Another thread on empathy and ToM

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I know there have been a lot of threads like this recently but I guess I couldn't resist making another one. I guess I just want opinions

Some people believe that people with AS or autism "lack" empathy and therefore do not care about the feelings of others. The truth is that this is completely wrong.

In The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, Tony Attwood writes,

"It is important to recognize that the person with Asperger's syndrome has immature of impaired ToM abilities or empathy, not an absence of empathy. To imply an absence of empathy would be a terrible insult to people with Asperger's syndrome, with the implication that the person does not recognize or care about the feelings of others. The person does care, very deeply, but may not be able to recognize the more subtle signals of emotional states or "read" complex mental states."

I just though that was a good quote and needed sharing.

I understand what is meant by impaired theory of mind in AS/autistic people, for instance many children with AS or autism don't pass the Sally-Anne test, and have trouble with reading a person and therefore knowing what that person is thinking or would be thinking in a situation. I guess the "impaired empathy" thing comes from not always being able to read a person to get an insight into what they're feeling, or maybe not being able to express it in the same way as an NT person.

The truth is that people with AS/autism don't lack empathy in any way. We care deeply about things. When I realise someone is upset, I do care. Some people on the spectrum feel extreme empathy and even feel empathy for fictional characters or inanimate objects (I have cried so many times reading some books because when you're reading, you can put yourself in the shoes of others more as there isn't all this complication).

I guess I just wanted to say this and ask for your opinions. If people on the autistic spectrum were in the majority, NTs would be considered to have impaired empathy.

What's your opinion on empathy and ToM? How would you consider your skills in empathy/ToM to be?

My ToM skills are pretty lacking. I'm only starting to learn NT ToM to figure out what people are thinking and feeling during different situations and what they expect me to say or do in response. The main reason that I want to learn NT ToM is to have a better clue of how other people are constantly interpreting/misinterpreting me, so I can communicate more clearly with greater numbers of people. But even with a little understanding of NT ToM, I still refuse to engage in behaviors that I consider to be overly phony or feel totally wrong to me.

Here's an example of how my mind has clashed with other minds in the past:

At the beginning of grad school, all the students in the department were having difficulty remembering each other's names and mixing up different people. So I suggested that we all "refer to people however we think of them". This suggestion didn't go over too well, and I couldn't figure out why for the longest time afterwards. One day, I suddenly realized that "how I think of people" was totally different from how everyone else thought of each other. I think of a physical description of a person, so I was thinking something like "tall skinny guy with long hair who wears black all the time". What I should have said to make myself clear was that we all "refer to people by their physical descriptions". Of course, now I realize that probably wouldn't have gone over too well either.

I told this story to my therapist, and she immediately came up with something ToM-ish that I hadn't thought of before. She said that her first reaction was not really wanting or being somewhat scared to find out how everyone else thought of her. I was shocked for a minute. The idea of other people thinking of me in a certain way or thinking of me at all hadn't crossed my mind until then.

So my ToM is pretty bad. But I do feel empathy for other people when I know what they are thinking and feeling. I feel bad for and with people in bad situations. Sometimes, I don't express empathy in the expected manners. When someone complains to me about something unrelated to me, my first instinct is to offer a practical solution, but I've only recently learned that most people don't want that. They only want to have their difficulties heard by someone as a way to release their personal anguish. But they don't know that they've simply transferred the anguish to me, because once I know that someone else has a problem, I will empathize with them and try to help them out of it. And that might actually offend them if I tell them about my solutions to their problems. But don't they know that I have to solve the problem, whoever's problem, if they tell me about it? Don't they know that it makes me uncomfortable to leave problems unsolved and things in limbo? Ack! It's not one side lacking a fundamental empathy that defines humans vs. robots or whatever we're supposed to be. It's both sides not being fluent in each other's ToM and not being good at empathizing with or expressing empathy to each other.

Yeh this is kind of spooky when it hits you. Someone thinking of you thinking of them , that's like getting into quantum physics kind of levels of understanding of basic human relationships when you first grasp this .

