Autism: Intense World Syndrome

Post Reply New Topic

Interesting article, good thread.

I was just curious: has anyone read the comments after the article in the blog? Somebody suggested that the autistic person who said- (I paraphrase)- "When the teacher yelled at other students, I felt like they were yelling at me"- that this was an example of extreme narcissism, rather than empathy. In other words, that the person was feeling distressed by the yelling, and was thus assuming that the student being yelled at was feeling the same way, whereas the student being yelled at might be feeling something completely different- (for instance, maybe feeling exhilarated for getting a "rise" out of the teacher). How do people feel about this comment? I´ve been having my own little debate, in my mind, as to what the definition is to "empathy", as opposed to "theory of mind", and what differentiates the two. Just curious for some opinions.....

Interesting. I feel really bad when someone else is getting yelled at. I never connected it with being empathetic.

I feel the same way, I never thought of it as narcissism but overly identifying with the other person.

Yes, this was pretty much what I was trying to say.

My hypersensitivity often causes my hyposensitivity, and visa-versa. It's like having a car with a stuck accelerator; I'm always either at 0 mph or 60 mph, but never "normal." Mostly, I spend my life in an apathetic state of "shutdown" and oblivion due to a brain that refuses to process sensory information correctly. Stupid brain.



Of course.




I hate yelling. Can't stand to be around it. I'm hypersensitive to "negative emotions" and will go to great lenghths to avoid "angry" or confrontational people. If I know someone in the room is angry, even if it's not directed at me, I feel it like heat coming off of a blast furnance.

It was one reason I was always such a "good" child. I couldn't take the yelling or the spankings.

I would imagine a narcissist would be more likely to (unconsciously) think something along the lines of "That can't have anything to do with me, because I am perfect and cannot do any wrong."

made me laugh a bit..

This is what I would have thought too. As the article stated, people with autism often have trouble with ToM and perspective taking, but I would assume that "empathy" would be something a little different. Is there a line of demarcation between "theory of mind" and "empathy"? Or do they intermingle so much that you can´t have one without the other?

My impression was that all people, whether AS or NT, used their OWN mind as a gauge when trying to feel empathy. In other words, it´s easier to understand like-minded people. (As NTs share a common Theory of Mind, this is why I think they get "dibs" on empathy). But no one can really and truly know the mind of another. This is why the expression is: "put yourself in the shoes of another". You can only guess how another person feels based upon how you would feel in the same situation.

So why is it that when an NT feels for another it´s called "empathy", but when an autistic person feels compassion someone claims that it´s actually "extreme narcissism"?

That's utter crap. Sorry. It is. You're so nice, and so Aspie, to give this person's opinion equal consideration, BUT it's utter crap. I've been haggling and arguing with this kind of crap ever since I was dx'd in the 90's.

People have for decades been trying to rationalize autism as a form of narcissism, anddespite the complete disconnect between a developmental disorder like an ASD and a pychological condition like narcissism, they keep trying. And I'm sick of it. Just sick of it. This crap just infuriates me now. This person simpyl wants to make autism out to be a psychological disorder--that way they can be biased against us the way they are boased against other people with a psychological disorder. They want autism to be define by their perception of it, their opinion of it, and not by how the autistic person experinces it or the greater, comprehensive reality of autism. In other words, the person who proposed this inane idea is being a narcissist themselves and is projecting, something narcissists do all the feaking time.

I have experienced this a lot. It was torture for me as a child. And it's empathy. It is the textbook definition of empathy, for bleep's sake. Aspies tend to feel a deep sense of right and wrong, of fairness, of justice. It goes hand and hand with empathy. We're "hyper-moral" almost, and often, hyper-empathetic. Being able to sense or detect intellectually, intuitively or emotionally the injustice or unfairness or wrongness of something someone else is experiencing is empathy. Being able to feel as that person feels in their position is empathy. Being able to sense or discern that person'feelign of indigination, humiliation or powerlessness is empathy.

It doesn't matter how emotional or emotionally detached you experience it--if you find yourself able to percieve on any level what is wrong with something someone else is enduring, it's empathy.

Let's take that example kid getting yelled at by a teacher--what is your first thought? Are you indifferent to idea? Or do you find yourself wanting to know why? Are you like me, thinking, what did the kid do? Is the teacher being excessively mean? Is it because he/she doesn't like the kid? I find myself thinking, Why? Why is the teacher yelling? What did the kid do? I need need more data to understand why! That's empathy. It's a very Aspie way of it, but it's empathy. No question about it.

Seriously, we need this "no empathy" meme killed and buried. It's false, it's a distortion of what we Aspies experience, Aspies themselves are being misled by it and people are using it against us to make us into bogeymen.

No, I think they are different. Theory of mind is about recognizing that someone may have a perspective other than your own... i.e. not necessarily the same thoughts (and I would include feelings) as you are.

Empathy is 'the capacity to share the sadness or happiness of another sentient being through consciousness rather than physically.'

You can have one without the other. Perhaps a deficit in the former = autism and a deficit in the later = sociopathy.



Of course. Absolutely. We have inherent biases. NTs share similar biases.

We don't not feel empathy, we just do it and display it differently. It's easy for an NT to think like an NT and know what an NT would appreciate in sympathetic and compassionate gestures. We could see a friend crying and (unconsciously) think; "Oh Susan is crying, last thing she will want is the extra sensory load of having me nearby and touching her". But that's cold and heartless to an NT. NTs can't do it for us either, not without special training.



