Empathy and ASD

[Fino]

To define is to limit...

Excuses out the way .

My own feelings aren't well defined,so I guess it's hard to guess others.

Angry and okay used to be the gamut

Used to? Did something change?

I can only reliably identify excited and anxious, in myself, which seems like maybe two sides of the same thing.

 

[Illkurok]

Emotion is an incredibly hard thing for me to read, it has often made me the enemy of others, and had me on the wrong end of the stick many times.

I can usually only read it if someone is truly happy and it's just downright undeniable or if they are so sad that I can literally feel their pain. Other than that, emotions are a vast mystery.

 

[Reu]

I think the issue is that non-autistic people can decode emotions intuitively, but we aspies figure out emotions cognitively. I know that, for me, it takes a lot of thinking before I understand what another person is feeling and even myself. When I can sit down and write down some ideas then I can grasp the emotions going on and am better able to understand how the person is feeling.

I also tend to interpret negative emotions as my fault. If my wife is upset or even stressed, I automatically assume I did something wrong when 95% of the time it wasn’t my fault or even involved me.

Emotions tend to make my brain go all crazy. Because of this I’ve tended to suppress my emotions and the emotions of others. Not a good thing for my family but I’m working on it. I lean on my wife’s understanding of my kids emotions to help me and I ask her often if I did something wrong. Don’t know if I’ll ever be good with emotions but I still work on it.

 

[onlything]

^That reminds me. I was recently baffled by the waves of sadness and surprise in response to the death of an elderly man in a choir I accompany. My boss didn't really even know him and even if he did, I can't understand why someone would be surprised or sad that the thing we knew would happen did happen. Maybe I'm just a psychopath.

Nah, you're not. It's the same for me. Unless I know the person well, I won't feel sadness over their death. The reaction could be stated more as 'Oh, I see' than 'Oh no, that's terrible!'. It can be upsetting but more due to a recent deaths of my close ones that it brings to mind, not due to the death of the person themselves. Surprise? If a person dies suddenly and unexpectedly, I suppose. But even then, people die every day.

 

[Gracey]

. Maybe I'm just a psychopath.

No, not really.
I wonder if you don’t have an emotional connection to the deceased then their loss isn’t felt as keenly,
If at all.

I would also wonder how many of those in the choir who displayed the correct social reaction went home after practice and continued to feel sadness at his passing.

I recently attended a funeral,
I didn’t really know the lady that well but it was (silently) expected of me as a neighbour who lived close by.

Maintaining the charade is easier than an explanation.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

Often things seem illogical to me where I would react or feel in a different way in that situation and I just don't 'get' it.

I think it can also mean difficulty understanding why a person feels a certain thing (unless it is explained...or perhaps even after it has been explained -- like you can't understand the explanation), even if you can do the reading/identifying bit.

I used to read a lot of fiction so that I could understand people better. I suppose it did help but often I could not understand why the characters made certain choices and then had difficulty feeling sympathy for them when things turned out badly. I haven't encountered that quite so much in real life but then I limit my exposure to people and their drama. I have noticed that in decades of reading fiction, I did get better at recognising ways I could understand people's choices and feelings. Mostly my inabilities probably cost me marks in essays since I have an Eng Lit degree. LOL

 

[GrownupGirl]

^Nearly all human beings are psychopaths by nature. Most of them are just good at suppressing their psychopathic tendencies.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

^Nearly all human beings are psychopaths by nature. Most of them are just good at suppressing their psychopathic tendencies.

I have no idea how to respond to that.

 

[Fino]

Nah, you're not. It's the same for me. Unless I know the person well, I won't feel sadness over their death. The reaction could be stated more as 'Oh, I see' than 'Oh no, that's terrible!'. It can be upsetting but more due to a recent deaths of my close ones that it brings to mind, not due to the death of the person themselves. Surprise? If a person dies suddenly and unexpectedly, I suppose. But even then, people die every day.

No, not really.
I wonder if you don’t have an emotional connection to the deceased then their loss isn’t felt as keenly,
If at all.

I would also wonder how many of those in the choir who displayed the correct social reaction went home after practice and continued to feel sadness at his passing.

I recently attended a funeral,
I didn’t really know the lady that well but it was (silently) expected of me as a neighbour who lived close by.

Maintaining the charade is easier than an explanation.

I feel much better! Thank you! I should have made a thread about it. I had considered it but was actually worried people would say it's odd that I didn't care. I was wrrrronnnng!

 

[Gracey]

^Nearly all human beings are psychopaths by nature. Most of them are just good at suppressing their psychopathic tendencies.

(Pre ASC discovery)
I used to read many crime thrillers, one of the reasons was to make sure I was nothing like the psychopaths in the stories.
(I often wondered)

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Nah, you're not. It's the same for me. Unless I know the person well, I won't feel sadness over their death. The reaction could be stated more as 'Oh, I see' than 'Oh no, that's terrible!'. It can be upsetting but more due to a recent deaths of my close ones that it brings to mind, not due to the death of the person themselves. Surprise? If a person dies suddenly and unexpectedly, I suppose. But even then, people die every day.

That's not empathy. It's insanity.
Why should you feel sadness for somebody dead just because you've heard of them?

It's a social thing, where you're expected to respond in a certain way.
Like you hear someone dead on the news.
Do people really care?
No, is the answer. They make a show of it.
A few seconds, job done,back to normal.

If they cared, they would start thinking about the way they life,the way their choices cause the deaths of manifold people and then change how they change their life as a result.

Just saying

Sometimes when the news is on, I will make a joke, highlighted the hypocrisy of the pretending to care for this unknown person that is dead.

The reality is I probably actually do care but I have to shut it down as it's too much to take.
These people pretending to care,in their limited way, when the sheer horror and abject terror of millions of people's lives everyday is beyond imagination.

