Asperger's with STRONG empathy?

Post Reply New Topic

People with Aspergers tend to have higher than average affective empathy, I can bring up a link to an article or study on it or something g if you want.

i do not understand what is happening in other peoples heads.

i can only see the outward veneer of people, and i become confused if i try to calculate why they feel like they do.

an example was on christmas eve when there was "carols by candle light" on the TV. i was playing a game, and the sound was turned down on the TV, but out of the corner of my eye, i saw smiling faces that seemed to be exaggeratedly happy.

i became interested, and i paused the game and i un-muted the TV, and i saw tens of thousands of people cheering and encouraging the various people on the stage.

i watched as the performers did their act, and all the performers were smiling so hard that it looked fake to me.

some performers cried as they belted out their songs, and i wondered if they would cry similarly if they sang that song at home in august.

every person who performed was very physically attractive, and they seemed so committed to being seen as smiling happy and talented and acceptable people, and they did everything right to elicit roars of approval from the audience.

the camera on the audience showed fathers with smiling children perched on their shoulders (among other things) , and the whole crowd including the children (which seemed to be the most important thing to the camera operators) were rapt and approving.

i wondered what would happen if a homeless ugly drunk gatecrashed the stage and played his harmonica in a simple and non celebratory way.

i know he would have been arrested and jailed for the night, and people would have been affronted at the blight on the show.

people seem so tightly tuned into an expectation of sanitized healthy and happy expression, and they are murderously hostile to anything that is less clean and sanitized, and i felt scared that i am a member of their species.

before anyone says to me that i must be ugly to have such an attitude, i will say i am not ugly, and i can not stand people treating me better than ugly people if i have nothing better otherwise to say than ugly and untalented people have to say.

i can not understand the bias toward physical beauty and white perfect teeth singing sterile songs at functions like that, and i see the children are all indoctrinated by their parents attitudes.

i felt like an alien watching the 15,000 or so people who were in the "spirit of it all", and i just have no idea how they can be caught up in such positive prejudice.

the ad breaks during the show were advertising pimple cream and excercize equipment (for sexy abs)
and wrinkle cream etc.


whatever.
i have no empathy much for how people feel.


and i know that people dislike me for it.

I am too empathetic, and it causes me problems. I try not to look at anybody in the street because I am frightened it might look like I'm staring, and I don't want the stranger to feel uncomfortable, so I tend to glance quickly then look away, and that ain't as easy as you think, because then you might look shifty, and I don't want to unnerve people either.

Also, I tend to be so nice that I freak people out. When a young girl first came to volunteer where I volunteer, and she is very shy and quiet, and I know strongly what it's like to be new somewhere and you're shy and quiet, so I tried to make her feel comfortable by being nice to her. But the problem is, I was too nice. I spoke really softly to her as though she was some kind of ill patient in hospital, and every time another worker walked into the room I looked away because I was afraid of the new girl thinking that I might be laughing at her by giving my friends eye contact (because I've seen people do that before - they kind of look at eachother and hint a smirk).

This girl probably thinks I've been brought up in Buckingham Palace or something, being so soft and gentle and afraid to be stubborn or cocky in any way. Maybe I should put on more of a lofty expression, rather than creeping round people feeling too scared to ruin other people's self-esteem. I've got to remember that not everybody has low self-esteem so I should just stop being too nice and just be natural.

Same here. I don't think I'd be a great counselor though because I'm too analytical. I can know exactly what someone feels, how they're thinking, etc... and still not know what to say or do to make them feel better. I can intuit things but not feel very useful. I get lost in my own thoughts and feeling and ramble on. There's only so far you can go using your analytical mind and telling people what you think is the truth.

Also, when I hear of injustice I tend to feel rage, almost murderous anger. Sometimes I think people should be angry, yet I see them blaming themselves. I can't deal with that well. That kind of stuff can push me clear over the edge. If I can't clear these feeling out they can fester a long time and lead to explosive meltdowns where I break doors or put holes in the wall. It's pretty sick that I'm so sensitive that I completely lose it and freak out to the point where people get scared and threaten to call the police on me.

It's a difficult question to answer when the doesn't seem to be any common agreement about what empathy actually is. You all seem to be talking about different things.

For what it is worth though: I find strong displays of emotion in others to be incredibly infectious. Upset people I find disturbing and make me fearful and I just want to get out of there as fast as possible.