Pity

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I probably wouldn't feel anything.

I have trouble relating to this. You aren't the only one who believes they wouldn't feel anything. Is it really nothing that you'd feel? Or is it that you wouldn't be able to identify what you feel? Is it the absence of emotions? Or the hardening of emotions due to your experiences?

I sometimes wonder if I feel emotions more intensely than other people. The example of the starving child isn't a hypothetical with me. I've experienced people diving into a trash can after a half eaten hamburger I threw away. I know what I felt in that situation and it isn't a stretch to understand what I would feel in the example. Please help me understand where you're coming from.

I'm sure that SyphonFilter can answer for themself.
but...
I have emotions, I feel, strong emotions are easy, and repeated emotions are easy as well. I look at my daughter and I do feel, I know this feeling, it is the feeling I call “love for my daughter”. Hate, rage, loneliness, pain (emotional pain) all are there. I can and do feel powerful emotions.
The subtle ones are harder, some like envy. Not got a clue, I know how to spot it; I can recognise the effect in others.
Same with other more transient emotions; however to me now, ‘showing’ the right response is almost like Pavlovian Conditioning. I see a situation that I know others (whom I trust, respect or care for, would respond to in a ‘particular way’ and I can recognise the “right” response to exhibit. I have attached a response to a “response stimuli”.

I’m sure in NTs that “Pavlovian Conditioning” is learnt “at the breast” and goes “in” without thinking, mostly on/at a subconscious level. I’ve just had to learn it later on in life, when I realised that I would be expected to exhibit such feeling if I wished to join in with NT society.

Thanks for the reply.

I sometimes just feel an urgency to act without understanding the underlying emotion under it. In fact I rarely understand my emotions and confuse this urgency for other emotions. Do you sometimes get this? I actually think its more related to my BP than ASD.

Pity is usually unintentionally condescending. It's a kind of misguided compassion that lacks true understanding or empathy. It seems the definition is based more on how the feeling is negatively recieved by the one being pitied. Then there is a second definition that involves intentional contempt.

I think you can feel pity for just about anybody, whereas real compassion takes understanding which takes a long time to build. I see an act of charity as being one where a person sacrifices something for another with the intention of helping that person, where an act of pity is where a person tries to stop having to feel bad for another. As you said earlier, an act of pity can be an act of charity, but I think that pity for the most part comes in the form of trying to justify the things that hurt people, so it generally doesn't actually help anyone. My two cents anyway.

I do feel pity for people. The type of pity that says I'd give up my home just to help a person. I actually almost offered a person on the internet a place in my home, then I realised what I was doing. Their situation wasn't that serious. It was kind of but they not expecting my reaction to be that.

I never have a' glad it's not me' response.