I'm so tired of people telling me I have no empathy...

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It seems to be everywhere in various media concerning autism, this lack of empathy. But just because I lack the innate ability to just know what other people are thinking doesn't mean I'm not trying. I keep doing everything I can in my power to compensate for this flaw, whether it involves asking other people what they need, going out of my way to make others happy, etc etc. I'm doing what I can to understand other people, and yet I'm still grouped into the "you're a soulless inhuman bastard" group. Every time I see an "Autistics lack empathy" statement, whether it's being quoted from the DSM or just someone telling me that on a personal level, it's very rude and offensive. I am not a soulless inhuman bastard, and I don't appreciate when people say that I am.

It is rather comical that someone would say you’re a soulless bastard because you lack empathy. I mean by them saying that, doesn't that mean they do too?
Either way, $crew em. People often say I lack empathy because I say how I truly feel. To me this is being empathetic, because I would want them to do the same for me.
I do think people confuse lack of empathy for lack of sympathy.

Yupp.

Just because some of us don't give a damn, it doesn't mean that we don't think that some things are wrong and should be stood up against. Once i hit 30 something, i got tired of all the s**t that is going on in the world and i just stopped giving a damn, not watching the news or reading too deeply into it.

Everyone has problems of their own and trying to "feel" for the entire world will wear you out...

try not to worry about it ToS, people are very critical and you have to not let it 'get' to you.

Unfortunately people also tend not to give credit for trying, and tend to tell people they are not good enough.

You have to guard your self esteem from feeling bad by other peoples opinons.

What helped me was a bit I read in a book, which says- never feel bad from criticism, look in the mirror and see your reflection, it is not you it is your reflection, you are the one looking at the reflection. All other people see/know of you is your reflection, they will never know the whole of you so their judgement is meaningless. I find this very helpful and when people are being critical of me, I say to myself "its just my reflection, they dont know the whole me" and it helps me not take the criticism so personally.

The old perception of autism is someone who "can't see a person as a person" or "can't differentiate a person from a chair". I don't think mention of empathy specifically will be in the new DSM if they don't change the proposed criteria, so maybe this belief will go away.

Given that an empathy deficiency never was in the diagnostic criteria and people just made it up - dont hold your breath unless you expect stupidity to be cured in humanity.

^ No, it means they lack SYMpathy (although in connection with the concept of 'soulless' meaning 'unfeeling', the irony stands).

No one ever said Autistics cannot FEEL emotions. Only that we express them poorly. Anyone who thinks we can't feel has no comprehension of what they've read - which includes a lot of reporters.

EMPATHY is the ability to recognize another person's emotional state by their facial expressions and body language, and knowing instinctively how to react to that appropriately. EMpathy has noting to do with having a soul in either a literal or figurative sense. That, again, would be a lack of SYMpathy, or compassion.



Indeed.

Empathy is not a feeling. Empathy is a social skill.

Sympathy is a feeling - the ability to resonate emotionally with a situation resembling something one has previously experienced him or herself.

^ No, it means they lack SYMpathy (although in connection with the concept of 'soulless' meaning 'unfeeling', the irony stands).

No one ever said Autistics cannot FEEL emotions. Only that we express them poorly. Anyone who thinks we can't feel has no comprehension of what they've read - which includes a lot of reporters.

EMPATHY is the ability to recognize another person's emotional state by their facial expressions and body language, and knowing instinctively how to react to that appropriately. EMpathy has noting to do with having a soul in either a literal or figurative sense. That, again, would be a lack of SYMpathy, or compassion.

That’s why I'm saying it's comical, the person making the "soulless bastard" statement is obviously lacking empathy.
I don't think you empathized with what I was saying, but were sympathetic enough to attempt to correct me. I appreciate that.

Once again - the person using the term 'soulless' lacks SYMPATHY because they DON'T CARE if they hurt the OPs feelings by saying it.

There is no expression of EMPATHY in the situation, because the OP does not indicate having exhibited any visible emotional trauma BEFORE the statement is made.

The social skills the speaker is lacking here are POLITENESS and TACT, not empathy. In this limited interaction, empathy is not at issue.