Because people are, for the most part, ignorant.

I agree with everything you said.

As for the yelling, I get upset when someone yells at someone else, too, but it's not because I feel bad for the other person. It's because I don't like the loud sound of the yelling and the expression of so much emotion scares me. If someone near me yells because they are happy about something, I also experience that as threatening and upsetting.

So it's not empathy for me, but this is just my own experience and doesn't mean it can't be for others. It's not that I don't care about others, but for me, I often never get around to empathy because I am so overwhelmed by basic sense and cognitive experiences that I don't think about what other people are feeling.

I think this is a workable theory. I really do.

Here's something I came across a while ago--Karla McLaren, who calls herself an empath, talks about recent research that appears to disprove the "inactive mirror neuron theory" and her own impressions of the autsitic experience based on Temple Grandin's work.

http://karlamclaren.com/more-on-autism- ... oh-and-hah

I never was crazy about the inactive mirror theory myself. And like McLaren points out, Grandin's mirror neurons work just fine--she just uses them with animals rather than humans. I could say the very same thing myself. Animals don't lie, They aren't hypocrites. They don't say one thing and then do another. And if you're neurologically sensitive to that sort of thing, it is overhwelming and your brain withdraws like you would withdraw your hand from a hot stove. That was what my childhood was like. Confusion, stress, a feeling of being overhwelmed, a feeling of needing go within myself where it was quiet...except with animals and nature and other "quiet" things that didn't lie to me or confuse me, like books. Words on a page stayed the same from day to day, Words coming out of my mother's mouth was another story!! !!

I have known that my issues are about too much "going in", being overwhelmed, for a very long time. It seems those outside of the spectrum keep making decisions and observations about others, when they might just learn more by asking. Some of these assessments of how people on the spectrum operate makes me very upset. Here's one from site about home schooling. Author sounds evil to me!

"When one or both parents are compassionate people, that is their motivational gifting is compassion, the AS person who is primarily a perceiver, will always be in a position to manipulate instinctively knowing where the weakness are. The compassionate person seemingly unable or reluctant to deal with the problem lets things slide. Once the AS person establishes a precedent the pattern is set and the AS child can and does become a tyrant expecting to get his or her own way, this can produce life long bother and can be dangerous when puberty manifests. Compassionate people deal in feelings, generally want peace at any price and give in easily, all this the perceiver AS person has worked out and exploits unmercifully. The maxim is always firm but fair for if allowed to continue the person will be very difficult to live with and may not be able to obtain work, as they have not learned to fit in." AUTHOR WOULD NOT SUBMIT NAME

AS child as a tyrant, manipulator, and exploiter. How is this helpful, let alone accurate? I so feel bad for any child that is viewed that way by their own parents. Can you imagine being this child, "getting" all that negativity spewing from the person who wrote that crap above, and NOT being overwhelmed?
I get too much what is going on with people.

Regarding empathy, in another thread someone posted about 2 types of empathy (or maybe two parts of empathy), Cognitive Empathy, and Emotional Empathy.

As I understand it, cognitive empathy is having knowledge about how another person feels. Emotional empathy is experiencing what someone else is feeling.

I would say that cognitive empathy is a subset of theory of mind. That is, theory of mind includes cognitive empathy, but it's not the same, because it also includes stuff that doesn't have to do with emotions.

One can have a weakness in one kind of empathy, and not the other. Those on the autistic spectrum tend to be not as good with cognitive empathy. Of course, that's at least as much because of being different (less people who think like us) than any innate weakness. Still, it's there. But it doesn't mean a weakness in emotional empathy.

This is just sick! How do people come up with this stuff?



Yeah, no wonder. The fact that this person would not use their name to stand behind their beliefs is telling indeed.

The world has always been overstimulating to me, even when I was young. Even as young as four months, I had to wear sunglasses outside since my eyes were too sensitive to the light. I was hyperaware to music, and I couldn't listen to certain types because I would cry so hard. I'm hyperaware to other people, but the people in my class never saw it because I was considered naive, when I could actually see the good in certain people (for instance, there was this boy who was always teased because he didn't concentrate well, yet he could draw like an artist of cartoons), and I could actually sense when certain people aren't what they seemed. I have a pretty intense memory, which tortures me to no end from my times in fifth grade.

Oh, and about this:

I don't find this quite accurate. I was perceptive, sure, but I never saught to manipulate anyone. I practically despise anything involving manipulating a person to my bidding, and I think this perception is kind of wrong that we are nothing but manipulative villains.

I've actually seen a website that says that a lot of Aspies were innocent and guileless. (That would be me in fifth grade---I never wanted to put a guard on or a block on my personality, because I liked myself to be clear to everyone.)
Then again, the website said that Aspies follow rules to the extreme and didn't get when people were trying to hurt them, so I'm not sure what to think.


Either I'm a perceptive person with a good memory, yet a manipulative villain who wants their way all the time, or a kind, guileless confidant with no understanding of people's motives and the belief that all people were perfect people...I'm always an extreme!

Given this distinction, I have a lot of emotional empathy but very little cognitive empathy. This is a clear way of understanding it, thank you.