Aspergers and Empathy Vs. Sympathy

Post Reply New Topic

I'm guessing this has been talked about before, but I wanted to know what you people feel personally.

I often find it hard to tell what other people are feeling, but if I know they are upset, I usually (not always) feel bad for them, and can relate, at least to their feelings if not the situation. I constantly ask people how they are feeling, because I can tell when someone is acting differently, but I never know why unless they tell me (this actually annoys people; "why are you constantly asking if I'm upset or sick? I'm just tired from work!"). I can also express that I feel bad, even if it's just to say something dumb like "Sorry you feel bad because your goldfish died. Uh, goldfish are nice..."

So I was wondering, is this the same for you guys/gals? I've heard before that people with aspergers's lack empathy, but do you feel sympathy? If you know someone is upset, even if they had to tell you themselves, do you feel bad for them? And are you able to say something comforting?

So, I guess there are three steps:

1. Empathy (being able to tell what someone else is feeling)
2. Sympathy (feeling for the other person)
3. Consolation (a social skill?)

Which steps, if any, do you struggle with? And if you have trouble consoling someone, do you still feel the desire to do so but just don't know how or feel too weird?

Sorry if this is a dumb question or one that gets asked a lot, I was just very curious. As a side, I've heard recent studies say that people with Asperger's and other forms of autism often excel at #2 but may have difficulties with #1 and #3.

It's not empathy Autistics lack, it's social intuition we can have difficulties with.

I have very high empathy. But I'm not so good at expressing sympathy. I tend to feel awkward when somebody is talking about their problems to me, although I can listen and understand the emotional side of it, but I don't always know what to say, sympathy-wise. But that doesn't mean people think I'm unsympathetic though.

When somebody is crying, I often want to cry myself, and I naturally want to go up to them and cuddle them and talk to them. If I'm unable to do that (like if there are others comforting them), I still stare, not in a nasty way, it's just that instinctively I cannot ignore someone crying. I feel I want to do something to make them feel better.
But empathy isn't always about hugging someone who is crying. There are other emotional situations where I naturally feel empathy, like when somebody has humiliated themselves, I feel embarrassed even if I had nothing to do with it. I can feel their embarrassment.

I can pick up on subtle body language too. Like at work there's this woman who I have discovered doesn't like sitting with people who play with their phone during lunch. Once when she walked into the canteen and saw other workers looking at their phones, I could tell that her facial expressions said "everybody's on their phones, I don't feel comfortable with it". So now I don't get my phone out when she's in the room, instead I sit and chat to her. But I don't think anyone else has noticed.

Keep working at it! I'm still sometimes wrong, often don't get it perfect but it is possible to learn to observe carefully, and learn enough rules to not only get by, but fashion a sort of resonse-persona that may be quirky and odd, but is labelled by others as caring and friendly (which in my case matches my intentions).

Also something interesting and perhaps, useful. Extroverts (ie also NT) are very often inclined to 'not get involved' or 'give someone their space' when someone is displaying any signs of negative emotions. And the more extroverted they are, the more they seem to actively avoid someone who is displaying mild non-intentional-communication signs of feeling down. It's like if all the very social people ignore and isolate that one person, the negative feelings can't spread to the rest of them like some sort of herd instinct. And the introverts avoid everyone else anyway. And those in the middle of the herd seem unwilling to go out on a limb and contradict the leaders. Over the years when I'd identified that someone was feeling negative and be avoided by others, my first impulse was to try to help. Mostly by simply acknowledging that the person still existed (they were being treated as non-entities by other people) and that they appeared to be feeling down, and then listening. Eventually I learned that the end effect was the same as the "empathy" that NT people tout but so rarely actually display.

I do #1 and #2, but struggle with #3. Knowing that frequently my intentions are misunderstood, and that I can try really hard to say the right thing and have it come out wrong (or be the wrong thing), I am often afraid to attempt to console someone.

One thing I've noticed that isn't often discussed, is that when people attempt deception, I can see this (they might act unconcerned but really be furious, or act sad but their voice and body language don't match) I am not sure how to react to them. Do I react to what I perceive/feel is going on, or to what they are trying to project? Also, if there are mixed feelings, it's confusing.

Also, empathetic response can be so strong in me that it looks like mockery, or like I'm trying to steal the stage. An example would be when a coworker's beautiful 19 year old daughter, who was also her closest friend, died in a traffic accident. I never could even think about her loss without convulsing and holding back tears, so trying to say something appropriate like "sorry for your loss" was out of the question (because I just could not reign in the emotional reaction).

What I finally did do, which seemed to work well for her, was ask her how she was doing, express a lot of appreciation for her as a strong, smart, and resilient person, and (this sounds crazy but it did work) tell her often how hot/gorgeous/well put together she looked. Yeah. I really did this to a coworker - repeatedly and in front of witnesses. I even cat-called her once. Her face would light up and her whole body would loosen up, and she'd thank me. And we'd both laugh.

I'd never EVER have gotten away with this if I were a male, or if what I was saying had not been true. I'd never have attempted it. The only reason I tried this approach was that she made an obvious (and highly successful) effort to look great, and she did, so it was clearly important to her while being superficial enough to not provoke undue emotional expression in me.

I do MUCH better with empathy when the emotion expressed by the other person is a positive one - but even then, I can appear entirely too gleeful when a person is truly happy and I can feel it. So yeah, awkward covers things pretty well.

Sometimes the most compassionate - as well as socially adroit - action is to pivot, like you did here. Instead of addressing what the other person is feeling, you deflect some of the discomfort in an unrelated remark.

I guess I always thought of empathy as being a form of social intuition; as in, being able to read a person's body language to tell what they are feeling. I always thought that people with aspergers's naturally have trouble reading body language (I do), but I guess that was a misconception? And I know some people are very good at reading body language, but do not feel any kind of emotion for the other person, like a sociopath. I guess I think of sympathy not as how you react to another person, but what you feel inside (i.e, your ability to relate to the person's feelings), which I think a sociopath lacks but someone with asperger's may feel quite strongly.

Thanks for the insight, you sound like a very kind and empathetic person. It sounds to me like you do pretty well in all of these areas.

Well this is why I doubt my diagnosis. There are so many common Aspie symptoms I don't have at all, not even as a child. But there are very few symptoms I have what affect my life like high anxiety levels, shyness, difficulties making friends, not liking loud noises, and coming across as odd to others.