Can theory of mind and empathy improve in the long run?

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I am very aspie in many respects (special interests, stimming, social awkwardness, tendency to be a loner, faceblindness, inability to read social cues, some sensory issues, including synesthesia, very rational thinking patterns), but the only thing that prevents me from being certain I have a mild form of AS is the fact that I have a good theory of mind and a high empathy.

In fact, I think my theory of mind is better than that of most NTs. So many NTs I know simply cannot understand the workings of another person's mind, especially if the said person is culturally different from them. It's funny that theory of mind is seen as a defining NT trait, because most of them simply project unto others their own thoughts and feelings or delude themselves that they are able to read others' minds. It's a delusion, because nobody (NT or AS) is able to read anybody else's mind - I'm a psychotherapist and that's one of the basic facts they taught us in therapy school.

So, while I am unable to read anybody's mind, I do have a good understanding of other people's realities by means of the questions I ask. I have no problem understanding that other people are different than me. And I sometimes am overly empathetic to their plights. That makes me more tolerant and open-minded than many NTs I know.

But I don't think I was naturally born with this good theory of mind. I think I exercised it and perfected it in therapy school and in my writing (always trying to create different characters). A few years ago, my theory of mind was crap, especially when I was a kid. Just yesterday, my best friend told me how I acted towards her when we were kids - and I was shocked how much I was lacking theory of mind by then... There have been many, many instances in my childhood and early teen years when I clearly didn't understand other people's feelings and behaviors. Been bullied for that too...

I also sucked at reading body language, until a teacher taught us how to read it - and even now I need to cognitively assess some cues in order to determine what the body language of the other person is telling me, I do not have a natural, intuitive understanding of it. Also, the fact that I was taught in therapy school to mirror with my body the posture of the one I'm talking to helped a lot (when I mirror them, I understand better what they feel, because I make my body elicit the same emotions). I'm very used to doing this, but when I relax too much, I forget about it and tend to lose eye contact altogether...

So can theory of mind and empathy be improved through practice and conscious effort? I know I got better at it because psychotherapy is one of my special interests and my motivation was huge from the beginning...

If it's true that my natural theory of mind was crap and I've improved it a lot, then my life might start to make some sense (I might have AS after all and that would account for being so different from others)...

i'm 56. i believe my ToM has improved with life experience. the more i've been through, the easier it is to relate to others.

I think it can improve as we get older and I also feel mine is better than most people. But I feel I still lack it at times but doesn't everyone?

Do you actively analyse the stuff instead of have an intuitive knowledge, and does it take time to do that analyzing?

Oh yes, that is me, definitely. I feel I connect very strongly with other people's intentions, feelings, their anxieties, their viewpoints and body language. I can feel when other people are feeling good, and feel when something is not right. It is like your mental state of happiness or sadness matches the other person, by just feeling the presence of it in the room, and not having to look at facial expressions or listen to literal words in order to find out something is going well or bad with them. I've always been overly empathetic (as you say) to other people's desires, visions; what makes them tick. More than just imagine being in someone else's shoes, I almost feel as if I am in their shoes sometimes (not literally obviously).

But on the other end of the scale, I can relate to your other traits too, which definitely do match AS ...


Always have been like that, at long as I can remember.
Seems a bit half and half in the aspie diagnosis.

In my case, I can explain a lot of my social awkwardness, being lost of what to say in conversations, needing to be alone ; by the fact that I had a single mother "Victorian-Style" (children should be seen and not heard etc..), with no "daddy"-figure ever in my life. So maybe that explains why I have social / conversational problems, but not getting the full set of difficulties that are mentioned for AS.

Maybe I'm just talking nonsense. Unless I get officially diagnosed I guess I'll never know.
I might even be neurotypical (even though I don't feel like one). Now that is scary.

Yes, I do analyze the body language and the messages I get from other people. It takes less time now than it did a few years ago, since I've been practising the stuff relentlessly. Now I can recognize at a glance the body scheme of a person who is depressed or anxious, but I still need to analyze it cognitively to make sure; at first, I kinda needed to analyze each segment of their body language in order to gauge the emotion behind it.

The less obvious things still go unnoticed. For example, I am always surprised when my father or my aunt get suddenly angry with me. To me, they give no warning and it's very unexpected. My best friend - an NT - however told me that she is always able to sense when my aunt is going to get angry with me, as she notices subtle hints given out by my aunt before actually exploding with anger.

I guess that I apply the same theory of mind technique to people as I do to my fictional characters: I ask myself how is a person supposed to feel, how would I feel in a given
situation? I then ask for a feed-back and check their body language. It's as if I cast the persons as characters in a story in my mind, while I talk to them. That happens as quick as it happens when I watch TV or read a book. And it makes empathy flow more naturally.

In fact, I think I am overly empathetic, to levels where most NTs are not. I wasn't that empathetic a few years ago though. But I've always got a strong emotional response to other people's emotions, albeit inappropriately at times. I felt empathy towards fictional characters and even some inanimate objects (projecting a human identity on them). I always attributed being so emotional to the fact that I am an artist... Yet, this emotional side is paired up with an extremely rational thought pattern...

I do not know how NTs are doing all of this though. Do they really get an intuitive knowledge of other people's minds? Do they not need to analyze it in a cogitive way?

This is exactly how I feel! I tried to explain in my previous post, but I was unable to. I couldn't put it better myself.

You are a lot like me.

i'm quite sure my theorie of mind had improved a lot during the last year

I think that it is possible to improve theory of mind by learning and applying more and more and more of the theory of how other people think.

Indeed.
In addition to that, even if one is clueless about theory of mind in their early years, at least we can learn to simulate it.

But then again it depends on how well you want to integrate into social situations. Many on here are just happy to avoid it. I'm just not one of those people.

So, dinner tomorrow evening, my place or yours?

Incidentally I'd just like to point out that I never think about "those NTs" vs "us Aspies" like some sort of tribal notion that some threads seem to indicate on WP. We are all people, with our own strengths and weaknesses. Some a-holes out there, lots of genuine people. I couldn't care whether someone is NT or Aspie in the same way as whether someone is black or white, gay or straight. I only see the individual, then make judgements from knowing them. It's refreshing to see that many on here think the same.

Well, I sure know we can improve our theory of mind. I remember I read somewhere: "For NTs everybody things likes them unless proven otherwise; for aspies everybody thinks vastly differently unless proven otherwise." When regular people project their minds into others, they are usually not that far off the truth, but they are so used to that they don't make efforts and as they are not all quite alike, I've seen them being very prone to misunderstandings. But after having enough practice, (and knowledge on psychology doesn't hurt) an aspie can figure out the way other people think, and more adept at identifying individual differences. Still, in many circumstances actually thinking more or less alike is hard to beat. Also, the body language thing goes miles at figuring out how other people may feel, and that also puts us in a disadvantage. I've taught myself to understand some aspects of non-verbal communications, but there is a lot more ahead.