I still don't entirely ''get'' what empathy is

Post Reply New Topic

Empathy is being able to care about someone else's feeling/thoughts and support him/her regardless of one's own thought.. to put yourself in one's shoes and sympathize.


This is child abuse: To intentionally harm someone simply because you are able to.


The child feels it's hotter because its skin is more sensitive to temperature than that of an adult. In this scenerio, the adult is ignorant to the child's basic safety. Despite the ignorance, ignoring the child's pain/discomfort/feelings shows the adult has an inability to show empathy.

Regardless of ignorance or misunderstandings, a person with empathy would TRY to understand a person's state of being and help to alleviate that discomfort.

Wow. That is what empathy means? That is what NTs are all supposed to have, and I'm supposed to lack? Whoa......

So true and to the point.

You re not supposed to lack it at all. You lack communication skills and social know-how.

If you knew that someone was being mugged or assaulted, whether by sight or hearing, and you could stop it, would you?
Did you stop it because you would want some one to save you, because you would not want to be mugged or assaulted?
Did you do it because it is the right thing to do, and no one deserves to suffer like that?
Both of these things show empathy, courage, and selflessness.

But I didn't know empathy necessarily meant kind and thoughtfulness. I agree with what Caz72 wrote. It does make me become bitter because if empathy does mean kind and thoughtfulness then why do so many people (not only those on the spectrum but anybody that stands out from the norm) get bullied? That's not showing kind and thoughtfulness. That is being uncaring and ignorant. Even people that aren't different can still get bullied, picked on, turned against for no reason, etc.

Then I thought to myself, ''does empathy mean all kinds of thoughts, not just good thoughts?'' Which is why I gave those 3 examples. I always thought empathy meant ''being aware of how one's social actions would make another person feel''. I didn't know it meant ''respecting somebody else's feelings''. Not saying NTs don't respect other people's feelings, but not saying Aspies don't either. I have an Aspie friend who is just as thoughtful and friendly as my NT friends are.

And it's funny that I have met a lot of people who only think of themselves. One of those ''I, me, me, I'' people, and don't really care about other people, as long as he/she's all right. And no, all these people don't have personality traits or PTSD. It's just the way they are, can't be bothered to think of other people, too much effort, only when they want to. I suppose we can all be like that though. I'm an Aspie but if I am having a bad day or am in a situation where I've got to be a little selfish, I am aware that I am not considering other people feelings at this moment and feel guilty for it, and then there are other times (most times) where I can feel somebody else's emotions through their body language and want to help. Sometimes I hate feeling empathy, because if somebody does something embarrassing I often feel their embarrassment and my face ends up going red, even though I'm not in the situation at all.

Edited

Last edited by appletheclown on 04 May 2013, 8:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think emapthy is specific to ASD/NT at all - nor do all NT's show empathy. I think it's an individual characteristic thing. Also, a person in the spectrum may not always sense/understand when someone is in need because emotions can be subtle.

Ugh, why don't they? I do. I hate assuming all aspies are alike, I keep on doing it. Sorry!

This is something my husband teases me about alot. As I understand it sympathy and empathy are 2 different things.

Sympathy is actively feeling or being influenced by someone else emotions.
On the low end just feeling off cause someone else is having a bad day all the way up to crying because someone else is crying. Or even throwing up or acting drunk because someone else is.

Empathy is not feeling what someone else is feeling or being influenced. Its understanding the position they are in or how they are feeling.
If you read about someone on Facebook who has a break up, of course you've had a breakup before and so you understand the feeling and you empathize.

The funny thing is you can demonstrate sympathy and empathy at the same time. Sympathy is feeling it like crying and empathy is allowing your understanding to prod you to action like arguing with the other persons ex and blocking them.

So if i try to explain with previous bath example.
Sympathy= child is in the bath and the water is hot and they are crying. You feel the pain as well and start to cry.
Empathy= taking action to pull child out of water and comfort them and cool down the water and furthermore reminding myself not to forget to test water next time because i have of course been burnt before and i know that i don't like it and would like to avoid it.

