How much empathy do NT's have anyway?

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I have problems with understanding empathy and dealing with emotions to any degree. I also feel very uncomfortable with certain emotions like crying. I hate when people cry. I wanna hit them. But maybe it's because I'm scared of it because I don't see the purpose of it either than to give pain. I hate compliments for the same reason. I feel naked when someone gives me a compliment, like they're invading my privacy. One thing for sure is NTs know how to propery display empathy. I never know how or what to do and I feel like I shouldn't have to fake it, if I don't feel it. I always thought that NTs are better than Aspies at showing/demonstrating empathy not necessarily that they feel empathy, at least the emotional variety.

When someone is hurt or sad, my extremely NT hyper empathic stem mom always knew what to say. I (a suspected aspie), on the other hand, want the person to go away because I don't know what to say, which makes me feel very awkward, and probably have something more interesting I could be doing than listening to someone cry.

I wonder as well (very much)
I was asked by my psychologist if I could sense human emotions and other pepole's mood or if I just observe the world around me. I said that I'm an observer. That makes me think, how is it to sense another person? How do you know what other people feel or think. And how does it feel to have that knowledge?

If 'normal' people can sense emotions and mood then they can tell if a person with AS is close to a breakdown and maybe prevent it. But that does not seem to be the case. Every time I have a breakdown everyone arround me is surprised.
It seems to me that no one is able to sense an autistic person.

I don't think it has to do with having the empathic ability, but rather the development of it - if you know just enough to perform on a daily base then there is not pressure for those moments which you can shun off or avoid as just a exception to daily routine (for example you being on the verge of/having a breakdown).

Not wanting to see is more the issue then not be able to see.
It's very automatic for humans (if not other animals) to ward of unpleasant situations, so don't blame the people around you too much for it.



I can only speak for myself, for me it's physical, the bodily experiences the other person experience(for example anger, sadness, joy, restlessness, etc.) I feel too. Only without the concrete guided thoughts though (for example anger because your parents don't understand you or joy because your favourite TV-show is on.


In a certain control of situations where I am in, it's like trading with fairly accurate foreknowledge


Not if you don't know what to look for
The only thing that gives it away empathicly for is the basic level of empathic experience, the bare minimum of reaction on the level of feeling compared to people who do seem to be able to empathise - but even that is present in more states of mind and other mental challenges.
Oh, the benefit I experience in contact with people who don't seem to be able to empathize in contrary to people who can is the calmer minds - all those feelings can really make it a mess up there.
To see if someone is autistic you can't fly blindly on the empathy input, it is just a sense for suspicions. It's as realiable as your five senses (it works if it isn't affect by something else, in the case of empathy it is the case a lot! - own thoughts, illness, mood, energy level, assumptions, etc.) only difference is it is not measurable as such as of yet - thus NEVER solely lean on it for a conclusion or even a assumption.

In my own experience empathy went from very crude (pleasant/unpleasant) to more refined sense (individual feelings, feelings being more of a sliding scale then a crude left/right switch, the emotion not always being the same as the experienced feeling (example: looking happy on the outside when you are actually sad on the inside), associating recieved feelings with tangible objects like colours, sounds, images, smells, tastes, former situations and objects.)

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

NTs don't empathize unless they really want to. I find myself moved by a movie or a piece of music.

I don't think they do. People in general can empathize more easily with people like themselves. What they consider empathy is just being able to empathize with those with at least vaguely similar brain systems.

Or as I've put it: "You don't understand me, so I lack empathy. I don't understand you, so I lack empathy." Autistic people are blamed for the failure both ways, which isn't fair, it's just not taking the proper perspective on what happens.

http://web.archive.org/web/200708061138 ... mpathy.htm

Quote:

I keep reading that autistic people lack empathy and are unable to take others' perspectives. I think it might be more fair to say that autistic people lack certain expressive and receptive communication skills, possibly including some basic instincts that make communication a natural process for most people, and that this, combined with any cognitive or perceptual differences, means that autistic people do not share others' perceptions. "Empathy" is a nebulous term that is often used to mean projection of one's own feelings onto others; it is therefore much easier to "empathize" with (i.e., to understand the feelings of) someone whose ways of experiencing the world are similar to one's own than to understand someone whose perceptions are very different. But if empathy means being able to understand a perspective that is different from one's own, then it is not possible to determine how much empathy is present between persons without first having an adequate understanding of each person's perspective and of how different those perspectives are from each other. (This would require an observer with perfect empathy for all parties!)

Haven`t seen much evidence of it.

Just guessing, but there's probably an "empathy scale" that crosses all types of neurodiversity, in which some people are less empathetic and some people are more. From my experience I don't think it is accurate to generalize about empathy based on neurology.

I think I have too much empathy sometimes.

It seems to me that the word empathy is too broadly applied.

If I see someone fall and scrape the skin off their knee, I feel a physical reaction to it. That is an empathetic response. But ask me to determine what another person is feeling about a particular situation and I will be hard pressed to provide an answer.

The way I like to put this is people with ASDs are often working on a very different wavelength with regards to these issues. NT people often having a hard time understanding AS perspectives and reasoning. From what I recognize this is why NT parents struggle so much with ASD kids and are completely and utterly unprepared. Their understanding of human emotional reasoning and development does not really apply, things which may work for NT are completely offbase for ASD kids.

The way I can best explain it is the fact that people with ASD cannot read and react to emotions in a way that is typical for people who are not on the spectrum. As much as ASD folks sometimes say "I am empathetic" they often are not. They struggle reading body language (if they can at all), struggle reacting to emotional situations correctly, etc. Even when they can it is often to a significantly lesser degree than a typical NT person, especially a NT women. While an AS person may pick up base emotions, how they react may lack the more subtle parts of the emotional message being conveyed. It is a matter of degree. But it is also how we respond, for example I pick up on emotional communication, but my brain does not process it correctly all the time and I get an atypical response from multiple people. I can handle one on one if I am giving time to process, but if given emotional input with a wider group I begin to really struggle.

The way I like to put it there is deficits and assets with ASD. The assets come from the fact we do think so differently and our brains are wired differently. We may be less capable of understanding and dealing with emotional communication, but we are better in understanding other forms of communication and thought processes many of these average NTs struggle with. So when confronted with non-emotional communication we may not struggle as much. The upside of course is take us out of emotional communication, we either do fine, and in some circumstance exceed NT counterparts depending on our individual abilities.

When I say empathy, I am talking about emotional communication, which entails a give and take. If you have problems responding or understanding there are issues with emotional communication or empathy. From what I have known, this is pretty common to have problems with either one or both. With this we can range from atypical to nonexistant on either end. I will be honest my problem comes from when there is too much emotional communication from to many sources in a short period. I fall into an atypical category. I can do very basic things, and even some subtle things, but there is a clear level where I struggle to communicate on the same level, where I cannot relate. Empathy is essentially how you relate to other people, how you take a persons own emotions and experiences and relate them to your own. This is what I struggle with, if it is a person outside my own personal experiences and life...I struggle to relate. I think they are wasting my time and energy. This is why many of us have a problem with socializing, because this is a way NT learn and communicate, while we learn and communicate differently. Truth be told, I have found out most NTs are pretty unempathetic, or have a very hard time understanding how most people on the spectrum work. That is why they have a hard time understanding us, we work outside their common notions of emotional communication and learning. While they may learn from others experiences, and that is why they communicate, we learn a bit differently. It is hard for them to understand our entire thought and emotional process is often different from their own.

I was just going to say that.