Utilizing empathy

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Okay, so I am going to explain what I have learned about empathy, from reading endless texts about this topic.

I shall preface this by saying I am stereotypically & naturally, Autistic.

Without great effort, time & contemplation - I have zero idea of what people are thinking.

This takes a lot of work.

If you are still reading this, then empathy is very simple, when it comes down to it.

What questions would you ask yourself, if you were not yourself and you did not know you?

Your natural inclination might be to say "yeah, but I am me." If you cannot get past that, you will never be empathetic & thus, never fit into a society dominated by NT's, or be successful, because you will live in a bubble of your own mind & other Autistic folk.

And to empathetic people you will look like you are mentally disabled, because you are not responding to everything going on around you in the world. That statement is not intended to be insulting - it is a fact of life.

Having empathy is different from knowing what to do with having empathy.

It's like knowing how to read, but suck or really bad at writing back. That can be very frustrating.


Not to mention that... Most autistics experienced not being reciprocated at.

How would an autistic learn how to emphasize naturally, when everyone around them is entitled to be understood when autistics themselves aren't?

And the audacity to tell us that wanting to be understood is a sign of entitlement.
It's almost no different from being raised around people without empathy.

Sure autistics don't know how would an NT think... So does the other way around.


Anyways.
I prefer cases against empathy.

Empathy doesn't make a better person or a better human. Just more 'literate' or mentally cumbersome no different from having sensory issues.
And that literacy can be use in a predatory way. There is such thing as a dark empath after all.


Lastly...
I prefer a hands on approach in learning empathy.

There already is such thing as social skills without empathy.

But what IS empathy without social skills?
Not even google can answer that apparently.

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yea, but i am who i am.

I also think that Edna made a good post - at least as good as, if not better than mine, in my opinion.

Care workers & support staff are generally terrible in their treatment of the disabled people they work for, from my experience as a former care worker in the United Kingdom.

There exists, very little care, dignity & respect for the disabled, in many care homes across my country.

From what information I get about empathy on WP, it appears that it is basically another word for "awareness". If a person is aware of what they're saying, whether it's good or bad, then it's empathy. So if I wanted to go up to someone tomorrow and call them fat, just for the purpose of making them feel bad about themselves, then it'd be empathy. If I went up to someone and called them fat without understanding that will make them feel bad or without the intention of making them feel bad, then that would be lacking empathy. According to the definition of empathy on this site, this pretty much explains it.

Pardon the Us Vs Them phenomenon...
But it's a two-way street. A lot of NTs have intentionally upset a lot of autistics in their lifetime and have not felt guilt or remorse. A lot of autistics have unintentionally upset NTs but have felt guilt or remorse afterwards. So isn't there some sort of equivalence in both parties here?

There seems to be 2 sides of empathy

- the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation
- the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Aspies have a reputation (and by reputation, I mean listed as an official symptom of aspergers) of having low empathy. I strongly disagree with this.

Firstly, I am quite capable of putting myself in another person's situation. However, I would simply respond differently. I wouldn't garner sympathy, make myself the centre of attention, contradict myself in the same sentence or seek out meaningless platitudes like "aww, poor you". I would solve the problem. So I can put myself in another's situation, I would just react differently which is mistaken for not understanding or "lack of empathy".

Secondly, I can understand feelings of aspies, very well, to the point of prediction. I can't understand the feelings of NTs because they are so random to the point of insanity, but then my NT "friends" cannot understand me either. I think that just because the NTs are in the majority, the NT-NT understanding is considered "empathy", the lack of NT-ND and ND-NT understanding is considered "normal". So from my perspective, all NTs have extremely low empathy and rarely understand me or even try.

NTs can misunderstand each other too. Like if an NT is suffering from depression or something that another NT hasn't really experienced, they'll most likely just tell the depressed NT to snap out of it.

When my mum had cancer she felt a lot of nurses and cancer support workers didn't understand the emotional side of the disease. They were educated about the physical facts obviously, but they seemed unempathetic when it came to her anxiety. She found it better talking to other people who also had cancer themselves.
Sure, people without cancer offered sympathy but they couldn't always put themselves in her shoes and understand the depth of how frightened she felt.

So it isn't just all about NT Vs autistic.