It is important to remember that empathy is not a feeling by itself. Empathy is the ability to feel the emotion of someone else. For instance you might see your friend is upset because he lost his ipod. Having lost an ipod once yourself, you remember how you felt when it happened. That jolt of despair, anger, or whatever you get is empathy. If you cannot understand how the person feels then you will not feel that. It is also the way your brain is wired you might actually just have a lessened emotional response. Sympathy is more about feeling sorry for someone without experiencing the same emotion. That's why people who are proud tend to shun people's sympathy. I've never heard anyone deny empathy, although I'm sure it's happened. I feel it's common not to feel sympathy for people, when you see no reason for them to be upset.

it seems everyone explains empathy differently each time i read about it, so i dont think we will ever know what it actualy is and where the line is drawn between nts having empathy and autistics lacking this empathy.

the way i see it, everyone experiences empathy to an extent whether they autistic or not (unless they are too severe to have any contact with the social world, this also includes people with mental retardation as well) have felt empathy at some point. empathy is not really something you can say one group of people lack and the other group of people dont. everyone just uses empathy as another social tool, its there when they want it but not everybody uses it all the time or uses it in the same way. it can also depend on ones personal charecteristics too.

i am not being sexist but i have read in lots of magazine and online articles that women have more empathy than men.

Here, maybe these web pages can finally put this issue to rest.

http://robin.hubpages.com/hub/Sympathy_vs_Empathy
http://dictionary.reference.com/help/fa ... e/d23.html
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-dif ... d-you-know

Empathy and sympathy get confused all the time and it is the lack of discipline in definitions that muddies the water.

em·pa·thy
/ˈempəTHē/
Noun
The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

sym·pa·thy
/ˈsimpəTHē/
Noun
Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
Formal expression of such feelings; condolences.

Sympathy is something done TO or FOR a person. Empathy is done WITH a person. Empathy is best demonstrated with the words "Me too." Sympathy is best demonstrated with the words "I'm sorry." Empathy is not about understanding but sharing. You can understand someone's position and still refuse to share in it. That is sympathy.

Aspies are accused of a lack of empathy because in many situations they don't understand the feeling, but when an Aspie does understand they show lots of empathy. It's all over WP, all the people who hear someone's story and respond with "I do that too" or "I feel that way too".

NTs fail at this just as frequently in the reverse. NTs don't share in the struggles that Aspies have and that is a lack of empathy as well. NTs can frequently show sympathy but they don't share it. Sympathy is also a barrier to empathy. If you feel sympathy you can not feel empathy at the same time. We need less sympathy in this world and more empathy.

Definition of EMPATHY

1
: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

This is the first definition of empathy in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Empathy specifically refers to the mind's ability to project the same emotion someone else is feeling with the psychical input. I imagine most autistic people are fully capable of feeling empathy for someone, its only a matter of understanding why they are upset. My father is fully capable of empathizing but sometimes he misses the point of why they are upset and just seems like a jerk. I feel most people with AS are told they lack empathy, when in reality their literal thinking means they don't see the reason the person is upset. When a girl comes to you crying that she broke up with her boyfriend, you might ask her why she is crying. She says she misses him and wish it didn't have to be that way. You then tell her that it's her fault because she broke up with him. In not understanding the reason for the girl being upset, you seem like you cannot empathize.

As I understand it:

Cognitive empathy: being able to figure out what someone is feeling.

Affective empathy: feeling what they feel in response to noticing their feelings.

No, caring and sympathy are different things from empathy. You can understand without caring and care without understanding.
It's the conflation of care, conscience, sympathy and empathy that gets autistics thought of as some kind of sociopaths.

I'll use my reactions as an example:

Say one of my friends is crying. Since I do have some social perception, I'll be able to tell that they're sad, or upset in some way.

That's cognitive empathy.

However, I won't feel sad myself.

That's (a lack of) affective empathy.

But I will feel concerned.

That's caring.

If I find out it's my fault they feel bad, I'll feel guilty.

That's conscience.

I appear to have empathy then, from what I've read here.

I often can feel other people's emotions, which I sometimes hate. If something embarrassing happens to somebody else, I can feel their embarrassment too, so my face sometimes goes red for them, even though I'm nothing to do with the situation.

Also I often find myself saying ''me too'' or ''yeah I feel like that too'' a lot of the time. I always thought that was being selfish though, because it feels like I'm just trying to bring myself into their problem all the time instead of just taking an interest in what they're actually saying and contributing to the conversation by asking questions to them. But I don't fake it, I can really imagine how they are feeling when talking about something.

A few weeks ago when somebody told me that her husband has recently died, my eyes filled up with tears and felt like crying, whilst saying ''I'm sorry to hear that''. I didn't want to cuddle them though because sometimes when you're tearful and somebody cuddles you, it makes you start up crying more (I know that happens to me anyway and I've seen other women doing that). So I just put my hand on their shoulder to show my sympathy.

Oh, and when a woman has period pains, I literally get them too, because period pains is the worst pain I have ever had and can really empathise with another woman who is suffering with them. I also feel panicky for them if they are out and don't know where to go or what to do because of the pain being so bad. I often say, ''I bet you wish you was home now, laying on your bed'', and they're like, ''yes, I do.''