lack of empathy a prerequisite for Aspergers?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all,

I'm just starting the process to be tested for Aspergers. my therapist suggested that i might have some aspie traits. However one conflict i have is the empathy dilemma . if anything i feel i have too much empathy and it affects my social connection issues. i definitely have social phobia and have recently done a great course to help with that. but even in that support group i felt out of place. everyone else seemed too talkative to have social phobia but that might have been just a safety behaviour they had, where as i am more the selective mutism type person.

When i was a baby i had a condition called encephalitis . it means inflammation of the brain. I also noticed in one of Dr Hans Aspergers reports that there is an overlap between Aspergers and people that suffered early encephalitis.

"Brain damage resulting from birth trauma, early encephalitis and the like may cause many remarkably similar or the same symptoms as seen in Autistischen Psychopathen, but in addition there are neurological and vegetative symptoms in those cases, like strabismus, spasticity, increased salivation and more.

Another difference is that the autistic symptoms caused by trauma are typically not seen back in the patient's relatives, as they have not been inherited."

So i am at a crossroads. i am willing and prepared to do the tests to see if and how Aspergers might fit . but if lack of empathy is a requisite then i am not sure if it is Aspergers or just very similar symptoms and an overlap on some of the traits .

there is no history in my family regarding Aspergers. but thats not to say its not there, just no one has been tested before or it hasn't been noticed. we are all Irish so we are complex creatures at the best of times. lol

I tried the online test for Aspergers i scored 186 / 200. but then a lot of the questions are related to social phobia issues as well.

I don't mind being quirky or even non NT . but i just want to find the best tools to manage things a bit better and increase my own awareness of what i need to look out for.

there is also the dilemma that what i think is empathy is not empathy at all ( just my version of it) and i just read too much into the world of NT's and i am misinterpreting the reality of the situations.

Many thanks for any replies and for reading this far...

The empathy thing is nonsens. If you do a search here on WP there are some very good threads about empathy (and the different kinds of empathy).

apologies. i will do a search too. i was just back from my doctor and he said the empathy thing rules out aspergers. hence why i jumped in with the post. Normally i just read posts and lurk. lol

I'd be interested to hear if anyone also had encephalitis as a child too as there does seem to be an overlap with certain traits...

Oh, I am sorry, didn´t mean to come over as rude. I am just from a rude (nordic) country
Just went through Dublin a couple of weeks ago, on my way to Galway. Unfortunately I didn´t see any of Dublin.

You can easily figure out what other people feel or think by just looking at their face? You tend to misinterpret facial expressions?

oh you are grand. you weren't rude at all and you were dead right too. i should have searched a bit better.....i normally do. but was thrown a bit by my doctor regarding the empathy factor. My therapist said that empathy is just a small part of Aspergers and because it is on a spectrum means anybody can be anywhere on that spectrum .

I guess it part of my own frustration that even the medical professionals don't agree on things. but i see my therapist weekly and my doctor only every few months. so i give my therapist more credibility. I guess the tests will help point where i need to focus my energies to.

were you over for the volvo race?

Don't worry about missing dublin. the rest of the country is nicer anyways. Dublin is only really good for partying n the like.

sure the nords are grand too. they gave us celts a hard time a few hundred years ago but they stayed for the beer and whiskey so they joined in with the natives rather than keep pillaging. lol

You should read up on Intense World Theory, it's one of the more recent scientifically based explanations of Asperger's, and it posits that (some?) aspies might have too much empathy, so much so that they cannot process it properly, shut down or express it "incorrectly".

I think you will find an immense load of personal stories and replies here going in the direction of 'too much empathy'... I'm a case in point, and just like you, it was the very same thing that kept me from considering autism in my case for many, many years...

Welcome to WP!

I struggled with this one too, once I started doing a lot of research about ASD. I have exceptional empathy or sympathy - still not sure which - and I don't really know if it's innate or something I learned to help me deal with a lack of normal-people empathy. It's definitely common here on WP, though.

Since you appear to be amenable to sidetracking in your thread... I went to Ireland this spring (my last week before this episode started, actually) and it was wonderful! One of the best weeks of my life, really. We went with a group of really wonderful people, stayed in a guest house near Thurles in Tipperary, and I enjoyed every minute. Sometimes I wish we hadn't come home! It's a beautiful country you have, and I really enjoyed getting to travel about to places my ancestors lived. Sigh, someday we'll go back - maybe next time I'll stay!

Empathy is a personality trait, some people have it more than others, lack of empathy does not define a person on the spectrum. I know people who can't put themselves in other people's shoes if they have never experienced what that person is going through. My family didn't think Alzheimer's was such a bad thing, until an elderly relative of our's had been diagnosed with it, now my family knows more how it feels for others who have loved ones that suffers the same disease. But before anyone in my family had it, we were just like, ''oh, Alzheimer's isn't all that bad, why do people keep whining about it?'' - until we now have to look after a relative with it, and we definately don't say that any more. We now know how bad it is.

The kind of empathy that is missing in a person with Asperger's is a social kind of empathy. It's the kind of empathy that makes you copy the conventions of others in a situation and that lets you pick up on emotional cues intuitively rather than by having to figure them out. You may still experience the same emotions as a "normal" person in the situation, but you will arrive at them differently. It's why many of us don't understand things like dressing fashionably or following popular culture just to have something to talk about with other people rather than because we find them interesting.

as mentioned before; not having empathy is a pile of bull indeed.
however; the way i (and most of my therapists) interpret that symptom is along the lines of "problems expressing empathy in a way that is accepted among his/her peers".
this meaning that you can feel just as much, or even more, empathy then an NT, but you have trouble showing it back, so you *appear* to have no feeling of empathy