SOMEBODY FAMOUS IS DEAD.
EMPATHY ALERT.

social group nonsense, then we get defined as not caring.

For this reason :
We don't show caring in the way that they deem socially appropriate.
We're condemned as uncaring by people who don't care but pretend better

Anyway - time for a coffee

 

[Tom]

If you mean understanding body language and nuances are different from understanding feelings yes I agree.

 

[Mia]

What is your experience? Do you distinguish between reading/recognising/identifying emotions and being able to understand them when someone tells you what they are feeling?

Used to think I was truly great at understanding other people. Like a mind reader. In my family being able to know the state of mind of some, was connected to my ability to protect myself. It appears that I only get the surface stuff, basic emotion. The behavior and look on the face. What people say and what they actually mean.

Often I've decided I know what my spouse was thinking, by his behavior and the things he's said. Turns out I was wrong a good part of the time. And so was he about me. He assumes, I assume that we know. Both of us might understand basic emotions, myself more than him. Yet neither of us, know what the other is actually feeling or thinking. I can't seem to interpret that anymore. It's far too complex.

 

[Reirei]

I can only definitively identify if someone is expressing a positive or negative emotion, but beyond that I'm just guessing, unless it's very obvious.

Of course, if someone says, "I'm mad," I'm sure we can all understand that because we know the word and what it describes. I'm guessing they mean, "Difficulty understanding others' feelings without having them explained," or something like that. So basically receiving an explanation through their body language, facial expression, tone of voice, etc.

I try to practice, but it's hard because I think it's a thing that not everyone is honest about their feelings if you ask them directly. Right? There have been times I've insisted because I was so sure, such as with a student who seems to be in a bad mood, and I ask how they're doing and they say good, and I ask if they're tired and they say no, and I ask what's wrong, and they say nothing, and I ask if they're sure, they say they are, and I tell them it seems like something is wrong, and they say there isn't.

Then it makes me confused if I'm at all capable of reading any signals at all! *goes mad*

Anyway, re-reading my post, it sounds like maybe it's exactly what they meant in their silly little sentence.

This also describes me in every relationship I care about - with my husband, sister, brother etc.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

Used to think I was truly great at understanding other people. Like a mind reader.

I used to think that about myself too. My theory is that on one level I am. I have an intellectual understanding of human emotion. I am good at coming up with all the possibilities but not good at actually interpreting what is being communicated. I seem like I understand people because I can talk about human feelings in great detail. Essentially I am a fake.

 

[GrownupGirl]

It's actually quite normal not to feel anything and move on with your day when a famous person you've either never heard of or cared about has died. The people I do feel sorry for, however, are the ones who edit Wikipedia. They have to go and change everything on that person's article to the past tense.

 

[Clueless in Canada]

Emotion is an incredibly hard thing for me to read, it has often made me the enemy of others, and had me on the wrong end of the stick many times.

I can usually only read it if someone is truly happy and it's just downright undeniable or if they are so sad that I can literally feel their pain. Other than that, emotions are a vast mystery.

With people I am very close to I just check. Sometimes I remind them that I may miss the signs but I do care and want them to tell me. Other times I will say that I sense something but don't know what it is.

 

[Sab]

I can relate to the last comments about being a mind-reader and easily understanding people's emotion. I think what I am good at is listening and validating people's experience. When I reread my end of high school book where all my friends had wrote in, they all said that '' I got them '' or that '' I get it ''. I think that I pick up on feelings really easily and am a mega empath - like I feel what others feel - but understanding on an emotional level is different. I'm really good at, as you said, intellectualizing emotions and understanding them from my brain but I don't just intuitively get what another person is going through and how they feel about it if they don't explain it to me. I have to interpret from the information I've gathered, sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm so so wrong (especially when it comes to reactions to me and things I say).

 

[some/aspies/need/hugs/13]

I always tell people when we start getting to know each other that I can't read body language or facial expressions which is only a half truth as I can typically read non voluntary biological responses like twitches, pupil dilation and other responses. But anyways back to the point I am clueless about most normal body language or facial expressions. But I have been around some people I can learn to read, but it is a long process with lots of hugs as they temporarily boost my EQ to give me a better chance of understanding there body language. however I do really understand and even empathize once I get them to talking about what is going on. Admittedly I can empathize with females better than males because they tend to hug me a good bit usually and there with unknowingly boost my EQ temporarily. Also on the feeling sad about someone dying I have understood what was going on and I struggle sometimes logically with it, just not emotionally. At the same time I feel real emotions, including remorse for my actions and not the problems they caused me, so I am not a phychopath or sociopath.

 

[Nauti]

I am definitely no sociopath, not wily enough and I detest lying, hurting people's feelings and doing anything I know is immoral.

I can certainly feel numb in the face of other's needs and suffering though, I put it down to pure survival. It's just the shut off/ shut down dissociation that has enabled me to survive this long.

In general I believe I have a highly developed sense of cognitive empathy, and I believe it is due to intensive mothering of many offspring for many years and from a young age.

I also think I am quite frightened and overwhelmed by others emotional pain, as I feel overwhelmed and out of my depth and feel a sense of responsibility to help, to ease their pain and that can be a crushing sense of responsibility.
I can be clunky in responding. I tend to intellectualize a lot and that isn't, necessarily the helpful approach. And I can under -respond, not because I don't care, just neural and social/emotional ineptness, and sometimes I'm completely at a loss of how to respond and I don't understand the situation well enough to feel confident in trying to respond. I need lots of clear communication to understand and many people aren't up for that. I find the ambiguity of lack of clear communication almost unbearable, and always uncomfortable. So I avoid most people.