have a
head start simply due to their greater amount of interaction.I don't think
it means the rest of us lack empathy,it's partly because we haven't had as many opportunities to develop it. One thing that I do find difficult is
trying to figure out ulterior motives,because it's something I'm not
comfortable with in the first place.
I voted OK

I don't know where to put myself. I always score low on the empathy test and I have been told I don't care about others and I have been told I lack it and I have been told I don't show it and then I have been told by my mother, and my boyfriend that I show it. Even my shrink said the same when I was talking about abortions and why women might do it because I was showing concern how the mother is feeling or how their child might feel if he or she found out the reason why they live on this planet is because their mother was raped.

Now that brings up some interesting questions.Assuming empathy is intuitively grasping how other people feel,can we read the word "empathy" to mean social savy?Conversely if it is possible for one to use logic to understand another's situation rather than intuition,Could one define compassion as the combination of logically understanding another and feeling for another human being--even if that understanding and feeling takes time to form?

Any thoughts?

An interesting topic.

One that I'm a bit confused about myself.
The other night, I was staying at my parents house, over discovering that I might have AS, my wife told me to leave, so I did (even though I didn't want to).

I was under the impression that she didn't want me there, and from the things she was saying to me, they hurt and I didn't care that I wasn't at home.

Then later on at 1am in the morning, my sister calls and says that she has spoken to my wife, and that she thinks i've left her and our marriage, that she's shattered and a mess, that she just wants me home to hold her in bed.

It cut like a ton of bricks, but I was also frustrated because my wife told me the opposite to what she wanted. Before I left, I even said "If you want me to come home, just tell me and i'll be home, you really need to tell me. You need to tell me if you are telling me to go, just to see if i'll leave" and she said "i'm being honest, i want you to go"

Whilst I was away from home, I thought she didn't want me there, so I came to terms with that and was ok. But when I found out, it was quite bizarre. Part of me was so pissed off at my own confusion or that she was saying something different to what she meant, and part of me just wanted to be there with her.

Yeah? I got 3. My compassion makes up for it. And I'm a lot more empathetic towards non-human animals.

WTF? I got a 5. I'm not that bad! This test is rigged or something. Time to doctor my answers...

Anyway, I think this metric is bunk. I think I read somewhere that someone's "neuroticism" is correlated with a low score.

I certainly feel compassion, of course. I've always thought I was actually pretty empathetic, but considering the difference ... I'm not really sure now.

I basically have three reactions to other people's emotions:

1. They're unhappy, so I worry for them. This is probably just compassion.
2. They're happy, so I am too. Everybody wants to be happy!
3. They're angry or upset, so I'm irritated/annoyed because it's troublesome. I don't like dealing with angry people, so sometimes I'll just piss them off until they decide to leave me alone.

Now that I think of it, none of this sounds very empathetic. They all seem rather self centered.

I think that I have normal amounts of compassion and empathy. I just don't always know how to express these things, especially in the expected way.

For instance, if a friend tells me someone in her family is very sick and then starts to cry, I definitely empathize. I can imagine what she feels like. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Then I freeze up and think, "I guess I'm supposed to hug her? But I can't stand giving hugs. Maybe she doesn't want a hug. Maybe I'm supposed to say a certain thing? Or not say a certain thing? Am I supposed to act sad because she's sad? Or act calm?" and then I just say something awkward like, "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that . . . Uh, I hope they get better."

I think I empathize, at least sometimes about somethings. But I'm not really sure. Voted poor.

I got a 33 on this test. Not that that really means much.