Autism and Lack of Empathy

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When I was growing up, Aspergers did not yet exist in public discussion. I saw myself as a "loner" and I understood that others at school were much better at socializing. It was only when I stumbled on a brief description that I realized that this was me. One of the principle aspects of ASD is being very good at "systematic" and no good at "empathetic." After college, I found a job with US Customs Service. My job was to apply the laws of customs duty and admissibility to imported products. It was essentially a very specific interpretation of the Customs laws and I was the judge. After a decade of this, I left Customs and went to work advising the import-export community - a big mistake. This article makes it clear:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrowe ... ad28103dc5
If empathy is not your strong point - more specifically, really not your strong point - work that requires inter-relational skills will likely not go well. I had a lawyer friend who was an Aspey too. Legal work is highly specific and analytic but then there is the client and the judge you need to work with and engage. He found a job in law that was completely research-associated. Everyone here starting a career or looking for a job should understand that systematic work with less interaction with the public will be better for you.

agreed, for me research as a career (legal research, something like writing instructions and practices for the general public, editing, or word processing would have been good matches as long as I was not working directly with the public) would have been good choices.

I did have several office and service type jobs and was miserable at all of them. I am delighted to research information and put it into print now in several forums I belong to or admin and to write a blog. Of course computers did not exist when I was growing up, but I created several newsletters and a couple of catalogs using my trusty old typewriter, and enjoyed that very much. I had no guidance about how to use those skills to find a great job and ended up doing menial labor and happy to be working alone.


My diagnosis came at age 68 long after I retired, now all my miserable job history makes sense, and my neurological tests show me what I might have been able to accomplish if I had only known about my autism and been able to understand my strengths and weaknesses as I do at age 70. Perhaps that is impossible in youth, with or without autism? We are all an unknown quantity of some sort in our teens. Thanks for this thought filled post.

What's this got to do with the "lack of empathy" BS stereotype?

Well, is it a stereotype? I though impaired empathy was a trait.

If it wasn't for the fact I DO feel emotions, I'd be this guy.


But I do feel things. That's why life can be hard. Life would be breeze if we were all Patrick Batemans. And felt nothing, for nobody. Not even ourselves. Psycho's don't even fear their own death or disfigurement. That's how little they care.

I know I have empathy, just not all the time, it's not pouring out of me. It's more of an inability to easily connect to to other people, it doesn't come easily, to identify with others, certainly strangers i don't know, and who might even be hostile, in that case, too much empathy is a disadvantage.

People in general have less empathy for people different than them. For example, i don't think a person Who is not a parent can empathize with someone who has lost her Child. Because you cannot understand some feelings and experiences in life if you didn't experience them yourself.
That empathy talk goes both ways. Most of the people around me can't empathize with my issues either because they didn't experience life as i did. But they don't get called out for it since they are the majority.

My experience is that I am perfectly capable of empathising with someone if I can detect their emotions. It's the detection that's the problem. Unless it's something really blatant (like crying or like screaming with rage), facial expression and tone of voice just don't convey anything to me. I have to rely on a) what they actually say and b) what I can work out by thinking about the situation. This is slower, harder work, and less reliable than the NT approach to empathy.

This.
I feel sorry for autistics who think they lack empathy but are just unaware that the same empathy they experience is the same as what NTs experience.
NTs don't empathise with strangers. They only judge what they see on the outside and don't even begin to consider what could be going on on the inside. Pointing and staring is how they deal with a stranger who is expressing some sort of emotion. When their friends, family, etc, express emotion they don't point and stare and laugh. Only if a stranger is not acting like an emotionless robot. Because NTs only believe people develop feelings and a mind once they get to know each other.

That's just what you think. You're probably more empathetic than you think you are but just get bogged down on the false belief that we're supposed to lack this. After all, everyone has their own definition of empathy so I suppose that all depends on how you define it.

Stereotype yes, but Frank says that applies to him and that is what matters.

A person who has an ability to feel empathy, perhaps even excessively, but it is accessed only through a narrow filter of focused attention, may appear to others as lacking empathy in that it is not so easily or often accessed.

