no sense of empathy?

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I have heard said that many aspies have very little sense of empathy when it comes to others and their emotions. I dont necessarily think this is true. In my personal experiences, i dont feel any real sympathetic emotion when someone around me has told me of some disasterous thing they have experienced. Its like i just go numb, but that doesnt mean i dont care. I just dont usually feel an emotional connection to them. I still know that suffering is unpleasant and that if i can help, i should. If someone around me injures themselves, i am not sure what is the appropriate reaction is, other than taking first aid steps. what about this empathy issue.. is it that we dont care, or that the logical part of the mind is taking steps to fix the problem with little emotional involvement?

I got none; I can aid people physically, but I have no emotional connection to people, nor do I supply false words of care to people because I don't...care.

I can sympathize as I've experienced something similar to what they reveal to me (it brings back memories from my experiences).

My take on this is that people on the spectrum can empathise - we just find it very difficult due to not being able to read non-verbal communication and due to theory of mind difficulties.

Also, the way in which we empathise, and the things which do and don't upset us are different from that in NTs - but our ways are still valid.

There seems to be an idea that NTs are great at empathising - but I'm not sure I subscribe to this. NTs may be good at empathising with other NTs - but they don't seem to be good at empathising with people on the spectrum, or people with mental health distress etc.

What worries me is that NTs seem to have 'selective' empathy. For example, an NT who is white and racist can empathise if a white person gets hurt, but can somehow choose not to empathise or care of a non-white person gets hurt. NTs who are prejudiced against the disabled may empathise if someone they know is bullied - but not with a disabled person who is bullied because they don't care and think that this is what the disabled deserve.

I have AS and I have no ability whatsoever to CHOOSE whether or not to empathise. I emphathise with people, with animals, with objects....I might find it difficult and I might misinterpret things, but I can't just switch off my empathy.

Yet NTs do seem to be able to switch off empathy whenever they like - and I find this quite frightening.

Girl7000, I feel the same way - for people supposedly so good at "empathy", how come NT's never seem to know or care how aspies feel inside?

As for my having empathy, often with me it is not so much that I don't feel it - I just have no idea how to express it.

Therefore, I generally come across as not even being aware of what other people's personal issues are.

Often I genuinely am unaware - people don't always tell me this kind of stuff - but even when I overhear other people talking about it, I find it easiest to just pretend I am not listening.

Thus people probably think I am "cold" and do not care about others, whereas in reality it is because I am too afraid of saying the wrong thing & triggering a load of emotion I wouldn't be able to deal with.

In my case it's hard to express the empathy, even though I feel empathy for people I care about. I often find it more easy to empatize with animals than humans.

I can empathize with others if I have experienced what they have that is troubling them, but not necessarily figure out a way to express it which makes people think that I just "don't care" about them. I try to by saying things like "oh ok then"..."thats too bad" etc, but can't really think of words to "personalise my empathy".
If I have not had the same experience that is troubling someone then I can't empathize with them because I haven't had that experience so there for I don't know how it feels.

I find empathizing with others very difficult. When a friend tells me something bad happened to them I know I should feel something, but instead I just feel neutral and analyze it rationally (or try to, at least). I also have no idea what to say if I want to comfort them. My mind is blank, so I usually do nothing at all.
It's very seldom that I actually feel something and when I do it's mostly because it's something that happened to me, too.

I agree with the (edited out) comments you have made. And as for the quoted text, I definitely empathise with that!

If I am genuinely upset about something and my AS son sees me crying he gets angry. When I asked him once why he couldn't just show a bit of sympathy he looked at me like I was mad. He said when he sees me upset it doesn't make him feel sorry for me, it just irritates him..

If I could change just one thing about my son's condition this would probably be it as it really concerns me how he will develop a relationship with someone if he can't/won't feel someone else's pain.

I think it has a lot to do with boundaries and feeling that if you take on someone else's *stuff* you'll get flooded and overwhelmed so you just turn yourself off from receiving their energy and/or giving it to them.

Make sense?

Alot of sense but isn't that an unhealthy mindset to have? I'm NT and love my son more than anything in the world. I'm trying soooooo hard to understand why he thinks (or doesn't think) in the ways that he does (or doesn't)!

The other thing I've noticed, is although he can't/wont express sympathy or empathy HE expects it from others - i.e "Mum I've had such a long day at work today and they got me mopping the floor and I only had 20 min lunch break, don't you feel sorry for me?" Loads of times I've been told that I should "feel sorry for him".

What's that all about?!

I can only guess from my own experiences, but this could be a possible thoery:

When people are upset, I do feel for them - perhaps because I have clinical depression, so I know what it is like to be at the depths of despair.

