What is Empathy????

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I have empathy. I just don't always show it so some people may think I lack empathy.

It's not that autistics don't have empathy. It's that doctors are unable to detect the empathy we have.

If we all were to practice saying "Ohhhh! Poor puppy!" out loud several times an hour, I think we'd all be cured. Or at least they'd declare us to be cured

Seriously, most of us are just as capable as anyone else in having self-awareness, compassion and perception, which all together are empathy. One can argue whether empathy needs to be obvious to someone outside oneself in order to really exist, but I don't think so. Just because the doctor doesn't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

I suppose we could get them to change the diagnostic criteria to read "does not SHOW empathy" but then they'll have to list all the other things we don't show. Some of us don't tend to show frustration until we're overwhelmed, for instance. Some of us don't tend to show that we're really paying attention. The fact that our eyes aren't forming some sort of Vulcan Mind Lock with their eyes makes them feel ignored, but that doesn't make that true either.

When we don't say the right things, they feel we don't want them for friends. So, we must have a social disorder. When we focus on something we consider important (God knows it's hard enough to find something large enough to keep our minds occupied) then they think we've "disappeared" or that "there's no one there."

When we get confused enough and sad enough at the inability and unwillingness of people to let us approach life our own way, and their own lack of empathy and understanding, then it dramatically affects our ability to function alongside the "normal" people. Then we are "disabled."

You know, it sure looks like the real problem with autism is that it makes it hard for non-empathic people to understand us. I know this makes it hard for us too, since we depend on them for so much, but I'm still a bit miffed that our "handicap" always seems to be defined by what we don't give strangers. They sure seem needy.

Just because I'm not sympathetic ("sharing the feelings of others, especially feelings of sorrow or anguish" - Some Dictionary off the Web) doesn't mean I'm not empathetic ("Understanding, being aware of, and being sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another without actually sharing the feelings or emotions of another." - Some Dictionary off the Web).

Since I do have empathy, I do understand how an autistic person might make a "typical" person feel when they reach out and look for and expression of mutual agreement and loyalty. However, I'm certainly not SYMpathetic with those whose react to not getting that shared feeling by classifying us as people who don't care.

Pretty rude assumption, I think. And pretty feeble thinking, as well.



Sorry for ranting, but I wanted to share my feelings with all of you - regardless of whether you wanted to share or not

This is horrible. The dog was scared and screamed and things like that really make me wish that the solder will get shot eventually = death. Do unto others what you want other to do unto you.

I get tear-y about this. I just told me mom, who's NT/ADD and she didn't feel sad about it, just said she knows how people are and well... guess it's because it's not HER pet - because she always cries when I talk about OUR dead pet, I don't cry then, I didn't feel like crying when it died anyway.


urgh. And I actually get teary because of this. I don't even own a dog. Someone say it's not a real video or something or say the soldier fell off the cliff soon after and broke his neck.


You know, that empathy-thing is about reading body language and being sad because another is sad without being told that they're sad, what makes them sad, what being sad means - it has nothing to do with being able to feel sympathy.

I felt bad while watching that movie, but it didn't have to do with empathy, I think, it happened too fast for that; I wasn't feeling any empathy until now.

...Poor doggy. >< But saying the soldier should die too is a bit harsh maybe.

Im not sure you need to be able to empathise to feel horrified at the movie. However, you need it to try and understand how the soldier could do such a thing. I try to work out people using logic as people generally cant help doing things due to their past experiences, but in many cases it breaks down because people just arent logical a lot of the time. So I try to empathise with the soldier, but I cant in this case because I cant see any logical reason why he would do this. I cant imagine people feeling differently about things that I would myself feel. This is not a lack of empathy - I think Aspies have empathy, but perhaps a wrong way of applying it. Sympathy is another thing - I am terrible at being sympathetic - it just comes out fake if I try to do it, even if I empathise with the situation. If I dont even empathise then I nowadays just tend to make noncommital remarks of agreement instead of trying to apply sympathy where I cant.

I think the difference between sympathy and empathy is that in empathy you put yourself in the position of the other person and imagine what you would feel. In sympathy you try and imagine what the other person would feel - even if this is not what you would feel yourself in the same situation. I think it is easier to imagine ones own feelings than those of other people.

