The E-Word

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Thanks for clearing that up for me, momsparky. I can be difficult due to my tendency to take everything literally. What people may not understand is that alot of people can have some AS traits. Then they read about it, and assume that the syndrome describes them, which is self-diagnosis. What they may not know is that to be labeled AS, you need to be showing many traits, some of which are very subtle and specific. It takes a long time of being observed to see all this. Medical professionals are very careful to be certain that the diagnosis applies to a patient because of the implications of the label that comes with AS. The disorder has to have a significant, permanent, long term impact on social functioning and other problem areas in life. Thats why it is a very rare (1 in 5,000-10,000) disorder. Many people, in the range of 1 in 200 people will demonstrate traits that place them somewhere in the mild range of the spectrum, but that does not mean that they have AS. AS patients are a more severe form of so-called high funtioning autism, and it impacts our lives in complex and significant ways.

Empathological topic

I sometimes think NTs fake empathy. They can read the facial emotions just fine, and tell the other person what s/he wants to hear.

If I am sad in public (I try to hide any emotions just in case, but if a few get through) I do not want strangers coiming up to me to offer "empathy."

As a few other people have mentioned, we want to feel empathy, and we do give a rip about what our friends are feeling, but it's almost impossible to read between the lines. Revelation of human emotion is a very complicated issue involving body language, tone distortion, and several other factors. How do NTs do it?

I just looked up the word Empathy in the Webster dictionary & it says

1~ the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it (huh

2~ the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this


If this is the definition that we use; I think lots of Aspies do lack empathy But different people think empathy means different things & I think that is the point of this post

i wouldn't say i have empathy for others but i have taught my self to think if that was my mom or sister or brother would i want someone to do that to them but works best when i think would i want them to do that me. so is that empathy i taught my self like i wouldn't want i to happen to me. it helped me learn a conchins. (sorry if i spell bad by i read/spell by the way the word looks when i rember seeing it) i used to be "cruel" till i learned to think would i want that to be me. so i guess people with AS can have empathy/conchins we just have trouble learning it and not as easy to learn as other people