Autism: Intense World Syndrome

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XFilesGeek
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05 Dec 2010, 7:28 pm

Mysty wrote:

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.

Niether of these apply to me.

I understand when someone else is in pain because I've come to realize certain situations and events are distressing to some people.

I do not "feel" someone else's pain. That's impossible. I'm not sure what "having knowledge about what someone else is feeling" means. If someone tells me they're sad, do I now have knowledge about what they are feeling? I run into trouble because I often do not have "normal" emotional reactions to things. For example, I'm an asexual/aromantic, so it took me a long time to understand why someone would be upset that their boyfriend/girlfriend dumped them. Previously, I just thought they were overacting for attention. I still don't "get it," but I know it's a painful experience for some.

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AceOfSpades
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05 Dec 2010, 8:50 pm

Morgana wrote:

backagain wrote:

"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."

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

lol I'm not surprised that people would come up with stupid theories like this. I dunno whether to feel sorry for that person's stupidity or to feel stupid since stupidity is contagious...

Morgana
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06 Dec 2010, 3:02 pm

XFilesGeek wrote:

This is exactly how it is for me too. I tend to have different feelings, and react differently to situations than the majority. In terms of emotional situations, I had to "learn" empathy, in a way: Through years of experience, I´ve come to know (intellectually) how most people feel in certain situations. I had to learn it, because I don´t necessarily feel that way myself, in the same situation. I feel empathy for them "in theory", and I think I am compassionate and even know, now, what kind of reactions they would like from me. I am generally a compassionate person, I just have trouble intuitively understanding the feelings of others, unless it´s something I´ve experienced myself, which does happen on occasion.

I do have instinctive empathy to any kind of physical pain though. I can´t stand to see any creature, human or animal, in pain. Maybe this is because I am highly sensitive to physical pain, and can therefore imagine it all too well! I really dislike violence in movies, and can´t understand why it´s so popular.

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wavefreak58
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06 Dec 2010, 3:36 pm

backagain wrote:

What a load of crap. A compassionate person does what is most effective for the person in pain. Sometimes that requires what has become known as tough love.

A wuss lets person dominate a relationship in the name of 'compassion'. This dynamic is as much about the dominated feeling inadequate as it is about the dominator taking over.

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Morgana
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06 Dec 2010, 4:30 pm

It´s hard for me to imagine anyone with AS being able to manipulate others. I thought one had to be socially savvy in order to play mind games and manipulate other people????

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Sholf
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06 Dec 2010, 9:15 pm

The worst part of this theory is the hokey name.

Everything else about it makes much more sense to me than the mercury theory or the extreme male brain theory, of which I have heard so much about. It accounts for autism leading to both sensory and social problems, at the same time that it is associated with savant abilities. It also suggests why antipsychotics can be helpful to some folks, by tranquilizing them. And it accounts for the extreme anxiety and stimming. I really wish I had heard about this 3 years ago when the paper was published.

Most interesting of all to me, however is HOW they produced their rat model...by dosing the fetal rats with VPA. VPA is commonly prescribed in the US to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, under the name Depakote. My mother has been in treatment for bipolar for many, many years, and she's been on Depakote for the longest. I know for a FACT that she was taking psych meds while she was pregnant with me, because she lost custody of me when I was a baby and it's part of the court records!

Apparently, there are several papers in the medical literature noting a risk of autism if Depakote is taken during pregnancy. I have never heard about this until yesterday. Instead, I've read piles upon piles of BS concerning mercury in vaccines! That really pisses me off. I've spent the past few years going back on forth on whether I'm on the spectrum or just screwed up by my crazy family, when in fact the stuff my mom was taking when she was pregnant with me is the same drug they use to make autistic God damn RATS!

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06 Dec 2010, 9:30 pm

Sholf wrote:

Wow. You may be one of the few people who can say with some certainty what the cause of their ASD is. That's pretty intense stuff.

Maje
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10 Dec 2010, 4:32 am

Quote:

From the article: "The fact that autistic children tend to develop the first part of empathy—which is called “theory of mind”—later than other kids was established in a classic experiment. Children are asked to watch two puppets, Sally and Anne. Sally takes a marble and places it in a basket, then leaves the stage. While she’s gone, Anne takes the marble out and puts it in a box. The children are then asked: Where will Sally look first for her marble when she returns?

Normal four year olds know that Sally didn’t see Anne move the marble, so they get it right.
By 10 or 11, mentally ret*d children with a verbal IQ equivalent to three-year-olds also guess correctly. But 80 percent of 10-11 year-old autistic children guess that Sally will look in the box, because they know that that’s where the marble is and they don’t realize that other people don’t share all of their knowledge"

I absolutely disagree with this test. I would maybe have gotten it wrong because I would take into consideration that this is a test, so the adults who were testing me, were maybe underestimating me and I would think the test is maybe too easy.

