What exactly does empathy look like?

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I've always thought of empathy in terms of being able to personally relate to. I imagine it would be harder for an aspie to relate to an NT than an NT to another NT. Aspies may feel more empathy towards other aspies than NTs feel towards aspies. If that's really the case, then it would suggest empathy is a relative thing. Women probably feel more empathy towards other women than men, teens probably feel more empathy towards other teens than seniors, NATO soldiers probably feel more empathy towards other soldiers than the Taliban, Republicans probably feel more empathy towards Republicans than Democrats etc.

That is exactly what I think, too. If you haven't experienced a feeling, how the hell should you be able to understand this particular feeling?
situation ok, because that you can explain.

NTs cant get us right, because they dont know our feelings, plus that they cannot read it from our faces correctly, because we don't use that kind of communication that extensively, or we use that kind of communication differently.

Interesting is though, how babies or young children learn it through facial expressions,
or how they get it right to relate own feelings
that have to be similar to some others people feelings
correctly.

Is it explained to them or what? I guess nobody tells them that they should look into faces when youd want to find out what others are feeling or thinking. This happens automatically. Not for us though

How do you generally learn feelings that you dont know?
NTs would probably try to relate facial expressions to something that they perceive is right.
So, they should be actually able to get our feelings in that way too,
depending on how much we actually use some facial expressions,
and depending on how much theyd know about our feelings

These facial expressions I think though have in principle nothing to do with the ability to empathize. Its just the normal way to communicate them.
And on this we are quite bad to recognize from the beginning. With whatever follows after that
(Maybe theres a bunch of feelings we dont get right because we missed the clue in childhood to look and relate for facial expressions).

Wed probably think about something to explain feelings of others and relate it in such a way.
Such wed be also more talking about feelings than using facial expressions to show them.

NTs are not particular well trained either to talk about feelings and theyd not understand why they should do that in the first place when they have their facial expressions,

And, on the other hand, they would look for something they cannot get from us, an appropriate facial expression.
And theyd relate this to some other similar feeling. This cannot go right, because we are so different.

In a relationship or in families (where father or mother are not spectrum affected)
though I think there can be some interesting adaption in both directions, if both wanted so.

I have thought that it is this deficit of facial expression and other body language interpretation that triggers all that problems in the end. No (effective) communication.
And to what that leads.. you can only imagine. Left outside!

Related to that

http://www.sburover.it/psice/psicologia/valutazione_cognitiva/Emotivo_cognitivo.pdf
this one relates even to animals, have to still read it

Cognition and Affection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition
Stages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affection
well and under Affection the table of the needs and its related links

Seems there are some difficulties in satisfying the affection needs

Two monks were standing on a little bridge in a Zen garden, watching the Koi fish swimming below. The first monk bursts out, "Look how happy the fish are swimming there!" The second monk pauses for a second and then replies, "You don't know if the fish are happy or not!" The first monk says back... without looking up, "You don't know, if I know, if the fish are happy or not."
........
The first monk monk feels empathy for the happy fish.

People who feel empathy are busy in their heads thinking about what the people in their lives are doing and feeling right now. They are like the people in soap operas in a way, they are involved with how each other are feeling. It matters to them... they worry about it.

NT's do not have universal empathy. There are plenty of NTs who have little to no empathy. As evidenced by a-holes who go and loot the homes of people who lost most of their belongings in Hurricane Sandy. I highly doubt it's a bunch of Aspies doing it, so that leads me to believe it may very well be a bunch of NTs!

I also agree that empathizing negatively impacts analysis. However, I think it is important to remember that sometimes the "right" thing to do has less to do with a logical analysis of a situation and more to do with an intuitive understanding of the big picture and I do think that empathy helps with that. On the flip side, I think it is equally true that analysis negatively impacts empathy.

Of the Aspies I feel I know best, I do not know a single one who is without empathy. It may be expressed differently, and sometimes people are a little slow on the uptake (meaning they don't express empathy as quickly as an NT might and I think this is because they have to cognitively process the situation first, whereas an NT might glean much more of the meaning of what happened without conscious cognitive processing.) Even the ones who state they do not believe they have empathy...I believe they do, because I have seen it in their interactions with me.

