Thinking of others

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Is not thinking of others very much an aspect of autism?

As you may or may not know I've been around on the site for a few years, knowing I fit some qualities, but don't fit others. I also have very poor self-awareness. (I'm working very hard on gaining it though). One of things I realized recently about myself is that my thoughts very very rarely go to thinking about what other people are thinking or feeling. It just does not enter my mind.

I'm sorry if this is an obvious question that has been asked and answered many times here on the site, but when I come at ideas from self-realization or self-awareness, the idea has a very different...shape than when it comes from outside. I can't match them up as being one and the same idea.

I happen to believe that most people with Asperger's/autism do think of others....but in a somewhat different way than what is considered "normal."

It would be quite erroneous to say that people with autism do not feel empathy.

In my case it is literally a lack of time spent thinking about other people. It is not what naturally comes to my mind. I do not wish people ill or anything, nor do I think they are not worthy of attention or that I am better than them or anything else. They just don't fill my thoughts very often. This seems in contrast to what a lot of other people I know do; I feel abnormal in this.

Do you mean thinking like "I wonder what so and so is up to right now?" Or do you mean thinking as in your're talking with someone and you don't think about what they might be thinking or feeling?

I think of others a lot. I am sometimes too passive, too nice, too tactful, because I think of their feelings more than my own.

A few weeks ago at work we were going to be short-staffed in the following week, and I expressed how anxious I was about being under too much pressure, and the supervisor knew that so on the start of the short-staffed week she put me down to do less stressful work, but as soon as I worked out for myself that me being put on easy tasks will mean that my colleagues would be given twice as much work, I ran to my supervisor and pleaded her to give me more tasks so that we will all have the same amount of work. I was just being thoughtful because my instinct immediately told me that it's not fair on everybody else to be under pressure just so that I can have it easy.

That's a good way to be, Joe.

Ultimately, you will win out.

It took me a long time, along with much trial and error, to even begin to know, or care, what a person is feeling while I am talking to that person.

I used to not give two craps, frankly. Until I've lived life, and experienced things on my own.