I was taking advantage of being underestimated already as a 3 year old, and from then; any question made me try to calculate what "the adults" wanted as a correct answer, because my parents and the environments didnt share the same awareness as me.

With other words: I always brought into consideration what people wanted of me when there was a question. Any test could go wrong because of exactly this.

On the other hand, I had problems accepting that other people were not that aware of me as I was of them, but the issue other people don't share my knowledge must be tested in another way.

pensieve
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10 Dec 2010, 4:41 am

I don't understand peoples emotions nor do I feel them. What I feel is a type of energy from them when they are angry, upset or happy which I call 'negative energy' because it always makes me feel, I guess, heated. Sometimes the heat becomes so much I can't bare it and I snap or run away from them.
Lately I haven't been feeling that. I haven't been caring about peoples emotions. I just feel annoyed that they get over emotional so much.

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AbleBaker
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10 Dec 2010, 7:54 am

Aimless wrote:

buryuntime wrote:

Morgana wrote:

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.

I was just thinking this the other day. I have learned to intellectually recognise other peoples emotions - or at least I think I have - but I don't believe I empathise or even sympathise very often. But if I have gone through a similar experience myself I might identify with it. Is that narcissism? Or are all these just different words for the same thing?

On the original topic: The IWS theory does seem to apply to me in some ways. As I stated in my first post here, I originally ruled out autism for myself because of the stereotype of being oblivious to one's surroundings but I feel I am more aware.

On the question of manipulating people: As a child I was once accused of having my mother wrapped around my finger when the truth was I didn't even know the reason for my own behaviour much less control someone else. I don't have much interest in what other people are doing anyway. I retrospect it's amazing to me that my teachers never picked up on it. They just said I was "shy" and would grow out of it.

Kon
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10 Dec 2010, 3:08 pm

AbleBaker wrote:

Aimless wrote:

but I don't believe I empathise or even sympathise very often. But if I have gone through a similar experience myself I might identify with it. Is that narcissism? Or are all these just different words for the same thing?

Sometimes I think a lot of people (even NTs) don't really have that much empathy. They're just much better at fooling us.

leozelig
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10 Dec 2010, 4:55 pm

PangeLingua wrote:

Mysty wrote:

Hyper sensitivity can cause hypo sensitivity. That is, being highly sensitive, in some area or overall, can in some cases cause a person do disconnect within, so that they don't experience whatever it is they are over-sensitive to. Or experience it in a muted form. It's a type of dissociation.

So, thanks to dissociation (something we often aren't aware we are doing) experiencing oneself as under-sensitive in some area, or overall, does not mean that there isn't a hyper-sensitivity behind that.

And, yeah, it could still also be that autism is more than one thing and this is only true for some of us.

I suggest, though, be open to the possibility that there's more than what's going on at the surface.

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.

This is exactly what happens to me, when people are really happy and it feels exaggerated and it's annoying. I understand that they're happy but it makes me nervous and I don't feel the same way. If someone's yelling, I don't think empathy can even register as I am too afraid of the loud sounds to even react.
Is that a lack of empathy because I'm not reacting or experiencing the same sensations of the other person and responding or reciprocating with their same enthusiasm?
Are there people who can literally feel another person's feelings? I always felt alone in my feelings because when I explain them to other people, they don't seem interested or affected by it. Maybe it's my perception. I thought everyone was like that.

leozelig
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10 Dec 2010, 5:10 pm

Mercurial wrote:

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!! !!

that's exactly how I'm feeling but it gets worse as I get older. More and more I need to pull away and focus on the trying to understand people especially. I often ask myself "Am I the only one that notices how much everything is always changing?" It's so chaotic and confusing. I try to be cautious when interacting with other people because it's overwhelming. I thought this was just me. I had no idea other people felt like that and I thought autism was something completely different. I don't relate to the way the symptoms are described in that list for diagnosis of a disorder in DSM-V or whatever it's called. I'm amazed by this forum.

Last edited by leozelig on 10 Dec 2010, 5:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

friedmacguffins
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10 Dec 2010, 5:17 pm

Alot of everyday (?) stuff seems too bright, load, and busy. The authors wrote, in three simple words, what I have struggled to communicate.

AriNecromare1213
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10 Dec 2010, 6:56 pm

pensieve wrote:

I can relate to this as well. One of my friends has an anger problem and that's exactly how I feel when he gets pissed off for some reason. I never snap or run away though, I guess I can bare it :/ Idk.

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AbleBaker
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13 Dec 2010, 12:07 am

Kon wrote:

AbleBaker wrote:

Aimless wrote:

Sometimes I think a lot of people (even NTs) don't really have that much empathy. They're just much better at fooling us.

I've often wondered whether everyone else really feels the way they say they do if they're just acting.

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