It kind of reminds me about the time my dad told me he didn't love me. He didn't say it in a mean way. He actually felt horrible. I don't think that he really doesn't love me. I think, instead, that it is that he thinks that there should be some overwhelming "feeling" attached to loving me, and since he doesn't experience that, he concludes that he must not love me. My dad loves me. I am sure of it. He's just not an emotional, strong feeling, mushy kind of guy. His love is more....like a rock? Stable. Steadfast. Sturdy.

I think both of my kids are too empathic at times. My daughter has been having a hard time sleeping since returning to school after the hurricane. She was fine after the hurricane, but once she went back to school and started hearing about what happened to some of her classmates, she became very upset and is now more afraid of the storm than she was during the storm. But the thing with both of my kids is that their empathy can be very "spotty." I'm not sure how to explain what I mean, but it's almost like they don't display empathy to many situations, yet they have "too much" in others.

But then when I think about it...I guess I am also kind of this way. Oftentimes, people view me as being cold and snobbish when they first meet me. I can be too stiff and overly formal. And sometimes I feel oddly removed from situations that I think I should be feeling...more...about. Yet other times, it appears that my empathic response to others is on overdrive. I have cried on numerous occasions when thinking about the woman who's 2 small children were torn from her arms in rising flood waters. In fact, it has woken me up at night. I feel so horrible for her, even though I have no idea who she is. And I was stricken with sadness for days when Haiti was leveled by that earthquake. I couldn't stop thinking about the families. The kids. The parents. Yet sometimes when something happens that logically seems like it would cause strong feelings in me, I feel little or nothing at all. And sometimes my empathy seems very cognitively based to me, whereas other times, there is no thought involved, only feeling.

I've never seen a meaningful or coherent technical definition of empathy. It's a label that people apply to a certain range of experiences they feel in which they experience something similar to what they believe some other person is experiencing as a result of observing that person.

It's also a label commonly applied to others who appear to have a "warm" affect, and denied to those who seem "emotionally cold" in certain situations. The label is also frequently denied to those who view the behavior of others as bizarre, alien, or difficult to understand.

I don't think the label is applied in particularly legitimate or consistent ways. When I see somebody suffering, I experience a sense of unpleasantness similar to what they seem to be feeling and a desire to see their suffering alleviated. I think my mirror neurons are firing just as consistently as those of an average person. On the other hand, because of my atypical social behaviors some people have described me as being incapable of empathy.

I'm uncertain of the precise workings of empathy, especially when drunk... but if I am to derive it from the polar inverse of what I personally experience, I would imagine it is a composite of both mimicry of external emoting and a replication of personal reaction under simulated matching conditions.


I seem to be a sadist though, as I get it completely reversed. I am at my emotional high-point when everyone else around me is suffering... though this is through no voluntary decision of my own. That is just the way it is. Happy people are my kryptonite. I hate them. Vehemently and viciously.

If that's the case then I don't really feel empathy. I become detached from the things that I feel in situations soon after they're over. I have general knowledge of how I felt in situations, but I can't recall the specific details of how I felt, and I don't feel the same way in situations as I do when I try to recollect them. I can't even empathize with my own past experiences. I can sympathize with them though, and I can sympathize with other people. That, combined with my general knowledge of how I felt in a situation similar to theirs, creates an artificial sense of empathy, but it's not quite the same as visualizing their feelings from my own point of view. I can't put myself in their shoes, but I can rationalize how they might feel.

... It reassures me that empathy here is rather low.
Around people who demonstrate high levels of empathy, there is always the incessant urge to experiment.
That constant niggling need to sit them down in a chair, then procure a member of their family and ask them "how does it feel when I do this?" as you remove parts of said family-member in front of them. It is unfortunate that such things are illegal, as it makes it awfully awkward that I really REALLY want to do them.
For Science.


... Also amusement.
...... Also I'm very drunk right now and my usual safeguards against saying socially unacceptable things are... inactive.

