The empathy lie

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I think it is because the current narrative about "empathy" does not distinguish between the socialized language and gestures, with it's interpretations and conditioned expectations of performances around tone, body language and behaviorisms -- from the more universal inner human affect in which where feelings and intent, inherent sense of right and wrong, and what drives compassion and cruelty resides.

Really do think people cannot distinguish between "empathy" meant "caring about something" from "empathy" meant "social literacy".


I'm not going to say "there are two types of empathy" that autistics sucks at cognitive empathy and that affective empathy might be intact. That's getting old now.
Also won't be saying about it's not the autism, it's the alexithymia that determines said "low empathy scores". For the same reason; it's getting old. Stupid, ignorantly old.

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Thank you for the interesting article, firemonkey.

From the article, my emphasis:

It's quite possible some empaths feed on others' misery. Like people who keep innocents locked up for decades in their basement, totally dependent on them. They crave the psychic energy given off by those captives.

I always thought empathy is whether YOU feel what the other person is feeling.
But where is the line between understanding someone's situation and feeling it?
And how much feeling it is "sufficient" to meet the "minimum standard" for empathy?
The problem is, we don't set the standards. Other people do. And the example of being there in a conversation with patients, which I do in other different areas, seems to meet my standards but gets met with "why do you have to be so logical?" That's how we do it. We repeat facts back rather than "That must be so hard for you" or my favorite "severely NT" late wife's response to MY mother breaking her arm "That must be so sad, not being able to hold your granddaughter." I could never match that.

I believe empathy is subjective and shouldn't really be used to describe a whole person (whether lacking or not), unless the person is a psychopathic murderer or something.

My husband is NT, and his friend's mother died about two or three weeks ago, and my husband still hasn't got in touch with him for emotional support. I keep telling him to at least text him, as he (the friend) might think he's not a good friend or doesn't care or something. But my husband said it'll feel too awkward to text or phone him and that he doesn't know what to say to him. He says it's mentally draining to have to offer condolences to people whenever they lose a loved one - even though he was supportive of me when I lost my grandmother and my mother.

He isn't the first NT to admit to not always knowing what to say to a grieving friend. Often NTs are reluctant to phone or message a grieving friend because they're not always sure of what is appropriate to say or do for them. My husband said that the same words of condolences "get boring". I guess I know what he means, but you've still got to show that you care, as a friend, because his friend obviously has feelings and he might be really struggling with the loss of his mother for all we know. My husband said this friend didn't really have a sensitive side to him but I said that doesn't mean a thing, and that it's best to assume that everyone you meet is sensitive to an extent and that we all need emotional support and we all can feel vulnerable at times.

Whenever someone I don't know very well dies (like a person online or something), it feels like people are (not intentionally) competitively trying to see who can say the most heartfelt words or something. But because I didn't really know that person, I might just feel sad for them and their family and I just put as little words of condolences as possible, like "so sorry to hear this, RIP", or something like that - just short and sweet, rather than throw out a huge poetic essay. I'm not very poetic, if at all.

But none of these points means I or my husband lack empathy as character traits. Some situations you might have more empathy than in other situations. It's the same for everyone (except for evil murderers, etc). I'm not the sort to keep bragging about how much empathy I have. I used to mention that I had "a lot of empathy" because I was scared of the word and being accused of not having it, but now I've learnt that saying repeatedly "I have loads and loads of empathy" can come across as virtue-signaling or bragging or something and can just get annoying. It's even grown-up to just hold your hands up and admit that you don't have much empathy for a certain situation because you've never had the same experience, or, deep down maybe you don't really care in a certain situation.

I think that's really well said, Tamaya.

^ That was excellent.