But do NT's really do this, all the time? Do we actually attribute the same meaning they give to it, how would we know if we did because is mostly unconscious until someone like us asks what are you doing, exactly?

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I lack ToM quite a bit, and as a result, I lack empathy. I have no idea how to put myself in another person's shoes. This does not mean I completely lack sympathy. I can sometimes have sympathy for someone when I know what they are going through is bad, but I still cannot have empathy and understand things from their point of view.(ie. I know a death of a parent is bad without having to know what is going on inside their minds....I know a warzone is terrible without knowing precisely how the people involved feel).

Theory of mind on the spot. I can later decipher the codes on my own and then end up feeling horrible for not responding at that moment in the correct emotional format which may have eased the other person's situation. I am however better with text and online because usually people end up spitting it out and being blunt.

My empathy is strange however where I feel people's emotions at times as if it's my own and that can cause me to behave in an odd manner that others don't get.

I do understand what you mean by this. I suppose it depends on the way you look at the term empathy. It can be really hard to put oneself exactly in another's shoes, but that doesn't mean you don't care- in fact most still care and would do something to make it better if they knew there was the option.

I'm not sure if anybody can really understand exactly how another person feels. Our minds are kind of seperate from someone else's. To really put yourself in another's shoes would mean having to be inside their mind, having to know everything that's going on in their life and the things on their mind, whether they talk about them or not.

That's what I thought for a while, anyway, but a family member told me that most NTs can actually pick up a lot more of this stuff than not by reading other people's faces and body language and immediately be able to put themselves in anothers shoes a lot more accurately.

So I guess that for us it takes more thinking about it and using our intelligence to figure things out than for NT's, who it comes to naturally?

Anyway, it's a lot simpler on internet forums!

I'm also not so good with Theory of Mind on the spot. When you're calm and alone it's easier to work things out and work out how you should have responded but it's a lot harder when you can't really concentrate on it, there is a lot going on and you have to take it all in to come up with the correct response.

So, if somebody is crying and you're not quite sure what you would want another person to do to help, is that ToM? I guess I never know quite what to do in that kind of situation, and I end up seeming uncaring while everyone else is gathering around and helping. The most I can do is awkwardly ask "What's wrong?"

But I do care about other people's emotions/feelings and I agree that it's easier by text.

I've also had times where I've felt other people's emotions to some extent- or at least what I thought their emotions were.

I agree a lot with this. My ToM isn't terrible as I've managed to learn over time but it's probably not the best either. My first reaction when somebody is crying is to ask "What's wrong?" and then to offer tissues. I can't really "put myself in their shoes" on the spot to decide what they'd like me to do to help.

I've gone through times when I've been so unsure of what a friend was thinking that I started to get kind of paranoid about it. You can imagine how much I got on her nerves. "Do you hate me?" "Do your family hate me?" `"Are you annoyed with me?" "Did I upset you?" "I'm sorry!" "What are you thinking? I just want to know what you're thinking because I can't stand this anymore!"

I was scared that she'd not want to be around me anymore and I knew I'd be totally lost if she didn't.

All of the above are things I actually said out loud to my friend, probably at least several times. Sometimes I'll be alone and end up overthinking what other people are thinking and come up with things which aren't really true. I mistake a friendly smile for a malicious smile or the other way around.

Referring to people by physical descriptions would definitely make learning names easier, but I suppose that a lot of people could be offended by it. People don't like to be called "obese" or other things like that, and I guess you could see why even if it's true!

This is strange. You thinking of someone thinking of you...Maybe it's because it's the first thing in the morning but it's taking me a while to get my head around that exactly!

For a while I never thought of that, and then, when I did, I started to assume people thought the same things about me as I thought about me.

Turns out it's quite different. But to know what someone truly thinks of you you'd have to think of how judgemental they are, and every single thing they know about you, and what kind of person they are, and how they might think of you.

To sum it up, I have no idea what people think of me!

