Anyone not an empath?

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In other words, you can fake empathy but not necessarily sympathy. I can do that- maybe I'm "empathetic" after all! But to league girls point this discussion is getting off the (not) empath topic and on to the done-to-death empathy topic.

no I mean your assertion that ND's view all NT's as empaths. It's a blanket generalization and one I've not seen on this site anyway

I don't think that was ever one of the defining differences between Aspergers and other kinds of autism.

Back in the 1990's and early 2000's, up until around ten years ago, it was commonly believed by professionals that autistic people (of whichever DSM IV diagnostic label) "lack empathy," period, end of story. It was eventually recognized that there was something wrong with that picture. (For an example of how one professional discovered this, see Empaths on the Autism Spectrum by Karla McLaren.) It then became fashionable, for a while, to jump to the opposite conclusion, that autistic people are hyper-empaths. (See A Radical New Autism Theory, The Daily Beast, originally published May 2009.) Eventually it was recognized that autistic people can vary from the norm in lots of different ways regarding empathy.

Empathy itself is a complex thing. See, for example:

- Cognitive vs. Emotional Empathy
- Three Kinds of Empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, Compassionate
- The Six Essential Aspects of Empathy.

Autistic people commonly have difficulties with either or both of the following:

1) Understanding what is going on, in the first place, in a complex social situation, e.g. picking up on subtle hints
2) Regulating one's own emotional response to other people's emotions.

Difficulty with the former is what is usually meant when it is said that autistic people "lack empathy." Difficulty with the latter is what is usually meant when it is said that autistic people "have too much empathy."


I got a low score on an online EQ test (I don't remember my exact score), but I think that was probably mostly low cognitive empathy. I could be wrong, but I don't think I'm very unusual in either direction regarding emotional empathy.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 23 Sep 2019, 5:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

No but it feels that way whenever empathy gets discussed in anything autism-related, whether the people discussing it are NT, Aspie or other ND.

Think it was ones that mistook allistic's instinctive and socially conditioned emotional competence for something metahuman. By comparing overall autistics' instincts and social conditioning with it.

Many of those that claimed themselves 'empaths' are either socially cognitively gifted, thin-skinned hypersensitive, or trained to be one.
The former are your stereotypical charmer that's unlikely autistic, the other is stereotypical emotionally immature and likely unhealthy, the latter are just emotionally attentive types and are likely more mature than the others.


True empaths ARE different. They don't need exceedingly specialized brain for social and emotional reading. They don't even need to have a thin skin. They don't need extensive social conditioning or maturity to be one. Heck, they don't need to look at someone's eyes to know what one feels.
It doesn't matter if one is autistic or allistic, it didn't even matter if said empath is alexithymic or emotionally and socially literate.
From my limited observation and experiences; think emotions more of an invisible 'noise', than a visible and audible 'cue' of any form like body language and tone to 'sense' what others feel and think. That's how empaths are different from most people.

1) Understanding what is going on, in the first place, in a complex social situation, e.g. picking up on subtle hints

I understand what's going on, I just don't care aka it's not my problem (obviously there are exceptions but they must be exceptional exceptions).

Dictionaries are not a primary source. The primary sources for concepts like "empathy" are psychologists -- who, alas, have used the word "empathy" to mean lots of different things. These multiple meanings can get very confusing. So, when reading any given source, you just have to be careful to determine what that particular source means by the term "empathy."

It's not psychic or supernatural, it just is. Have you ever played with tuning forks? When you ding one and put another nearby, it picks up the tone, too. I always think of emotional empathy like tuning forks.

Sympathy and cognitive empathy are different, they require processing. Emotional empathy is a lot more like a sensory issue. And it is an issue, I have to work not to pick up other people's garbage.

My cat can hear auditory ranges that I can't possibly imagine. I can see colors the cat can't. It doesn't mean they don't exist or are supernatural, it just means one of us isn't able to pick up on the same things as the other.

To the OP, like everything with autism, I think we are all different in our extremes. NTs probably have a nice mid range of all the types of empathy and sympathy. If you have a hard time feeling what other people feel, you can still observe and react with sympathy. Making sympathetic and caring choices is what makes you a good person. Feeling what other people give off is overrated and really difficult to live with. You're not missing anything.

That's "Sympathy", as in "Sympathetic Vibration" (a physics term).

True. Sympathy is emotion-base response to another person's emotional state and/or the conditions that produced it. Empathy requires cognition -- intellectual reasoning of the other person's words and actions to determine their emotional state -- without necessarily feeling any emotion yourself.

Both require sensory awareness. There is no "extra-sensory" channel for either.

Not just psychologists, but psychics and other flim-flam artists. That is why it is essential to rely on authoritative sources like dictionaries.

I'm not at all an empath - I have trouble "reading" people, so I tend to fail to sense what they are feeling, much less feel it too, unless the emotion is very obvious. I do have sympathy once people tell me verbally how they are feeling, or if their emotion is so strong that I'm able to see it.