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Aspergers/Autism nd feeling empathy

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Shadi2
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09 Dec 2010, 6:35 pm

Same here. I can have empathy, but it depends on the person and situation. Unfortunately usually I don't know what to do, or what I should say, if the person would like a hug or not (so I don't unless the person initiate the hug), sometimes I will pat the person's back or shoulder ... its just really hard to know what to do exactly and not make things worse. But if it is someone I know more, my husband for example, then its not too bad I just hold him or rub his back (he's a hugger so I know he will always appreciate a good hug lol), and let him talk about whatever made him sad.


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Loke
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09 Dec 2010, 7:09 pm

I'm extremely emphatic and intuitive. Way beyond normal. Might mean I don't have As, ofc



aghogday
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09 Dec 2010, 7:42 pm

Cardamine wrote:
Thanks Thoughtcrimes for starting this topic back then - i'd love to know where you're at now? Did you get a diagnoses? What do you think about the whole empathy thing now?

I'm in a similar situation. I suspect i have Aspergers and have done an on-line test. However, i think of myself as empathetic. I've also done an online test for empathy and scored really, really low. Yet i feel like i know how to listen and sympathise, i feel for people in tragedies on the news and have always been involved in anti-poverty movements etc.

I know that on line tests may not be accurate, but i wonder if the root of all this is in the definition of empathy. I lead an ethical lifestyle and friends come to me with their problems, but may be this is just an intellectual choice of mine?? Though - i do feel other's pain so i'm not sure about that.

Or may be there is confusion between caring about others - being upset because others are suffering, and knowing what others are feeling by watching their body language, facail expression etc??

Can anyone shed any more light?


(I appreciated the post somewhere in this thread which said that it does not matter whether the person feels the pain of others, but whether they do something about it.)



I saw an interesting post http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt122533.html that had a link to a test that measured empathy in a written quiz, but also measured the ability to recognize emotion by looking at people's eyes. I was surprised to find out while I did very poorly on the empathy test, as I have in all other tests, I did nearly perfect on the recognize emotions part. Many people that responded to the post were surprised to find out they scored this way.

As long as a person who "feels" little empathy can learn to respond appropriately when they recognize visual or verbal cues about another persons emotions, and react appropriately, they can be interpreted as being "caring" by the other person regardless of whether or not they feel the emotion themselves.

I think the "caring" part is more important than whether or not you share the emotional part.