__Elijahahahaho wrote:
I don't respond to normal things that make other people sad, like a dead pet or something.
But I do respond to deep things.
With me it's usually a matter of whether or not I've been through their sad experience myself, so in the case of somebody losing a pet, I feel sad for them because I've lost animals that I'd felt bonded to. I've got a bit of social imagination as well, so I can sometimes understand a bit about how people feel when I've not had the same experience, but it doesn't always work. But I've not noticed much empathy shown to me when the reasons for my joy or sorrow have been anything that's particularly outside the experience of other people, so I'm not sure whether Aspies are all that different from neurotypicals in that way.
I don't know what the OP means by "planning empathy." For me, empathy is just something that either happens at the time or doesn't happen. I suppose over the years I've learned to consider a bit more carefully when I can't immediately understand why somebody seems to be feeling good or bad about something, instead of just deciding that there must be something the matter with them. For example, a lot of people love professional football. I had to look up the psychological reasons for that on the Web before I could see what the hell they saw in a load of overpaid tossers kicking a ball about. Mind you, that hasn't made me feel the same way as they do. I'm just a bit more diplomatic about it now.
A lot of my learning started at a time when I felt my circle of friends was getting dangerously small. I wanted to know more about what made people tick, so I started looking at psychology. Around the same time I was lucky enough to get to talk with a Relate counsellor, and I learned from her that feelings were important, and not the redundant, outmoded load of slop I'd come to assume they were. But it took me a long time for the message to get through to me. It was strange in a way, because as a child I think I knew full well that feelings were important, and that happiness was very important. So I was kind of re-learning what I'd known deepdown all the time.