First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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I have been thinking about your ANT acronym. I have heard that said to mean Automatic Negative Thoughts. Oh well.

I tend to err on the close side. I watch the person; see if there is something I can do that is helpful. Look for a pattern that reveals the source of their pain. Is there a way I can relate, or figure out how to create a way to relate, or is there some person that I can refer them to, or some person that I can point to them, who is able to relate. All that is important to me is that this person is comforted, by whatever means will work. If leaving them alone is what will comfort them the most, or what will make them the least uncomfortable, then that is what I will do. I am better at giving comfort by non-verbal means than by verbal means. If I can comfort them by sending comforting thoughts I will. Some people respond to that approach. Does that qualify for atypical neurotypical?

I don't know that I've ever "imagined" being someone else. I can have empathy for other people's situations, but then I am not imagining being them, I am imagining being me in their situation. And that's not always a good fit.

As for comforting someone, whether I knew it was the right thing to do or not is a bit moot, since I would feel too awkward and uncomfortable to try to do anything about it. Unless it was someone I'm very close to, like my bf.

As far as I am concerned, that is the only way anyone can empathize. All I have is what is inside me, and I take what is inside me that is like you, and then take what you say it is like being you, and I take what I think what you say, means, and weave it into what I experience, and create an image that I use to empathize with you. Does that make sense?


I understand. I don't mean to imply that you should be able to do what I do. I know I'm peculiar.

One question at a time, so I am told.

1. I still can't work out the difference between empathy and sympathy. I have always thought that I empathized. But I have found out that I am so far off the mark that I don't think I will ever understand other peoples feelings. With me it is black and white. I feel good or bad or indifferent, with a couple degrees of of goodness or badness.

So can anyone exlain the differences between empathy and sympathy?

I think it depends on what dictionary you use. I've looked in several different dictionaries (I love reading dictionaries for the shear joy of it) and there is quite a bit of overlap, and I haven't found the definitive answer. The following examples are from dictionary.com:

Sympathy: the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

Empathy: the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

For myself, I just kind lump them together to mean "knowing, understanding, or imagining how another person feels."

my interpretation:
italics - AS method of empathizing
bold - NT method of empathizing

no?

also .. is "you're not from around here, are you?" NT code for "you're a little bit strange"?

To me, sympathy is my response to another person's situation, where empathy is me imagining a feeling that is the person's response to their situation. The former is a response, or an action, where the latter is an experience. Sympathy can be in response to empathy, but it doesn't have to be.

Additionally their are types of empathy. There is the type where a person is able to imagine what they know the other person is probably feeling. There is projection, where you assume the other person is feeling whatever when they are not. This can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding. There is another type where certain people have a gift where they actually soak up the feelings of others around them. They find themselves experiencing feelings that make no sense in their own context, so they go looking around them to see whose feelings they are experiencing. There is another kind where the gifted person has kind of a radar where they can scan another person and know what emotion the other person is experiencing, and yet another type where two people can link themselves so that the two co-experience each others feelings as if they were sharing a memory buffer. With this variety, proximity has no impact on a person's ability to do this with another person. With the latter variety, many with this ability can also project feelings to an other person so that they feel the feeling that the former person created in his imagination. For instance, if a friend is feeling overwhelmed or stressed, this person can send him feeling of calm, or make it feel like he is with that person if he is facing a stressful situation.

How I feel "sympathy," is usually when something similar has happened to me, so I know what it feels like. Say a friend is having trouble with her boyfriend in a way I've experienced in the past, so I can give her both practical advice, and I can give her advice from my personal experience.

"Empathy" for me is a logical thing. That's for situations I've never been in (a plane crash, a house fire, etc) that I really have no idea what it actually feels like, but I'm logical enough to deduce how it would probably feel, or how I think I would feel.

For me, I experience both ways of empathizing. If I see somebody going through an experience I have already been through, then I know what the other person is feeling even though I may be wrong and I am cognizant of the possibility I may be wrong. An easy example is watching a child skin their knee and then be afraid to have it washed out with peroxide. I know what the pain and the fear feel like. But I can also experience the intellectual identification of another person's feelings if I haven't lived through the experience, for example...childbirth. I'll never really know what this feels like, but I can imagine it and intellectualize about it to the point of not saying insensitive things to pregnant women or mothers. I used pain-based examples here because they are easy, but I think the same process holds true for emotions/feelings as well. Standard caveat: please don't generalize my thoughts on this to all NTs...most NTs don't even think about such topics.



