aspies don't show empathy, but NTs don't seem to feel it

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I keep hearing that "aspies don't show empathy" or whatever, but while NTs show it, they don't seem to genuinely feel it. of course this is a generalization, but it seems like when an NT over does the "aww i feel sooooooooooo sorry for you" /etc, but really don't give a s**t.

i may just be around the wrong people sometimes thoughts?

and i've just realized that the server censors my posts, how cool is that?

It seems to be a human thing. Not everyone feels it either and even they fake it and I have also noticed they tend to lack it too. It's not exclusive to autism.

My mother told me that 90% of her eggspressions of empathy for other people are fake, and she feels no emotions to go along with those eggspressions. It's just social convention to fake empathy, she told me.

I suspect that we have too may psychopaths out there. To far too many people, all that matters is what they get out of it. If they can make money by causing grief and misery for others, they think that is their right. And they seem to be able to go on without ever even feeling sorry for all the problems they caused others.

There's so much hypocrisy by NTs on the issue of empathy that this wouldn't surprise me.

That I agree with. It's silly to assume just because someone's not on the spectrum that they have empathy for their fellow man.

I've noticed this too. People will make a lot of fuss over something, but if you need their help they are often unwilling. I've found this with both Auties and NTs, so I think it may just be a human thing. The ones who do stick with you when things aren't good are real friends.

I think empathy is much deeper than what you suggest. It's not an "Aww." It is being emotionally involved in other's stories. Knowing the characters and their different roles... and caring about outcomes... and remembering what happened in the past... and even being able to know what is going on in a friends story when you see them for the first time that day just by the look on their face, or the clothes they are wearing, their posture and gate. (One of my kids is muy empathetic... she taught me [not that I can use it...ever]).

Yeah I agree

Empathy baffles me. I am in a liberal arts program in grad school where we talk about all kinds of horrible injustices in the world and classmates often break down crying in class. I know I look like a terrible person to them because even though I DO care I just don't express it that way. Yet these same classmates seem completely oblivious to the fact that the people sitting around them may have been through the same things they're talking about, that injustice doesn't just happen elsewhere in the world. I just don't get it at all.

Empathy is much more than pretending to give a s**t. NTs are into one another's stories for real. The are engaged, and think about them... and feel emotions about other people's stories. That's what politics really is. They know and care about all their life stories. Soap operas are like a metaphor of how they work. And Survivor games on TV too. I have never watched one for half an hour... you?

It is the story they are telling themselves. They are being there. It's like a sense that we didn't get wired for.

I've always been an outsider in one sense or another, my first really severe meltdowns started coming when I was starting to gain enough social awareness to realize how deeply awkward I was, and prompted a major depressive episode that meant I never finished 10th grade. I made my first friends in college but nearly everyone I've had a lasting connection with has been through some kind of trauma, seen someone they love die, survived rape, or something like that, and somehow I must communicate to total strangers that I'm a "safe zone" for talking about this kind of thing because it happens to me all the time. I'm much, much more comfortable consoling someone who is having severe emotional problems than I am trying to talk to strangers at a party, and apparently it shows. I have no idea why.

that said, I've seen people do the fake empathy thing but I've always sort of classified people into the "in the real world", "not in the real world" categories, and people who have "real world" experience don't do that nearly as much, if at all.

when I worked at a hotel I once had a woman complain about the status of the chocolate fountain at her daughter's wedding reception for nearly 2 hours while the family of a child undergoing treatment for leukemia in the pediatric hospital a few blocks away was in the building at the same time asking for nothing, complaining about nothing, and being kind to everyone. "real world", "not real world".

I'd seen a member of my immediate famaily in mid suicide attempt before I was in 4th grade. I don't spend a lot of time with people who don't know what real suffering is, and consequentially I don't see a whole lot of fake empathy. regarding empathy in general, I've been accused of being harsh in my writing to/about people and subjects when logic (as I see it) dictates a clear ethical imperative one way or another, but lacking empathy in general has never been something I've been accused of...and generally when I've offended people in the past it's been because I was trying to speak up for another group that I felt empathy for that I didn't hear anyone else speaking loud enough for.

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I'm waaaay high on the "black and white thinking" and sensory overload problems associated with ASD, as well as idiosyncatic speech/special and academic interests and all the rest, was really bad about not understanding people outside my family as a child, but lack of empathy has never even been a blip as far as I can tell.

I don't cry, though. the vast majority of my negative emotions aren't expressed except in writing, and end up as twitches or jerks or occasionally paralysis, so "empathy" for me usually translates into talking someone through something or talking for someone who can't talk for themselves.

Last edited by Ca2MgFe5Si8O22OH2 on 27 Dec 2012, 12:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

I dunno what you're talking about, but my mother told me that she only cares about a few people and is completely indifferent to all others. I doubt that she's into the stories of her coworkers when they are going on and on and on about their lives and she wishes that they would shut up while pretending to care about them.

Most people seem to believe that they have lots of empathy though. This includes NTs and autistics.

Your mother doesn't know what other people are thinking... trust me.

Did you ever hear the Zen Koan that goes:

Two monks were standing on a little bridge in a Zen garden, watching the Koi fish swimming below. The first monk bursts out, "Look how happy the fish are swimming there!" The second monk pauses for a second and then replies, "You don't know if the fish are happy or not!" The first monk says back... without looking up, "You don't know, if I know, if the fish are happy or not."