My point is not to correct you, I allowed that I recognized the irony to which you alluded. My point is to clarify the meaning of the term EMPATHY, which seems to elude so many.

Thank you for the clarification between the two words, Willard. Good point.

I've always thought of it this way:

If I can relate to someone's emotions, I feel empathy... though whether or not I'm able to express that is another thing altogether. If I cannot relate to the emotions someone is experiencing, but I am still able to express a corresponding and appropriate emotion, that's sympathy. As you said, it indicates that I care that someone else has an emotion (usually a painful one).

By this way of thinking, I feel empathy more than most NTs, I think. Heck, I'll walk into a room and sense tension or anger or pain, etc... but my ability to express either for whomever is suffering from those emotions is largely shut off by any number of things. It could be a pure lack of giving a crap (by way of logic or reason with or without personal experience to back it up) or a complete sensory overload (sensory issues), or an incapacity to read a person (I say incapacity, because I have, like many of us, trained myself to read body language and facial expressions so I have the ability, but it's not by any means intuitive and if I'm not consciously thinking of it, it's the first thing I forget).

In either case, it's not because I lack empathy that I don't express it. And it's harder to express sympathy than empathy, because if I'm not feeling anything or able to relate to the experience, I won't have any internal cues that I should be acting differently on the outside and it won't even occur to me that I should be reacting in some way.

I think this might also be a case of "whisper down the lane", when the original message that people with AS do not or cannot express empathy, was twisted to this strange idea that we don't have it.

Thoughts?

It's because the theories are dreamed up by people who don't have the condition. "Lack of empathy" is a what a lot of autistic behavior/relating looks like to people without the condition. To my knowledge there is no (and never was any) "officially sanctioned" theory that says the real problem is a lack of ability to express empathy. Lack of "Theory of Mind" is proposed as the grand unified theory -- that it explains what autism IS in the most fundamental and complete way. (And it's been around a while now.)

(Now, some autistics probably do lack empathy, just as some NT's do, but the theory doesn't allow for that. All NT's have it, all autistics do not.)

And in the great historical tradition of marginalized people, autistics are presumed to have no right to criticize or otherwise have any input. Autistics are the ones with the defective brains that would 'naturally' lead to a lack of insight. You can't have the inmates "running the asylum," after all. (It is reminiscent of theories that reading too much causes a woman's uterus to shrivel, or that blacks need slavery because they are inherently psychologically "disorganized" and need externally imposed order.)

Who to thank for this? (There are many, many others, also.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind





Since then more and more researchers have piled on in taking this as "the" theory (academics need to work within the accepted frame work to be taken seriously, after all), and so it has become "the" theory.

BTW, RaquiGirl, didn't mean to sound belligerent toward you, there; the subject just gets me riled up.

It's all good. I didn't take it that way at all. I get riled up about it too!

Why's that even part of the diagnosis? Only one aspie I know doesn't seem to give a flying f**k about others' feelings, and he IS a soulless bastard.

They only say that because our kind has a hard time showing it. Just because we don't show it, it doesn't mean we don't have it.

I think its more of a question of wanting to show it.

I have no problem sympathising for a homeless person living on the streets begging for food, but i have negative sympathy for a joe-average-family crying about how "tough" things will be for them if the government starts to charge them 1% more in taxes. ("Boo-hoo, worlds smallest violin" and all that).


The thing is; if you are an aspie, or an autie, chances are that you have probably lived your life alone, missed out on fuckloads of things, have had several jobs you probably lost because of some dickhead-social rules that expects you to be a social animal, when you really cannot stand it (it goes against everything about being an aspie/autie, the touching, the eye-contact, and shallow social chit-chat and the coma-inducing team-sports which is "so important"). You have probably lived with your parents or alone with a cat or something until you were 25, you were probably bullied in school and beat up from time to time.

Now, with that in mind; why the f**k should we care about everyone who has had a better life than us, has had numerous relationships and no problem functioning in society?

I for one do not, and never will. Unless someone is starving and living on the streets, i do not care for that persons problems.