But for me, the main thing is practical advice. If I am upset about something, I don't really want hugs or sympathy - I want practical solutions, and this is what makes me feel better.

What I find difficult with my NT boyfriend is that he has depression too but for him being pro-active just makes things worse. He is the kind of person who is reassured by hugs and kind words and by escaping from tasks he has to complete. So I do feel bad for him when he is upset, but my instinct is to look for pratical solutions (as this works for me) but for him this just makes it worse - and I find this frustrating as I just can't understand it.

But we have talked about it and he has said that for him, me 'bombarding' him with pro-active suggestions gives him 'overload' - kind of like my sensory overload. Once he explained it like that, I understood as I had found a way to relate it to my experience.

So the irritation your son experiences could be because he doesn't understand. Perhaps if you explained why you are upset and what things would and wouldn't help, he might have a better idea of how you are feeling. Also, if you can relate it to things that he has experienced, this might help him to understand too. It might also be worth explaining that NTs don't always behave in the 100% logical way that some aspies would like them to!

Or his irritation could be frustration at himself for not knowing what to do or not knowing how to express the relavant and appropriate feelings towards you when you are upset.

As for him expecting empathy from others, well I guess that's nothing unusual, although I can see that it is a difficult thing to ask bearing in mind his empathy difficulties.

A surprisingly good psychiatrist I saw recently said that people on the spectrum like to have acknowledgement of what they have done - e.g. if they have had a hard day or if they have been bullied etc. Also, something Tony Attwood has said (I forget where) is that it is important to people on the spectrum to understand why they have been made to have a hard day or been bullied etc.

I certainly find that this relates to my own experiences. I had years of counselling for abuse and bullying which didn't help at all. Why? Because they'd make me talk about it and that was all. No feedback or acknowledgement or explanation - even when I asked directly for them to explain why I'd been bullied.
Once I was able to get an explanation and also just some acknowledgement of my negative experiences, this really helped.

OK - it's relatively simple. His reservoirs are depleted - that's as best as I can explain it - and he is requiring them to be filled up right now and that's what you need to be doing. Looking at it as if you're simply pouring water (love, compassion, empathy) into his empty places and spaces inside of him. Who knows how long you will have to do this? It's unforeknowable. But it has to be done on a conscious level in order for him to ~someday~ be ABLE and dare I say willing - to reciprocate.

The tricky part is for you not to get depleted in the interim. So you have to walk a fine line and beef up your reservoirs in caring and loving him unconditionally.

Pets help, btw.

Girl7000 ~ JJstar

You make a lot of sense, it's interesting to hear from your perspectives as J doesn't seem to be able to express what he's feeling quite as well (maybe because he doesn't know what he's feeling!).

I have to say though that I disagree with shopaholics statement "how come NT's never seem to know or care about how aspies feel inside". That is a gross generalisation - this is one NT that very much cares about how MY aspie feels inside. When it comes to KNOWING what he feels inside though - well that's a different matter.

What I am constantly being told by the experts is to remember that I think very differently than people with AS. So I suppose being NT I could reverse the question and ask why don't AS's seem to know or care how I feel inside?

Same answer ~ because you/I think differently. That doesn't mean though as NT that we don't care or want to learn.

P.s - apologies to the author of this thread - I didn't mean to hi-jack it!

The only experts that can ever be are the ones who actually lived through an event, illness, experience and came out through the other side. All the rest are text-book memorizers. So, glad to help you. That said, I just wanted to add something which I think is the crux of the matter and whch for some reason I omitted in my reply to you and that is - because it's a giving/receiving issue - and to do both actually is painful for him/us to do - you really need to understand how to maneuver between giving and stepping back and allowing for space and then giving a little more in different ways. Sometimes you may want to give him empathy with a hug, sometimes that's too much and just a thumbs up is enough. From what I know at this ripe old age - it's consistency - even if it's spread out - that counts.

Take care of you too. Replenish. For me it's give a little and rest a lot. Seems to work

Hi Lola1,

I was not referring to every single NT on this planet, or to a situation between mother & son, when I said that.

In clarification, I was referring to the situation where aspies tend to get bullied at school and misunderstood in the workplace by tribes of NT's.

If NT's truly had empathy with us, they would all "just know" that we were not ignoring them on purpose but simply didn't know how to join in with their play etc, and would approach us and invite us to join them.

They would understand how it felt to be "always on the outside" instead of ridiculing and shunning us.

And aspies aren't "meant" to have empathy, so it is OK for us not to understand NT's, but NT's are supposed to have it, and therefore should be able to understand aspies as well as NT's.

In other words, I am trying to make the point that the so-called empathy that aspies are meant to lack is "empathy" as defined by NT's for NT's. Also in saying all of this, I was simply agreeing with an earlier poster in this thread who had already made the same point.