If you feel sorry for the puppy then you feel sympathy. If you know how the dog feels then you feel empathy. I don't feel much empathy, so the "accusations" is in my case true. I do feel a lot of sympathy.

Non-sympathetic aspies wouldn't be more sympathetic if they were NTs.

I feel sorry for the puppy and i think it was wrong, so that is sympathety.
but i would imagine that that dog feels terribly scared, absolutely terrified.,,I guess that would be empathy??
Either way i did feel things for that poor doggy ! !
xx

Having AS doesn't mean you don't have empathy, it means that you have a hard time expressing it. I feel empathy all the time, but tend to act inappropriate in how I show it, especially at funerals, news of death, etc. I didn't cry when Ol' Yeller died, either, (empathy for the boy who lost the dog) because I knew it was just a story. I have cried during movies, though, as long as the movie was done so well I actually 'forgot' I was watching a work of fiction. The mental conditions you're probably thinking of which have (as a symptom) a display of a lack of empathy/sympathy are the following:

Narcissism
Sociopathy
Borderline Disorder
Psychopathy

and more.

Please note that if you felt nothing for the poor puppy, that doesn't mean you're sociopathic, it just means that you knew it was just a video and were 'buffered' by that fact. It's a whole other thing to see something like that happening in front of you in real life, though. A video of a puppy falling over a cliff? The aspie would react, but internally. The sociopathic personality would simply shrug it away, like it was no big deal. The psychopath (and perhaps the sociopath, too) would find it funny. 'Empathy,' defined roughly as 'the ability to step into the other person's shoes' and feel their anguish, etc., doesn't really apply here, anyway, unless you imagined yourself as the puppy and how it might have felt while going over the cliff.

OMG, who would do such a thing to a puppy?

People often mix up the terms "empathy," sympathy," and "compassion" and thus when people hear that we have problems with empathy people mistakenly think that means we are emotionless robots with no sympathy and compassion. We have problems with putting ourselves in the position of others and understand their fellings, which is empathy, but we don't have problems with feeling sorry for people nor do we have problems with wanting to help them.

I seem to feel empathy only in certain situations. When I saw that puppy video, I was horrified. When I heard that a local boy had died because of a mishap involving explosives and a tree house (he and his friends were being rather careless) I felt no emotional response other than to wonder how someone could be so stupid.

..it's something I've been told I have none of.

Like people who have the bumper sticker 'In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned (usually driven by a woman...wouldn't that be unwomanned?... I'm the guy going "wow, can I have your stereo?"...

I tend to avoid situations where I'd feel bad like that. It's why I've never seen the logic of horror movies (no, I feel scared enough IRL, why would I want more of that?...

I still have this feeling deep down that the video is fake. I've believed it to be fake since I first saw it.

I rarely feel even a shred of empathy, I look at almost everything with a completely neutral emotion-less feeling. That's why if I feel emotional at all, it's fairly obvious.

I think the puppy was fake or already dead. Why? It was stiff looking. It didn't move at all, even after he tossed it. While it was spinning in the air, it didn't uncurl or kick to maintain it's balance, as a real dog would instinctivly be doing when it's in the air.

It was in the same possition the entire time. They would have uncurled and curled, repeating till it did land. (which ever body side it would be that went to the ground.) I sure would like to be able to throw and object that distance to, because that's very far, in my oppinion.

Naturaly, someone out there would want it to be put out as "see how cruel this soldier is? Soldiers from that place are bad people! What should we do about bad people?" Have they considered the one with the Asian lady stomping on a kittens head? I don't know. Not saying that any Asians are bad, though.

Reading a little of this thread reminded me of another fact. If an object that made a certain level of volume was going farther and father, it's sound would either echo, or go with it. It would not be at the same volume in the same egsact spot that it left when it's moveing farther away. If the volume of the sound were to seem at the same level, it would need to get louder as it moved away. You can figure that out easily by listening to vehicles driving by. The screaming was clearly dubbed in.

I dont want to even watch the video.