I don't feel emotions towards people.

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Certainly many of you are familiar with the unease of having people try to make eye contact and facial expressions directed at you and being unwilling/unable to look at them, or 'powering through' the anxiety but having nothing but a blank stare to show. For the longest time I assumed the problem was I don't know how to make facial expressions, or not enough attention span to make nonverbal cues sync with formulating thoughts and saying words.

But with increased self-awareness recently, and being mindful of what is happening, it seems I have normal capacity to feel emotions, but they are only self-referential, and ordinarily I don't feel anything when I look at or talk to other people. What I am still trying to understand though is now the neurotypical becomes emotionally involved every time they talk to or look at another person. From my experience the process of real-time affective empathy is super invasive, like letting other people control your brain, or see into your soul.

This is not just uncomfortable, but I simply cannot bring myself to do it. My lack of affective empathy is often mistaken as arrogance or condescention, but it's not a choice, I just don't feel emotions towards other people. I used to want to become normal, to be able to automatically display inconspicuous, congruent body language and facial expressions throughout everyday life. But the more I realize it's not just a matter of nonverbal cues, but a direct exchange of visceral emotions that makes you vulnerable to feeling what other people are feeling without any filter, I feel that this is not something I want to develop.

I would rather just deal with the awkwardness of appearing detached, cold and robotic than surrender control over my emotional states, Affective empathy is so intimate, so personal and under the skin... it's like sniffing someone's butt, especially since the only time I actually enjoy sharing smiles with another person is when it happens with a woman I find attractive. Once in a while there is just the right moment when I notice a girl looking at me, and my face is relaxed enough to allow my mirror neurons to reciprocate the gesture, that feels wonderful. Feeling the mirror neurons trying to get me to smile back at a random unattractive passer-by, street beggar, retail employee or guy staring at me aggressively, it feels like 'emotional rape' when I'm caught off guard, start to instinctively form a smile then my face falls flat and a visceral discomfort takes over.

Just writing that out now it sounds like I'm being conceited in that I have the capacity for affective empathy, but am unable to engage in that except with females I find physically pleasing. However it could just be that resonating eye contact and facial expressions with another person exchanging emotions is a very sexual experience for me, which is why that's the only scenario when my body will let me do it. Hence the mutual smile = butt sniffing analogy also.

For clarification:

Cognitive empathy means inferring how other people are feeling, understanding their emotions.

Affective empathy means directly experiencing other people's feelings as your own.

I think just learning these definitions has improved my self-awareness by leaps and bounds.

It's nearly as me but much less totally. Did you read this?
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=368901#p8033193

I believe many of us do have a high capacity for empathy in the intellectual sense, as in we do feel the pain of others when we really grasp the whole situation of something tragic or unjust that they're experiencing and try to imagine ourselves in a similar situation. But that takes time and/or direct observation on our part.

But cognitive empathy, feeling an emotional connection on the spot, is often down-right numbed in our senses. We just can't do it and can't fathom how others do it instinctively (or at least appear to do so instinctively).

Having low affective empathy seems unusual for autistics. It sounds closer to psychopathy. I made quite the opposite experiences with other autistics and myself.

As far as I know there are quite different problems called ASD or autism. Some people are simply afraid of other people, some are unable to read any kind of body language, other feel to much deep (affective) empathy and emotions and can't control it, some feel deep empathy but can't read facial expression, some have problems to express or recognise emotions within the language and some people have nearly no emotions and for this they feel nearly no empathy too.
You'll find all kind of this people within the forum. You shouldn't expect all others here to be the same way different to NTs that you are.

Everybody seems to be in so much pain and all of their emotions are a release of that pain, be it laughing, crying, excitement, talking a lot...... I find it overwhelming and like the OP I'd only want to absorb or share that energy with somebody I'm attracted to, otherwise it does feel invasive.

I can't relate to that personally. I have a lot of strong emotions I just don't know how to express them, I mean I cry at movies and tv shows all the time and I care a lot about other people. I hate feeling vunerable though so that I can relate to, I don't open up to many people and even in a relationship I do not like to tell my partner even how happy they make me because it feels too personal which is quite silly when you think about it lol but I like to think I show them with my actions how I feel instead, it's definietely something i've decided to work on though because I know a lot of people wants to hear it. I also do not smile at people I see outside or make eye contact, not even if someone smiles at me because it feels too personal but of course it makes me happy and I think it's nice and that everyone should smile more.

That's for sure. I wish I could turn it off, it's the reason I miss half of what's going on around me, I'm just a swirl of other people's emotions.

This debate over which way autistics are is on every empathy thread here. Maybe what unifies us in not which side of cognitive or affective we're on, but the fact that we have a hard time switching back and forth? NTs seem to be able to combine the two at a socially appropriate level.

I agree 100% with this! I came to this conclusion regarding my social awkwardness/"not being there" in social sutiations. I feel there is this very obvious emotional current everywhere where there are people, and it is so strong sometimes I lose sight of my own emotions/intentions/interests as I am completely carried away by this current. (Or maybe "absorbed" is a better expression.) I talked about this with an autistic (female) friend and she said the same. Anger and negative emotions are paricularly hard to deal with, I feel my brain comes to a halt and everything else stops existing apart from the anger in the room. Sometimes I literally can't see my surroundings and hear the words spoken to me when I am like this. I hate it.