My ToM isn't all that impaired, as it can easily be understood with logic (usually). The problem is that I don't actively make an effort to try to understand what other people are feeling; it usually doesn't even cross my mind.

I do this all the time. ALL the time. How do I affect people if I do things in a certain way/look as if I would be in a certain moment/AM in a certain moment/think about certain things in a "positive" or "negative" manner etc., because people think of me? The affection is constantly in every form (for every sense) present. How am I so differently and undescribable affected by people and the surroundings? By which means are many people influenced apparently in the same way? How do people react to the surroundings as a group and as an individual and why? I would say I think more about this than a normal person. I make guesses about how people think on the basis of their appearance/reactions/behavior. Its unavoidable because it kind of happens automatically, and sometimes I have a problem with their way of thinking and so I have to turn my head because I cant look at the person without being uncomfortable. Thats mostly people that are stuck in some for me unbearable imagination of reality. So I lack empathy for these people because I feel sorry for them/are afraid of them/am influenced by them in a way I dont like/cant stop thinking negative thoughts and have negative feelings when I think about them. Other people can catch me staring at them because its more interesting than watching a movie or reading a book to make guesses about them.



Im more aware of the manipulation than most people and I know this because I dont let myself be affected by stuff other people dont notice that they are affected by, and Im not affected if I dont agree, as a (bad) example: if somebody speaks with a “sympathic” and “convincing” voice (etc.) and tells his/her opinion about something, most people just follow. Thats when I choose if I agree or not, filtering out the many redundant sources of influence. And sometimes I agree and the person can have the impression that he/she has something to do with my decision. I can also be affected by people because there is an indefinable limit to being aware of my nature, but I can also choose to let myself be affected if I see that its going to be positive. Im not saying that Im always aware of everything, I can also be distracted, also be affected and react impulsively in some moments, and I also can shut the world completely out and go ego. What makes a difference is how aware of own opinions/ how much of an own plan I have and how much of my personality which is formed by impressions of other people and the surroundings. Actually I cant escape from being a copy of the world, but I expand my opinions to find something new instead of the old standard way of seeing things. We are all formed by the surroundings, and how much a person manages to create as a new inspiration I measure as interesting. Therefore many people dont interest me at all from very early and I dont notice that I ignore them, which maybe means that I also dont give these people empathy.

I think its all about knowing that we are separate beings, because all people to some extent believe they understand someone elses thoughts, and the more you take for granted the wronger the perception. Thats why Im constantly ready for a person to turn out to be different than what Ive seen so far, and so Im seldom impressed by revealments when it is expected of me, and I often dont judge people the way they want or even trust anybody.

I am the most insecure person I know about when it comes to people. I have only my own view, but if I think about how Im affected to have that view I can become insecure about even that. My plan has as long as I can remember been to find out my own way of seeing things. I cant always decide like everybody else on the basis of whatever, but I have kind of a positive attitude and I enjoy the moments I think more aware of reality than whats normal. Facing the hard reality makes it fun to see how other people think about it/miss it.

I think everybody has a limit for empathizing. I can understand everybody because Im a human, but sometimes I just don’t bother because its so far away from what I consider important.

I think I could become sure of everybody if I force myself to think of people in my own way instead of going around trying to understand them more than they actually deserve, but my interest prevents me from stop thinking about it. Back to the question: HOW am I affected by the person? And if Im not affected in an expected way, how am I affected/ what is my own view?

Things I can say for sure is that not everybody thinks the same about me, and that every single moment I affect people new, so that the impression of me can be formed in other people all the time.

Not "all the time", but it does cross the average NT's mind just about every waking hour, everyday. Thinking of what other people are thinking happens about all the time.

A person who is sure about what other people are thinking is living in a fantasy world, like most people.
A person who is unsure and thinks about it constantly has a problem, like me.

Hmmm.

I don't really think I struggle with TOM at all.

BUT I don't feel a lot of empathy.

I think this just makes an as*hole.

I do feel LOTS of sympathy, FWIW.