I have what psychologists call emotional contagion. I get flooded with emotion and as a result it is difficult to ascertain where I start and the other ends. I understand this to be emotional empathy, but for the more 'refined' "natural' empathy", I understand there needs to be an emotional resonance without significant loss of self..........ok, that's the analysis.

On a more heart level, I have spent half my life coming to terms with my suffering and in so doing have moved beyond emotional contagion (mindfulness is a gift here) the analysis or intellectualization of feeling and into the feeling of feeling. I have grieved deeply my losses and tragedies.


........this transformation has enabled me to connect with the feeling world of others.

These days I dont have to connect with the specific form of suffering in others in order to activate my empathic pathways, suffering is suffering is suffering......this is my experience.

However, what remains, at times is my inability to convey on my face the emotion I feel in my heart. It's like my heart is on fire, but to convey this I have to work a system to pump it out, it's like being a puppeteer, having to pull all the right strings on my face.............hence, the woodenness not in heart, but in the theatre of the heart. Theatrics is not me.

The subtle interplay and dance of facial expression combined with the split second timing difference results in me being viewed as rather cold in non autistic circles yet in aspie circles highly skillful.

That saying very often used here by people with "mild AS" (whatever that is) "Too 'NT' for the AS world and too AS for the 'NT' world", is rather apt in this regard.

Someone has mentioned here the visual dimension. As an artist, and being right brained and very visual combined with my profound experiences of feeling my greif seem to have 'rendered' me emotionally attuned, regardless of how I express it.

I think it is the neurotypicals that lack empathy. Why do neurotypicals treat autistics like dirt?

I have to agree to some extent. I think a lot of NTs can be very inconsiderate. Especially when it comes to asking someone to turn his music down a little because it's overwhelming to you, and they're just like "pff go somewhere else if you don't like it." Obviously they do not empathize with us.

Perhaps NTs feel empathy, but don't always act in a sympathetic manner. They understand how people feel, can imagine what another person's feeling, but don't care. Not always of course. Whereas sometimes people with autism/AS may act as if they don't care, but because they were unable to empathise in the first place.

I don't think there is one overarching definition of sympathy and empathy, but here's how I see them. Sympathy is being able to understand how someone else feels in a situation and provide an appropriate and helpful response. On the other hand, empathy is actually feeling the emotion that someone else is feeling, even if you're not affected by the particular situation yourself.

Here's an example. (I apologize for the politics in the example, but I include it because I think it explains my point. I voted for Obama and was happy he won. The next day, a friend of mine told me about a small business he knew of that was closing down because Obama was elected and they didn't want to pay for more taxes or healthcare. I told my friend I was so sorry that was happening (sympathy.) However, for the rest of the afternoon, I felt sad for the employees affected by the shutdown of the business and guilty and regretful about my vote, even when the conversation about this business was over. (empathy).

Empathy makes it easier to be sympathetic because you're already feeling the emotions you need to understand how the other person is feeling. However, you don't need to be empathetic to be sympathetic. There's nothing wrong with asking, "how do you feel because of this?" That's always a supportive question to ask.

Feel free to agree/disagree. Great discussion!

Why should I feel empathy for Ebenezer Scrooge who won't provide Tiny Tim with health insurance but would rather let him die?

Ohh, I am so sick of seeing threads about EMPATHY! Empathy this, empathy that, like it's a well-known fact that NTs naturally have all this empathy built in them and Aspies don't. And there's so many different meanings of empathy that I don't know what is means any more. And don't say ''ability to put yourself in somebody's else's shoes'' because the majority of NTs do not have that, otherwise why aren't I as understood as what I should be? And by the way not all NT's intentions are connected to how they want you to feel - if I get intimidating stares from a stranger in public, the stranger isn't always necessarily thinking, ''oh I want to stare at this girl because I want her to feel intimidated because I don't give a f**k''. People just stare 'cos they don't know they're doing it half the time, it's just a natural thing people do is look at each other and make eye contact, and don't realise that it may affect some (shy) people.

We all have selective empathy, don't you get it? Everybody does. I can have empathy when I want to have. I can be selfish when I want to be, although I am aware that I am being selfish, but sometimes you've got to be a bit selfish in this day and age.