worried i dont have AS

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That's kind of what I thought. I assumed she meant 'I hope it's just AS and not something much worse.'

no, i'm positive that is empathy. empathy is being able to feel another's feelings. i can do this if i can relate. with close friends, there has definately been mutual crying.

my friend got his like that.

ok. i wonder how much they are in the states...private.

This is the third time I've posted this in two weeks. I should probably just stick it in my signature.

Main Entry: em·pa·thy
Pronunciation: \ˈem-pə-thē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion — more at pathos
Date: 1850

1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2 : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this

Sympathy is when you share feelings, because you've been through the same or a similar situation. Empathy is when you share feelings and yet have not been through the same or a similar situation. You stated that you understood because of "some similar happening to me", so it is sympathy. I'm not saying you can't feel empathy, because maybe you can; however, in the post you gave, it's sympathy.

Do you want to be an Aspie? Or do you want a reason or excuse for being "weird" (your word, not mine)?

We are all weird whether we are Aspie or NT.

ruveyn

There have been conversations about instinctive empathy vs. analytical empathy. I can relate to some situations when discussing them with others, but I don't always have the same 'reaction' that they do, and it takes a fair amount of information for me to create the scenario for myself as what seems to be the case for others in the conversation. There are times that I cry without knowing why, and times when I am the only one dry-eyed amongst others. Emotions aren't absent.


M.

^This.

thanks for clearing up the thing about empathy.

i want an explanation for being weird. something to work with.

Oh, so you don't want to have it? You just want the label so you can get better? Well I think people can still get better without the label. They just need to know their faults and admit it and work at it.

But sometimes people do need a label to change because before they ever knew what they had, they were clueless about themselves and their own problems. Instead they thought others were the problem, not them. They might think that is why they are so different because of people. But once they find out about AS and it fits them, I don't see why they should get diagnosed if they can work at their faults. Rather they have it or not.

Spazzergasm, it sounds to me that you want an explanation for being weird when its quite simple.. everyone is weird in their own unique way.. being weird DOES NOT make you an Aspie. And it sounds to me that you want an excuse, and I'm getting all these mixed messages from you and that confuses me. But to me, being weird is not that bad, NTs are weird, people on the spectrum are weird. So why want this label so badly? There is much more to being an Aspie than being weird, and i do not consider being an Aspie being weird.

I don't know, I'm still irked by a few of your comments.

I think I know what she is going through. I have been there myself. Everyone wants a label to their problems, human nature I'd call it. If someone kept getting rashes on their body and they came and went. Don't you think that person would want to know what is wrong? Don't you think that person would want to know why it's happening and want to know the name of it? It's the same with other medical conditions and disabilities. If someone were struggling in school more than everyone else, I think that person would want a label because then that would mean he or she isn't stupid. Same as when someone has AS, they have an explanation for their problems and it means they aren't stupid or rude. Their minds just work different.

I am sure there are people out there who have aspie traits and it impairs them but they don't have enough to be on the spectrum. I bet that is hard because how can they explain themselves to people? People just think they are rude and uncaring or insensitive or a jerk. But lot of aspies have crappy lives anyway it seems like due to people and their lack of understanding.

Then of course there are people out there who do have plenty of labels and then they hear about AS and it's suggested they might have it but they don't really care because they already have enough problems and the last thing they need is another label. The last thing they need is finding out there is something else wrong with them so they don't bother for a diagnoses or to see if they have it. I'm not interested in finding out if I have executive dysfunction or SPD or auditory processing disorder.
Then there are people out there who don't care what they have so they don't bother to find out. They just go "maybe" if someone asks. I also think some are just scared to go so they don't bother. They don't want to have it so they don't bother to find out because if they do have it, to them it's a horrible thing to have and it means they aren't normal and need to be fixed or it means they need to change. I wouldn't want to know as a kid if I had AS or not and when my mother told me I did, I didn't like it. I felt broken. It just meant I wasn't like evryone else and it was scary. It meant I wasn't "normal." But lot of the times I do feel like a normal person.

My husband decided he might have it and then he decided he doesn't because not enough traits he has he said. He said he was joking about having it. He said lot of his traits are due to his brain damage. He also won't bother with the tests or there be the 7th thing wrong with him and he also thinks what the answer would be anyway for the results so why go?

