Too much empathy?

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Is it common for people on the spectrum to experience too much empathy? Or on the other hand, having it look like we have none?

Ever since I've been little, I can't be around someone crying without automatically starting crying myself. Doesn't really matter who they are, or what's wrong, it just happens. This can be quite annoying, so I've always avoided overly emotional situations and people. Another thing is that I absorb the moods of other people so much that it can be difficult to differentiate their feelings from mine. This can especially be hard when someone close to me is having a hard time.

I don't think people view me as highly empathetic because I tend to avoid expressing it a lot, but the truth is that emotional situations make me uncomfortable because I think I experience them too personally, and I worry about starting to cry.

Too much affective empathy, emotional sensitivity and intensity. Not enough cognitive empathy, not enough social and emotional quotient to handle, distinguish, and remedy it.


It is annoying. Either I want said skills to counter that 'annoyance', or not to have said empathy and emotions so there won't be anything to frustrate at in the first place.

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I experience super emotions which are very intense. I cry a lot and if I am upset it feels like it comes from deep inside me, the very core of my being. Just because we come over are blunt, that we don't get sometimes that the things we have done and said might offend someone does not mean that we don't care about other people.

Interesting stuff, didn't know there were several "types" of empathy

As others have stated, I also feel conflicted. When confronted with a problem, the best thing my mind does is try & come up with possible paths to solutions -- math word problems are my favorite. Social problems isn't something I know how to work through. It makes me feel bad when confronted with a social problem, because I don't usually know in that moment how to go about solving such things.

One of my phobias is to be talking to someone & they start talking about personal problems they are having with someone else. Have had panic attacks when trying to solve social problems for myself & others. Have to avoid getting in those situations. It just makes me very emotionally unstable. I prefer to feel neutral & productive -- not emotional. Don't even like feeling happy over a certain level of joy. If each emotion were on a scale of 1 to 5, I prefer to feel the positive emotions at a 2.5 & only for a short time. Neutral is the best. Negative emotions last longer for me, & feel more intense -- it affects my productivity harshly.

When I was trying to save a couple baby birds, I couldn't even take a shower or eat very much. All my focus was put into helping to save them. It is very difficult for me to take care of more than 1 thing at a time. My hair was very hard to brush because it became matted up from neglect. I wish I could take care of the whole world, but taking care of myself is the best I can do. Splitting my focus between me & another living being isn't a talent I have & it makes me feel guilt & shame when I can't do it.

Other people's negative emotions make me anxious. Also certain tones of voice and pitches make me anxious too. Shouting makes me really anxious.

My high empathy makes my job hard, as a housekeeper in a care home. When I get anxious of some of the patient's actions, my supervisor says I "don't understand dementia". I DO understand dementia, but some of their actions still makes me anxious, probably because of my anxiety disorder. I understand how loud noises upset some of the patients, which is why I hate it when I am asked to use a loud carpet-cleaning machine in a room with a patient with dementia in the same room. Some yell "stop that awful noise!" and I can feel their anxiety, which makes me feel uncomfortable about using a loud machine. In reality I'm just a person doing my job, but to some people with dementia I'm a mean person intruding their space and making a loud noise on purpose. So just because I worry about them yelling at me, it doesn't mean I don't understand. It means I understand too much.

And I don't think my (NT) supervisor understands anxiety.