Empathy & Emotion

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I've been reading a lot about Asperger's and I keep getting different impressions of the concept of empathy. Some people seem to think we can't empathize at all. Others seem to think we have a hard time of it. Others seem to think we only appear to empathize because we use our intellects to imitate empathy rather than truly having it.

I'm inclined to say that in most of my interactions, I probably behave as I've taught myself to by observing things that people do, without always understanding why they do them. I remember explaining to someone once that I do x or y because "that's what I'm supposed to do." When I was a kid, I remember going up and giving my mom kisses a whole bunch of times in a row. She commented on it. I couldn't tell if she was happy to have my affection or annoyed with it (typical aspie, right? Couldn't read people.) I think I was trying to get a response out of her, to test whether that was an appropriate action, and she kept brushing me off. Or I was misinterpreting.

Anyway, I still misinterpret faces/expressions/tones a lot, but I've gotten better. I can tell when my kids are lying to me. Then again, sometimes I overcorrect and probably come off as paranoid, assuming they're lying to me.

Also, there's empathy in the sense of feeling for someone. When my wife's father died, my brain immediately started thinking of practical considerations instead of sharing in her grief. Dutifully, I imitated grief, but some people saw the way I reacted as cold. I remember talking about how he left us his house. It was the day after he died and I was perceived as caring only about inheritance. I was truly sad, though. I loved the man. He was very kind to me. I even cried later, mostly because I was emotionally exhausted and aware that my wife was hurting.

So the question is: can aspies learn to empathize or do we only ever imitate empathy? Is there a difference between the kind of empathy by which we can interpret another's thoughts or intentions and the kind of empathy by which we can share in some else's emotions? Can we really feel emotions at all or do we simply imitate them based on what we understand of them?

some of us DO indeed have empathy, but at least in my case it did not awaken fully [from "theoretical" to factual] until I suffered.

You mean that the experience of suffering made you more compassionate?

Interesting. I lost a classmate to a tragic accident the summer after 5th grade. I absorbed a lot from observing the reaction to that. I cried, even though I didn't know her that well, I suppose because the thought of death is sad to anyone. Then another classmate committed suicide when I was in high school and I observed and dealt directly with people grieving that. I lost most of my grandparents when I was young. Despite being an aspie, I've been pretty good at consoling people. I'm not great at most interaction, but consoling I'm good at. I suppose probably because I know intellectually how to handle that situation, even if I'm not good at feeling their pain. I rarely cry when people die. I'm usually cool, perhaps cold, about it, though I recognize the sadness and I feel bad for those affected.

Perhaps this is a part of the gift of Asperger's. Some people have to stay a little detached, right?

I was the only person in the room when my college roommate - who is one of my few brotherly friends - got the call that his little brother committed suicide. I was able to be there for him. I helped him pack and get to the airport.

I kinda want to say we feel emotion, but it's so deep down it rarely comes to the surface, and when it does, we don't always know what to do with it. I know what to do with grief.

Then again, I feel content quite often - not happy, but content. Perhaps only extreme emotions are buried deep.

I know I've complained a lot about my AS husband on here, but he was truly great when my grandfather died. Probably for two reasons.

1) He's not from my culture and we have quite different funeral and grief rituals. I didn't expect him to understand or know how people would react to death in my culture - so I explained EVERYTHING that would happen and how people would behave and how he would be expected to behave. It didn't come off as patronising from his point of view, because he truly didn't know and couldn't be expected to know how things would work and not from a point of social awkwardness but from a point of cultural awareness.
2) He understood that his role was to support me, so he did it. He was 'just an in-law' so grief wasn't expected of him. He quite liked my grandfather (everyone did) but they weren't close. It meant that I didn't have to comfort him at a time that I needed comfort (I was very, very close to my grandfather). On the other hand, my step-father was treated as 'just an in-law' and he had a very close relationship to my grandfather which none of us really appreciated at the time and we (the blood relatives) probably didn't recognise this as well as we should have and it caused a lot of friction.
3) I was expected to give the eulogy at my grandfather's funeral. I HAD to remain calm. He was quite good at modelling calm, dispassionate behaviour. He also used his Aspie critique to help me hone and perfect my eulogy. My brother also stepped in where my husband couldn't at the vital moment when I needed calming before giving my 'performance'.
4) He left my home country to go back to work just at the time I was feeling really raw from grief. So I didn't expect him to provide comfort at a point where he probably wouldn't have been able to give it. Lucky coincidence.

I seem to be quite lacking in empathy.
Until a few years ago, I didn't even realize that some people had feelings.
Aside from when one of my friends died, I can't say I've ever felt anything when hearing about bad things happening to other people, and even then it was a pretty delayed reaction (like a few days).
I often know what I 'should' feel, and sometimes try to make myself feel that way, but it's nothing more than a cheap imitation.

I'm not very sympathetic either and am usually perceived as cold and/or insensitive I've been told, so I find I'm better off not saying anything most of the time.

I usually feel emotionless, but I think sometimes I'm just not consciously aware of how I really feel.

I've read so many different concepts of empathy here. I believe most Aspies have more empathy than they think they do, but because everywhere stereotypes that ASD is a lack of empathy disorder, we tend to believe it and then put ourselves down by saying ''yeah, I lack empathy'', without even thinking about all the people who have bullied us in the past mostly because of not understanding how it really feels to be in our shoes.

Although I get so many different concepts of empathy here, I still consider myself pretty empathetic. I even took a couple of different online tests about empathy, and I scored pretty high on both. Also my counselor said that it sounds like I feel other people's emotions, even if they are strangers.

I am not AS, I am HFA. But I really struggle with empathy. I've never really felt it before. I do, however, know some stock phrases to fake the empathy I lack. Such as "I'm really sorry to hear that, is there anything I can do to help?". Although I suppose I could have some subliminal empathy because I only want good for the world.

My proposal for classification:

(1) Cognitive empathy: recognizing what others feel by seeing their situation or their reaction, without them spelling it out to you. ASD people and the like often have less of this.

(2) Emotional empathy: feeling what the other feels (good if they feel good, bad if they feel bad), once you know how they feel (after they told you, if you lack (1)). No correlation with ASD as far as I understand.
(2a) Emotional empathy for others in general, e. g. not hurting a random person because you don't want them to feel bad.
(2b) Particularly much emotional empathy for people who are close to you. This may appear lacking in people with ASD simply because the set of people close to you may be small or empty, sometimes not even containing close relatives. So not caring about the death of a relative more than that about a random person may be unrelated to empathy.

The problem is that the two variant of empathy are usually confounded, and since lacking (2) is regarded to be immoral by many people, the debate about empathy can lead to a lot of name-calling.