How do NTs feel empathy/sympathy?

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yeah! are NTs not like that? my dad almost died because his appendix exploded and had been for hours...but i didnt feel anything, cause i knew he was in the hospital and cleared up...is that wrong?

The NTs I know seem to feel as in feeeeeeel these things.

My fiancée is on her way back to the doctor right now. I feel nothing.

Hello, I've been reading this thread with interest and a lot of things have stuck with me. In particular,

I'm NT (apparently) and like to think of myself as someone who is in touch with emotions, mine and others'. I've noticed that many of the posters here have said that it's not that they don't FEEL sympathy or empathy, but they don't know how to respond to it appropriately. Let's take a death in the family as an example. Most people know instinctively that you should respond differently to someone whose twin sister died in a tragic accident than to someone who lost a 95 year old aunt, who they hardly ever saw and was sick for years. A good deal of that is having experienced some level of grief yourself or in someone close. In this example, the NT person would look to the other person for cues on how much sympathy they want. Some people don't want any expression of understanding, while others want lots of it no matter who died. We would be able to ramp it up or tone it down based on how that person reacted to our reaction. Does that make sense?

So it's not that we're being dishonest, exactly, it's just looking to someone else to see what they need from us in that moment and using good social judgment to decide the right response. For example, if the twin was killed while driving drunk, the NT person would (usually but not always) know that it's not appropriate to talk about the twin's stupidity in driving drunk right after the accident, but would either wait until a less volatile moment or just assume nothing needs to be said. We'd weigh the gravity of the loss higher than the stupidity of the action. And very likely talk with other NT's behind everyone else's back

Aspies can certainly both have friends and a sense of humour. (Ours may be different from the NT sense of humour, but it's there. Just look at this forum. )

Sure we are able to love also. I've never heard that it should be something we couldn't. Only maybe from people who don't know about it.

As for feeling empathy, you can be aspie and still feel empathy.

Your approach to your fiancee's situation seems kind of logical, I guess. I mean, as in the fact that we tend to think very logically.
As for me, I might "feel something" in a similar situation.

But I think the feeling aspect is kind of overrated here. As in, you have to feel a lot, or you're not really caring.
It's perfectly possible to have a cognitive empathy, and act on it.

Better a cognitive empathy that you act on, than an emotional empathy that you don't act on.

It's believe it's a combination of thinking about how the other people feeling and A Natural feeling that u get from within. What autistic people lacking is the natural feeling. Although we may feel something it's not at the same level of an NT person.

It does, spectrummom, and thanks for not taking offence. The people in my experience talk about this sympathy as if it's something spontaneous which they simply express, and it's healthy and correct, and there's something wrong with me for not behaving in the same way just as spontaneously. What you describe is more calculating, more reasonable, and more consistent with observed behaviour (including the manners of expression learned from entertainment media). I think these people would disagree with you, but I think you're probably right.

Problems with generalization and problems with communication are not mutually exclusive, however. I think DW's example illustrates a situation combining both communication and generalization problems.

Same for me.

I'm also very logical with the problem. If someone says they're cold, I tell them to put on a sweater, or something like that. Then they say they cba, which annoys me - why complain about something if you don't want it fixed?

I've been following this thread and thinking about the comments for awhile. Its a very good and deep, almost philosphical, question. The question is: How do NTs feel empathy/sympathy?

Since this is a matter of opinion, I will share mine: I believe all humans are born with the capacity to feel empathy and sympathy. Some learn to recognize, process, and react to these feelings quickly, some learn more slowly, and some never learn to process these feelings. And its not because they are incapable of learning, its because they haven't found a caring emotional teacher, or haven't had experiences that force them to learn by the school of hard knocks. In my case, it wasn't until I was an adult and experienced some serious losses that I fully learned to process my own feelings and truly empathize with the others' losses. Furthermore, some people are taught to ignore and suppress their feelings. An easy example is that its socially uncool for a man to cry in public and when that does happen it makes headline news. So males are taught from a very young age to control their emotions.

Just my $0.02.

Very well said. I think that what you described applies not only to Aspie acquisition of empathy/sympathy, but also of social skills in general, and learning anything really that isn't innately a particular Aspie's strength.

Referring back to an earlier post that I don't care to track down: Emotional projection? Interesting... I never thought of that.

Personally, I don't feel what others are feeling, and don't see the point of it either. I can determine and acknowledge their emotion, (Reading some stuff on here, I'm really glad that I intuitively understand tone of voice.) but why would or even should I want to feel it with them? Does it help with comforting them? (Which I'm not good at, of course.) To use an analogy, if I'm in a warm cabin and someone else is out in the snow, I don't see why I should have to be cold to be able to invite them in, where it's warm.

That's an analogy I really like! And totally agree with.

NTs don't "feel others' feelings" by the way. They might get sad or happy on behalf of the other (I can do that too), but don't feel exactly the same. Maybe it was not what you meant.
But it seems like a lot of (NT?) people want to make us believe that. I really wonder why. What I see, is that they themselves misunderstand each other all the time, and guess each others' intentions, thoughts and feelings (!) wrong all the time. They just "forget" to tell us, for some reason. Which I would really like to know.

Feeling the same or a very similar emotion on the behalf of another is at least close enough to my meaning.
I observe that someone is feeling something (with my own feelings remaining separate and unaffected) and determine logically whether I have anything to contribute. Usually, I don't.

You would need to ask an NT. I have no idea, they seem to find anything and everything upsetting. I can't really feel sympathy or empathy for other people, I was a lot younger when the Twin Towers were blown up and at the time I laughed, I didn't care about the people I just thought the buildings look cool blowing up.

When all those people died in the "Black Saturday" Victorian bushfires I didn't care, everyone else was crying and I just didn't care.

I think that NT's try and maybe genuinely do care about others.

Um... Yeah... That's kind of not cool...

Imagine watching Titanic in the theater when the movie first came out.
*the ship sinks* That was awesome!! !! *dirty looks from strangers*

I've heard that people's empathy in general gets weaker because of all the accidents it's possible to see and read about in the media.
So I don't believe that NTs get upset every time either.
No one could handle to get very upset every single time, with the frequency of accidents that are shown on TV.