This is what I think Empathy is...

Post Reply New Topic

Empathy is feeling part of a group. This is the Balinese Kecak chant from the film Baraka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kecak

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxuPxdsZ58[/youtube]

empathy is undertanding how others feel, or i guess... putting yourself in their shoes and feeling how they feel.

its impossible i think

I was an abused child, while my siblings were very loved and cherished. Nowadays, my parents are old and totally alone and disabled, and my siblings have abandoned them. I should abandon them even more, given that they ruined my life. However, the pain I feel in my body and soul knowing them alone and sick and helpless, is more intolerable than being there for them. This is, in my opinion, empathy... I believe all humans have empathy, only some are more in touch with it than others. But when you're in touch with it, you feel it even if you don't want to.

what's that video have to do with empathy? how they move together?

Hans Asperger noted many years ago that some people he knew with Asperger's were thrown out of the Army because they could not march with other soldiers. They were always individuals, they could not march with other people.

I have the same issue, when I'm walking "with" other people I always walk in front or behind people, but never with people. An NT friend who met me with several other Aspies, said she was quite surprised to see how we never walked as a group but as individuals. My definition of empathy is feeling part of a group, where your "I" feeling is replaced by a feeling of shared experience, us or we feeling. Perhaps this feeling is evoked by mirror neurons, it is a kind of empathy.

I felt a "we" feeling fleetingly once in my life, on the 6th October 1998 (a life changing experience). I had mapped with a friend for nearly 6 weeks, we spent all day nearly every day walking around the hills of Wicklow mapping the geology. Then for about 10 minutes as we sat on a park bench, I was not an individual anymore. I felt like it was us. It took me along time to figure out what I had felt.

Since I am a individual, and rarely if ever feel part of a group, I would be terribly uncomfortable if I tried to be part of that Balinese Kecak chant - I might do a good job leading them but I could not be a part of that or any group.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a lone traveler and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..." - Einstein

yeah i never walk astride ppl; always run em into a wall or off into the streets......... i like to have em slightly ahead of me so my peripherals can guide me

cant walk a straight line either (unless the line is visible)

When I was young, I did play football (soccer) with other kids, but in an unusual way. There would be a bunch of them round the ball and I would be ~20 meters away on my own, waiting for the ball to be kicked towards me.

other kids
other kids->ball<--------Me
other kids

One time I was in a local soccer league game, and I stopped to look at daisies. My parents still laugh at it.

heh, no wonder i suck at team sports, im always somewhere else.

I too eather walk to fast or slow for the group im following, resulting in me being to far ahead or 2 far behind, eather im in a rush to get somewhere or behind them non-responsive...

heh, no wonder i suck at team sports, im always somewhere else.

I too eather walk to fast or slow for the group im following, resulting in me being to far ahead or 2 far behind, eather im in a rush to get somewhere or behind them non-responsive...

heh, no wonder i suck at team sports, im always somewhere else.

I too eather walk to fast or slow for the group im following, resulting in me being to far ahead or 2 far behind, eather im in a rush to get somewhere or behind them non-responsive...

I think it worse then that.

You are not only in the wrong place, you appear to be in 3 places at once!

I think you are right. The not seeing myself as part of a group plays into my problems with social interaction. I don't really picture myself from a third person perspective very often. In fact it's very uncomfortable for me to do so most of the time. I would rather not know how others perceive my presence. Seeing myself as part of a group puts pressure on me to "perform" my part. I don't like to perform. It's easier for me to be myself, feel natural, when I'm not conscious of my presence as part of a group.

Something my psychologist wrote, not directed at me.. it was a unusual statement, and stood on its own, but i'd like to know more.

To paraphrase, he said there were two types of empathy affective empathy and emotive. (if i recall). The former, it seems, is how you act, regardless of how you feel. The later, of course, is how you feel.

In thinking about it, it draws an interesting parallel with religion. You can have the most awful, selfish, cold thoughts towards others, but if you treat them decently, can you be called evil? On the other hand, there are those with light and fluffy thoughts. But if their actions are a negative experience to those around them, can they be called good?

I disagree. Empathy is a delusion, although possibly a useful one. Though I stress that empathy is highly selective where it is applied, and it is selft serving even if you could say it is 'kind'. I think ASD do have empathy, it is just different.

I would like to see the real evidence that we are not empathetic, and what they mean by that. Problem is some people take it to mean we are not sympatric or some how prone to psychopathy.

I always considered it being able to accurately surmise the feelings of another person and take those into yourself. Pointless? Yes.