empathy or no empathy?

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It has happened I had an argument and got violent with a friend, I am angry and cannot control anymore and push her down, or she fell down and starts crying or asking me to help her to get up. Me still in my anger mode get ice cold inside and tell her to stop crying or being emotional or being hysterical. Inside I feel she is overacting or being silly, that it wasn't all that hard and that she can get up by herself and I can walk away.

I just can't feel the empathy to understand how hurt she felt or feels, and I cannot feel for a woman just because she is a woman and therefor has to be treated differently than if she were a man.

It is cruel, the way I behave, I think afterward, and that's why people think I am cold or arogant or a monster if I don't show feelings of sympathy or try to console her or apologize.

Have you had similar situations?

Last edited by Loborojo on 26 Aug 2008, 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. Now I try and intellectualize their motives, which thankfully gives way to sympathetic emotions.

i visit my mom only once a year for christmas and new year. the last time i was there, we had an argument when she accused me of doing something inappropriate with her car when parking it. but it was completely out of logic what she was saying. i protected myself so strongly that i made her cry. and i consider myself very calm person. the whole family went out to celebrate the new year and i stayed at home sleeping in front of tv. i didnt want to be in crowded bar with anyone. the next day she told me that she is not angry anymore and asked me if i dont want to apologize. i told her no. i hurt her, even the other members of my family thought so, but even today i am still not able to see why i should apologize. no emphaty there. i felt really bad about it, though. these kinds of situations are very frustrating. fortunatelly they tend to forget relatively easy.

Many times when I'm in a situation where I do not believe that I've done anything wrong I will appologise... not for what I've done, but for the pain that the result caused. I'll say something like "I'm sorry you're hurt", "I didn't mean to hurt you", or "I'm sorry you see it that way" something along those lines. I really don't want to hurt people, but if I don't believe I've done anything wrong, I see no reason that I should appologise for that action.

I'm the first one to admit I have problems with empathy. I can be quite cold when it comes to other people's emotions. However, when you actually start laying your hands on other people; that's just being abusive.

I don't have as many problems with empathy like I use to mostly because I just discovered that people have emotions. I know I can be a little blind to how people feel, and maybe not fully understand how they feel.

I don't feel proud afterwards when it happened. I pushed her away not with the intention to pusher down or make her fall, I just wanted her to stop nagging at me

Oh. ok. It just sounded different when I read it. I feel bad when I cause people to feel hurt and upset, so if it my fault...I guess I find empathy easier.

I still feel pretty low and she is ok, she is working out a list for me of how to do things in the future days...a task list basically, so that I get out of my depression and get organised for the day

Sounds like my Dad. But I also have serious issues with showing no empathy. It was worse when I was a kid. If another kid was crying I was basically like "stop it I want to play and you're interfering" type attitude. I found crying and shows of emotion to be annoying and tiresome. I think I've gotten alot better with age, but I think it's because I've been forced to live in an NT world and observing what everyone else does and how they viewed me for not being more caring... but then also because I learned that if you are hurt and people ignore you than that just adds insult to injury and makes you feel even worse. Then in turn if people feel that way towards you they will be less likely to be there if you want something from them. From a slightly more practical standpoint it's just better to try to put yourself in that position except that it's very hard. I feel like I'm faking it alot of the time, and it's not because I actually truly care, depending on the situation and who it is.

Ironically I cried a lot as a child and was easily hurt, oversensitive and called cry baby by my dad who made fun of oversensitive people (maybe he was aspie too), and yet now seeing someone else cry doesn't touch, and i can cry watching a tearjerker and the story has nothing I can identify with...so what is it with me??

The thing is, that most people when they say that kind of apology, are actually saying it as a subtle 'dig' against the other person. So "I'm sorry you feel that way" tends to be interpreted as "there's something wrong with you for feeling that way".

Apologies don't have to be about intentionally doing something to hurt someone. Most people say they're sorry when they bump into someone, whether or not they intended to, and whether or not they intended any damage by it. Just as an example.

There was a whole thing on salon.com about how to say you're sorry, years back, maybe someone has a link because it goes over all this.

what is it with us? i was and am exactly the same way...


i think that the whole concept of appologizing is wrong. when you mean something then stand behind it, don't appologize, and when you don't mean it then don't do it.