I don't know, I must've been absent the day they were handing out NT codebooks Seriously though, I think that might be the meaning for some people in some specific geographic areas, but I'm not sure you can generalize that meaning to everyone in every situation. I can imagine someone innocently saying that out of shear curiousity without having a hidden meaning.

Here's a question/thought back atcha: One of the WP members I enjoy conversing with has taught me that some people on the spectrum have difficulty generalizing social rules for specific situations to other similar but different situations. Could this also be a challenge in terms of empathizing/sympathing?

Well I am not an autie or an aspie, or at least I haven't been diagnosed as such by a professional diagnoser, but in my opinion this is not about empathy/sympathy. Its about taking a principal that works in this situation and reshaping it to work in another, and it doesn't only impact social rules. From what I have heard and read about LFA, it makes perfect sense that Aspies might experience some of this. Another thing related to this; people have told me that I have this ability, but when they told me, they called it a rare gift. Maybe it isn't.

...most NTs don't even think about such topics.

Really? I have only just learnt that I think differently. I have been asked to give examples of ways I think or feel differently and I can't because I have no idea how others think or feel. I now see a very good counsellor who really understands this. She will tell me what an NT would most likely have said, thought and done in situations where I have been confused. She is like an interpreter for me. That's how I think about it. Other people speak another language which sound similar to mine but means different things.

I have also recently been told that I am a near textbook example of AS. Which I interpreted at first to mean they thought I wasn't responding naturally but acting as if I had read about AS and was pretending. But I think I understand now that they meant I was 'typical' AS.

You have hit the nail on the head exactly with this statement. This is a major source of confusion and miscommunication that I experience. It's all English, but the words don't always have the same meaning, or tend to have a different associated context, for people whose thinking is different. And this doesn't only occur between quote NT and As folks, but among all people between different personality types. For instance, in the MBTI personality system, folks who are INTJ, and folks who are INFP which is my type, each practically speak different languages even though it's all English. I needed to learn to recognize INTJ thinking patterns, in order to learn to translate between INTJ and myself. Studying MBTI, and observing people has allowed me to accumulate an inventory of thinking and feeling differences to compare myself to and to use to relate to people who are different than me. INFP type is rare too. I also think differently than most folks around me, and I am NT.

I find that one to be situational. It can even, at times, be a compliment.

If said by someone in a business that has regular customers, or any other closed circuit type situation, it is a simple reflection of the fact that if they haven't met you yet, you must be new to the area or visiting. The problem when we're traveling is that we may not always realize we've just walked into a closed circuit situation, so one may not always realize when this is the accurate meaning.

If said when sharing an idea, it could be a compliment to what seems like the freshness of the idea, because everyone else has been stuck in the mud doing everything the same old same old.

But it also could be the opposite, a statement about how everyone likes the way they do things and they don't like the new idea. You've got to read the body language and expressions, unfortunately.

Sometimes it is just a statement of fact. I recently read an article from a frequent traveler who was thrilled when a passerby talked to him in the native language, instead of English. What was interesting was his explanation of why it is so easy to spot a traveler. Clothing choices - even socks - can have a strong regional base, as do things like the way one walks and holds oneself.

I think if I'm going to use the exact phrase, instead of a more indirect "where are you from?", it would be because I'm comfortable enough with the person to take on a more casual attitude. It's kind of cheeky to me, to say it that way, so I tend to be looking for a laugh; a shared acknowledgment that we come from different places and that is one of the things that makes life rich. But, then again, I'm learning that my reading of social cues isn't as up to speed as I had thought, so I could be wrong. Still, when someone says it to me, taking it lightly as an opening for more conversation has never done me wrong.

So, I think the last is probably the most important message: I don't think it is supposed to ever be a send off. A reflection of differences, sure, but also an opening.

Newday, i wish i had your therapist.

mine seems to be trying to "help" me by insisting that there is no such thing as normal, instead of explaining how people form connections with one another.

(i have a post about my frustration with therapy in the Haven - if anyone might have advice please look! thanks)

and p.s. DW mom, that was very helpful.

The explanation I have been given about empathy and sympathy is that sympathy is understanding how the person feels because you feel, or have felt, the SAME. Empathy is apparently being able to understand even though you don't feel that same way.

Now I see from reading these boards that empathy is much more intuitive. Like if I had empathy, I would know my friend was sad even without her indicating such. I don't. I do care about my friends and do not want them to be sad, but I can only relate to what they verbally say. This whole intuitive thing clears up why people in my life are able to tell that something is bothering me even when I have said otherwise.

The way I understand it is empathy is knowing how someone feels, sympathy is caring about another's feelings. Neither of those is black and white, but come in degrees. So we can have sympathy while only kinda sorta understanding how someone feels.