The empathy question - once more.

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Empathy vs. sensitivity.

Often I am the only one in a company, who has caught and read an expression in somebodys face.
Often it makes a deep impact on me, whereas the others seem to forget/shake it off.

Is that sensitivity or empathy? or just being overwhelmed.

I´m told, that I have a hard time reading others and a difficulty with empathy, but I am more or less too open to other peoples emotional expressions, and I can be shut up with a very little grimace, so I won´t say, what I had prepared for, - say, at the psychologists.
It almost feels like fear. I go numb, meaningless and forget, what I was to say.

Anybody know this?

I have a problem with the notion that because you have difficulty picking up on some-one's facial expressions, you don't emphasise with other people. That's just stereo-typing people with AS if you ask me.

I bugs me too.
But I don´t think anybody has seen, how I really react. I don´t think my behavior is that obvious.

I bugs me too.
But I don´t think anybody has seen, how I really react. I don´t think my behavior is that obvious.

I think that these issues of empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, over-stimulation, and so forth are terribly muddled, not only in meaning but in terms of which, how, and to what extent they are experienced by people on the spectrum.

This is just a hypothesis, but I bet you are sensitive to genuine moods/emotion, and simultaneously find it difficult to pick up on the little social nuances because they are not really genuine or deeply felt. And perhaps the genuine moods affect you emotionally, but, intellectually, you may not be so in tune because you can't intuitively know for sure which thoughts anyone's body movements or facial expressions represent.

What is also confusing is that sometimes people do not want empathy.
They want to pretend that they have successfully concealed their emotions.
I think aspies do have empathy but can't cope speedily enough with the contradiction,
like Hal the computer in 2001.

Jensen ? This is something I have been trying to understand myself. One of my favorite WP users, Willard, has written on this topic several times. I had compiled some of his thoughts in my journal, and I include them below.

"knowing how to respond appropriately"
Who decides what this is?

I suppose appropriate is whatever response a neurotypical person would like, but
it sounds kind of snotty to me.

for AmethystRose.

Speeking of my own experience, but I believe it applies to everyone, without evidence that it does.

I believe I do generate emotions just like NT's. I also believe that I recieve emotions just like NT's. I say this because looking into somebody's eyes scares the hell out of me. It hits me like a bolt of lightening and I have to recoil. But for NT's, they look into each others eyes in order to read the other person. So based on this, and other antidotal evidence, I do beleive we recieve it.

The signal breaks down when it reaches the interpretive centres of our brain. Mine just goes "I don't recognise this signal, ignore it". Sometimes "Oh, I recognise this signal, send a message to "fight or flight" for imediate processing". And for the stronger ones I might get "OK, this is fear, we know what to do with this one, send it over to analysis for consideration".

I read the definitions above and just don't agree with them. It makes it seem as if empathy is a speed test designed to discover how fast one reacts to someone else's facial expressions. If it takes a little longer to react to these signals, does it really matter as empathy is the feeling and reaction to how the other person is feeling and then offering understanding and appreciation to how the other person is feeling. Don't understand how you separate the two words, "empathy" and "sympathy" from each other as they are both part of the same reaction. How you feel and how much response you make is an individual thing which you can't measure and only the reaction from the other person tells you whether you have made that connection or not. Hope in having this discussion, that no-one is saying that if you have AS, you can't connect with another human being.