Lack of empathy

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This is one more problem and serious, at least as I experience it. When you had your diagnosis late in life, you realize that you have always lacked real empathy. When somebody was sick, wounded or dying you felt displeasure but not real grief. You reacted in conventional ways, expressing some feelings which really didn’t were your real feelings. This happens all the time with condolences, and third parties don’t make any attempt to verify the real weight of your words or reactions. Often they also fake their grief. But now that you have decided that you can’t feign feelings anymore, that you are adult (in my case old, though only in terms of years lived), it’s hard to confess that you are indifferent to what happens to your purported friends. In a sense it’s worse to have to shake off the mask of compassion, than the loss of acquaintances in itself. And hard to say it. And hard to verify your lifelong coldness.

<shrug>. speak for yourself.

I definitely don't get as emotional as many people, but I've gone into clinical depression from the death of a loved one.

bit rude eh?

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I feel a lot of sympathy, but I can't feel true empathy unless I've been in the same situation myself.

I concur with this statement. Unless I've experienced the situation I can't empathise properly with people. Although apparently I'm good at faking it.

Bit presumptuous, eh?
The OP is framed in second person, which assumes that everyone reading it feels exactly the same way that he does.

I've updated the d.o.b. on my profile for you.

Haven't you seen one of Paolo's posts before? He's been posting in this forum a long time. He has a particular writing style. He's not a native english speaker.

I have - or, at least, I recognize the av.
I don't think that using second person, however, is attributable to ESL in this case; it's not a mistake anyone would make but the rankest beginner, and he appears to be quite fluent. Moreso even than some native speakers!
It may be merely a stylistic device, but if so it is one which should be used with more caution.

Especially, perhaps, on a board for people who take things literally more often than not...
(raising hand).

The "you" is a rhetorical device that some time is used in diaries or intimate journals, when you want to convey that, in some sense, you are talking to yourself. So it was meant by me, perhaps inappropriately.

Seems a very pedantic statement...we are all entitled to use our particular writing styles. I'm just happy that so many people with AS are able to communicate with each other in this way, i.e. via a message board. It's wonderful! It is not a place for formal English is it? I hope we are not all to have our grammar and syntax scrutinised so closely. (I will fight to the death to retain my ellipsis...lol)

Empathy...I feel it. But as others have said, not until I've experienced the same situation myself.

Last edited by Starr on 17 Aug 2008, 3:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

The idea that aspies lack empathy is another one of those assumptions of the "experts" that I've got serious doubts about.

But I'm absolutely certain that empathy is rare in the general population. So, paulo, you've been around humans for awhile. Have you seen a lot of empathy in other people? I don't mean expressions of empathy, I mean people who manifest empathy in their actions, people who are actually considerate of others.

I took an introductory philosophy course years ago. The professor mentioned solipsism. "There's not much to say about this," he said, "Not much gets published about it, for obvious reasons. But one thing; there's very few people who seriously believe this, but a lot of people live as if they did."

Besides, I was in a fit of gloom when I wrote those lines.

This morning the newspapers vendors reopened. I had a friendly nice long chat with my newspapers provider, she is from the extreme South. She spent the holiday in her South and we talked about olive oil (the best where she lives) and tomatoes. Then I had a long walk with the little dog on the hills. And she also was happy I think.

Last edited by paolo on 18 Aug 2008, 9:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can relate to the OP.

Until my mid-20s I'd never known the loss of any close family members, or anyone. But I was devastated when I found out my grandparents had died. I cried, I was really upset.

But as for friends or colleagues or acquaintances, if they are bereaved, I know convention dictates that I'm supposed to say: I'm sorry for your loss. And so I do, if I remember. But in reality, secretly there's a little voice in my mind that saying why am I supposed to be sorry? I didn't know your 99-year-old great aunt ethelm why am I supposed to be sorry?

I'm getting better at stuff though, but only through trial and error and learning where I go wrong.

I was doing some work experience on a radio programme a few years ago. A famous local cabaret artist had died and the programme editor asked me to telephone another famous comedian, who was known to be a close friend of the guy who'd died, to ask him to do an interview. I picked up the phone and was going through my usual spiel about my name is Lulu and I'm calling from programme ABC and we're doing a piece in this afternoon's show about subject XYZ... [i.e. his friend who'd just died]... when the programme editor took the phone off me and started saying "I'm sorry for your loss..." Oops! I wasn't thinking about the emotional context, didn't have any empathy whatsoever. I was just thinking of it in terms of a regular interview request.

If I'm in a similar situation in future, I'll know what's expected. But if a different situation crops up I might get caught out.

I meant that only someone who was very early in their ESL studies would confuse the words 'you' and 'I,' and that Paolo was clearly writing well above that stage. I meant, in other words, that the second person was attributable to style rather than ESL - which Paolo has confirmed.

I'm quite willing to accept that I took the use of second person more literally than it was intended. Goodness knows that it's not the first time I've failed to get the joke because of that.

I think that I'm capable of feeling empathy, but I have to work at it. I have to really try to imagine myself in the same situation that the other person is in - and I can turn my empathy 'off' quite easily. Situations rarely sneaks up on me in real life where my ability to function is impaired because of sympathy for someone else's problems.

Oddly enough, though, I cry fairly easily over books and movies.

I have limited empathy, basically confined to nonhuman life, and people I care about.

I both have empathy for animals and for characters in movies and in the fiction. So the wirings for empathy are there but sonehow blocked by some enchantment. In the fiction there is abundance of love stories for people "not available" because near kin, or nuns, or immature (Salinger: "Nine stories"). And when I was a kid I poured torrents of larms about Rawlings' yearling. The matter should perhaps be further explored.