I think it sometimes has to do with how one expresses empathy.
During my assessment, the assessor told me about when her summer house got broken into once. I replied with a story of when my car was broken into.
To me, that was a way of telling her that I understood the trauma and how hard it can be to have that kind of thing happen to you. To her I wasn't showing any empathy with her experience and just wanted to complain about my experience.

/Mats

But if you had of expressed the empathy that you felt, wouldn't it then be sympathy? People are always getting empathy and sympathy mixed up, but basically they mean the same thing when it comes to expressing one or the other. "Oh, dear, I'm sorry to hear that, that's awful" is sympathy, isn't it?

Yes I've had that. People can take it in different ways - either they think you're illustrating how you can relate to their woes by sharing a similar experience, or they think you're belittling their woes by trumping them with a tale of your own, or they think you're dragging the conversation over to be about yourself. I suppose it's helpful to add a sympathetic comment that's entirely about their tale, such as "that must be tough," or even an empathic wince, but I sometimes forget to do that, because I tend to expect the other person to realise that it's implicit in my own tale (as long as my tale isn't too far different from theirs, and even then it's very likely just a comprehension failure) - I'm not in the habit of sharing my own anecdotes to belittle other people's experiences, so if they know me, they should know that, and if they don't know me, whatever happened to the benefit of the doubt? I guess Aspies aren't the only ones without much much social intelligence and social imagination. What's odd about your experience (to me) is that the session was supposed to be about you, so if it was a test of your empathy, it wasn't very well designed, because it wasn't a normal conversation in the first place. If a health professional starts talking to me about their own problems, I don't mind as long as it's not excessive, but I'd see it as essentially unprofessional, and if I were paying for the interview I'd eventually become suspicious of the quality of what I was buying.

Anyway, just to make sure, I hereby declare I can relate to your story. But I hope and think you knew that.

I also think that the term "empathy" is rather dangerous because its technical meaning to health professionals is different to what it means to other people. I'd rather they talked about social imagination, social intelligence, ability to read other people's feelings, and compassion.

I've had it too, started prefixing the story with ...not to one up you but...that sometime works. I have empathy for animals, people with my phobias...like the sight of sticking a needle into someone's arm, but very little for family, almost none for friends, and none for strangers. I've learned the facials, but no connection thrill, and how to put myself in their place and can sympathize or have some compassion or fake it. I have to make the effort which means I can turn it on or off, what little I have.

Last edited by txfz1 on 07 Feb 2022, 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm an empath and highly compassionate. I am hyperaware of feelings. My problem is that I feel them strongly (regulation difficulties) and sometimes can't relate to the reason NTs are having them ("double empathy" problem).

For example (regulation): An NT's 2 out of 10 frustration feels like a 7 out of 10 frustration to me. I'm more upset than they are! My attempts to appropriately express this is hard. Too often I am at the extremes: overexpression (hysterical) or oversuppression (stone-faced). I think some "stone-face" ASD folks are suppressing their empathy - it's there, but it's too "dangerous" (uncomfortable and big). My ASD mom is an empath and took the "closed" (avoidant) route. My ASD daughter is a lot like her and I am teaching my daughter to regulate rather than avoid.

For example (reason): Is the NT upset b/c of the noise, the injustice, their mistake, the unkindness, the bright light, the crowds ---- of wait, those would be my reasons. They are upset b/c of some power play they made and failed at. Why would they even do that in the first place? I feel them, but I don't relate to them.

All the other ASD folks I have meet in support groups are also very empathetic. There isn't a one who isn't. Granted, support groups are self-selecting individuals (who choose to participate), but in any case it firmly dispels the myth (generalization) of lack of empathy. I find even the "stone-faced" ones are caring.

In my work I am Sales-facing and although I am "odd" I am fantastic at knowing when a customer is in need - the trick is that I have to ask why (since their reasons are often different than mine). Ask, don't assume. That's key for multi-cultural social interactions.

Yes. I would also take it a step further and say that it wouldn't necessarily even be sympathy, it could just be a platitude, something one is expected to say.

/Mats