Interesting thing happened in a cafe today...

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I was sitting at a table by myself near the door having lunch. Not far up from me were a couple, also eating. The cafe had really heavy, rigid glass doors.

Anyway, I was staring outside and I saw a man and woman in their 50s leaving the cafe. The woman was starting to reach for the door handle but her male companion walked straight into the glass door, which remained shut. You could hear the mans head hit the glass and his whole body collide with it and the glass made this loud, clanging, jarring sound.

As I watched the impact I sort of felt it myself, I felt kind of like it was me who had connected with the glass, shocked and sore, like he must be. His partner then said "Are you ok?" and helped him get through the door. I was thinking "His head! I hope he isnt too hurt by that."

They left the shop and one of the couple behind me, a man, said, in an awed voice, "Wow. I could feel his embarrassment."

It was interesting, as both me and this guy, probably NT, witnessed this, and I felt the physical impact, and he felt the emotional impact. It is like his mirror cells are designed to register other people's embarassment, and my aspie ones instead pick up physical things.

Interesting, anyway. Anyone else had anything like this happen? Do you feel others embarrassment, or physical pain, or anything else?

I know in my case I am really bad at feeling peoples embarrassment. I know I used to embarrass others all the time and have no idea of it. I also have a pretty high embarassment threshold myself.

Very interesting point. I always feel the physical reaction to things like that happening. I would say that I even feel that way when it is an dish that is dropped or an object that gets hit or broken, I feel the "pain" (don't know how else to describe the feeling) twinge of the breaking. I usually do a little bit of a recoil from the sound of the impact like if I was the one getting hit.

I don't really think about how the person who just dropped the plate in the middle of the restaurant feels.
However, I do get embarrassed when I am doing the stupid thing like walking into posts or breaking something in public.

Wow, this describes perfectly how I feel around people who are having emotional outbursts. My boss frequently stomps around the office shouting into the phone, face red as a beet, and when he is through, our office manager tries to quell his anger by giving him some bit of good news, whereas I am totally silent, feeling like I have been stabbed in the ears.

People seem to feel both physical and emotional empathy for one another (think of a guy's reaction to seeing another guy kicked in the crotch). Physical empathy is so much easier to understand though! I can't tell what has set someone off to be angry or embarrassed because I am often not angry or embarrassed myself at times when I ought to be. Physically though, we all sense pain or changes in temperature.

Perhaps this is why people go around chatting about the weather so much

I feel other people's embarrassment very strongly. It makes me cringe.

I don't think that this is like NT empathy though. Sometimes, I think that I'm more bothered than the person who is getting embarrassed. I just naturally think about how I would feel if I was in that situation. It's hard for me to grasp the idea that other people would react differently, feel different things in the same situation.

hehe.. i can feel all of it! hi, i'm an NT.. i like that "mirror cells".. it mostly works by imagining that the guy who hit the door was you. how you would feel especially if you add the impact which was also physically felt plus the number of people you are aware who have seen it.

if the hit wasnt that hard that nobody felt the impact and better if not much noticed what happened, or at least that person is not aware how many people have seen the incident we may not get to have a feel or idea how his misfortune could feel like. what happened to him was in such a scale or intensity that to NT's it is but natural that anybody in that situation should feel a certain way but it is still not exact. and maybe mr.door banger also showed signs that he was very embarrassed..

There's a type of synesthesia where if you see someone touch someone you can feel it. This might be the same. I haven't noticed it in me yet. When people talk to me about being in accidents I can sort of feel what they go through. It's nothing more than that though.

This is what I mean, an instinctive physiological reaction of some sort of physical stimuli. When a plate drops in a restaurant I feel this kind of energy, with the plate breaking, it really effects me. Then after while the waiter is picking the pieces, it might occur to me that they are embarassed by the incident. When I was younger though it wouldnt have occurred to me at all..

Yeah that is pretty much how it was for me when the guy hit the door, I "felt" it throughout my body, in a sense.

When I see people injured I can feel it, too. Sometimes very strongly, almost overwhelming. Strong emotions are similar, primarily the physical sense of those emotions, and that can also be overwhelming.

It's interesting that these reactions are immediate, but my interpretation of a lot of body language seems to be on a delay because I have to consciously decide what they mean (even if I can do it quickly, it's still a few seconds). If I see someone crying I immediately feel a response to that, but it can still take me a few moments to work out that maybe I should do something, and then work out what I should do.

I guess the thing I noticed that I felt primarily the physical impact, with the embarrassment thing being sort of in the background, when the other guy seemed to experience the embarrassment as the primary vibe he picked up on. Perhaps the guy had a lot of emotional empathy or something..

Mirror touch synaesthesia,I am not sure i have that, but when my senses are heightened, seeing certain things, such as something rubbing against something, or something in my peripheral vision, can feel almost painful.

That is interesting. I also think more in terms of pain than embarrassment, as well.

Odd. I think a lot more about the embarrassment than the pain.

That is interesting. Thanks for writing it up.

Likewise. I think I feel theirs more than I feel my own.

Thanks all, Yensid and Kaybee, my brother is just like you guys. He feels others embarassment very very keenly, in contrast to me who is barely aware of others embarassment. He is NT though. But I think that all aspies are different, Im sure quite a few aspies out there can feel cues like this.

Moog, you're welcome, and I like your new avatar.

CockneyRebel, I think you understand exactly what I mean then. I live in New Zealand, and I was out and about yesterday, and do you know what I saw? A Routemaster. Somebody had bought one, polished it up and was using it for a tour bus. It was very cool...

Thinking about the thread more, I thought of something else. When someone insults me badly I feel that they have punched me in the chest. My body behaves just as it would if it had actually happened. I know that NTs would get this too though of course.

For example right now I have had some really bad stuff happen last week, and I feel literally kind of bruised all over, as if I am covered in bruises. I have little physical strength as well, and I am usually quite hyper. My stomach is in a strange state as well, sort of tender and not really accepting much food.

Anyway suffice it to say I have no actual physical injury incurred and no actual stomach bug or whatever, but my body seems to think that it has been injured and my stomach thinks I am sick. Interesting, anyway.

Last edited by zen_mistress on 23 Jan 2011, 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.