Wait just a second. you're all saying that if its an emotion we've felt before then we can feel for someone else and its sympathy not empathy. But everyone on this planet has felt almost every emotion possible at some point during the course of their life. So going by that, everyone is not really feeling empathy?

Yes this could be possible, im an example of AS with no sensory issues. Thats IF I have AS. But the fact that everything seems to go wrong in my life would point to me having it.

I also have never had narrow obsessive interests. I barely even have hobbies. It happens.

I think my mum was talked into the sensory thing by the psychiatrist when I was younger. I didnt like eating vegetables when i was a kid and after their little chat she made comments about how i probably didnt like the texture or something but i think the real reason was cos my parents just didnt try hard enough to make me eat them. I dont have a huge problem with veggies now except a handful of them but everybody hates SOMETHING! And i dont really dislike any other tastes or... pfft... 'textures'... so very unlikely its a sensory problem. I knew a guy who didnt like textures of things. So he hated onion (like me) but it also meant he hated tomato done a certain way cos of the texture. I cant relate to this.

Only thing close to a sensory issue i have is when heaps of people are talking and i can still make out words theyre saying. But recently i learned this is purely a CAPD problem. (caused by ear problems when i was younger NOT comorbidity from AS) My brain is just being overloaded trying to fill in all the missing words i missed in a conversation. And if im not actually trying to listen to a particular conversation in that mess or if speech is just a murmur in the background it doesnt bother me. In fact many people think CAPD issues are a symptom of AS. They are not.

(Sorry, not trying to derail the topic! just had to answer this cos Ive been confused by the sensory thing myself for a while)

Spazz: Lack of empathy is probably the most debilitating symptom of AS and causes most of the other problems listed under it. If you sincerely believe you feel empathy for others then you should be ok. You may have some traits of AS but not enough to be a 'disorder'. It could be something else. You may just be an emotional person which sometimes interferes with your ability to think rationally. Or something may have happened when you were younger that affected you. who knows...

Diagnosis of AS only gives you a label. There are no meds you can take and very little at all that you can actually do to cope with it. Yes, you can try to explain it to others if you like but they most likely wont understand. And yes, if you know the problem you can pretend you're normal but if you act for too long the only thing youll lose is your sense of identity.

No, it's only sympathy if it's an emotion you've felt in a situation similar to the one the other person is going through.

For instance, if your friend is getting divorced and you feel the same way she does but have never actually been divorced yourself, you're experiencing empathy. If you have gone through a divorce and feel the same way your friend does, you're experiencing sympathy.

You might have felt nervousness, sadness, and confusion from a number of other situations in life. If none of those situations were divorces or something similar (breaking up with a long term, live in partner, for instance) though, it's empathy. You have the emotions to draw on, but not the experience.

argh, i'm getting royally confused, here. sorry if i'm giving mixed signals or something.

i dont know if i have a lack of empathy for other people or not. i'd say i have more sympathy, then. i can have empathy, but its rare. when it comes it's usually intense. i can get it better with close friends.
i think i might have problems with empathy. liek the other night my friend said something they were upset about. i tried to think and get myself to understand/feel the same, i just couldnt. this happens a lot. i dont care about strangers acquaintances much. this guy in my school is getting heart surgery, everyone was all upset, i didnt see why- he's getting his problem fixed.
i'm pretty good at faking it, though.

i'm not sure! i'm always second-guessing myself. someone recommended taking the simon baron-chone empathy quotient, i got 23 on that.

see, that irks me. i like labels. it's like having a pet and not knowing what species it is. if it's some unidentified species, then fine, it's unique. but if it's a rabbit, i'd have a very strong desire to know that. just like i do about AS.
that was a lame example, did that make sense?
sory if i'm sending you mixed signals. i really dont see how i'm doing that, though.

Empathy is decoding the others, sympathy is caring about them.

That's normal, a lot of peoples care about the labels for knowing who they are and knowing why they "differents".



Being gifted certainly bring social difficulty http://giftedhaven.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=1203 , so it could be possible... Then again it do diminish the difficulty from being asperger, as you then can use your intelligence to "learning" strategy for dealing with social skills.

Agreed. I think that I would still have difficulty relating to most people were I not AS. However, like you said, being on the extreme high-end of the intellegence spectrum has allowed me to create fairly complex models of social reality. These models function as a sort of crutch that I can use to "fake it."