A closer look at empathy

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"Empathy" is a word that's thrown around quite a bit in regard to autism, but many people seem to be confused as to what exactly it is.

I have no empathy, but my significant other has what I'd call genius-level empathy, and we've discussed the finer points of our differences on many occasions. I would like to share a few conclusions we've arrived at.

The best way to understand empathy is by comparing it to sympathy, which is a related (yet distinct) concept. Pinning down the distinction between the two can be tricky.

It seems that many people think that empathy is a general ability to feel badly for others. Many autistic individuals protest the "lack of empathy" generality on the basis of their ability to feel badly (sometimes quite strongly) for people in unfavorable circumstances. Feeling badly for others is sympathy, not empathy.

Empathy is often described as the ability to "put yourself in another person's shoes". This is somewhat misleading, as it doesn't seem to address the difference between sympathy and empathy (until you really grasp the difference between the two--then the shoe analogy makes more sense).

For me, a person with no empathy, the closest I can come to "putting myself in another person's shoes" is figuring out how I would feel if I were in the same situation as that person.

For someone like my significant other (with genius-level empathy), "putting myself in another person's shoes" means actually feeling what that person is feeling.

For example, say my S.O. and I are walking through a grocery store and we see someone with obvious and severe motor issues. I can think to myself, That must be awful. If I were struggling to walk in a straight line, I'd be very frustrated, tired, etc. But my S.O. can actually make herself experience what that person is experiencing via her imagination. She can "assume" that person's being, and actually "feel" what they feel. In this case, she'd probably say something like, "My body felt drunk, it wouldn't do what I wanted it to."

In an effort to produce another example, I asked her this morning to empathetically imagine being Barack Obama giving the state of the union address. The description she gave me was incredibly thorough and detailed, from "being smarter, not having word-jumble" (her expression for a mild expressive aphasia) to describing how he felt before, during, and after the speech, to noting how much larger and heavier his hands are (and how the difference was very noticeable when he gesticulated). She generated all of this almost instantaneously, after about a second or so--there was little or no "thought" at all, she "lived" or experienced all of it with no help from her intellect, and she described that visceral experience as if she had truly shared Obama's experience of reality for a while.

Think counselor Troi from Star Trek. She didn't just know what other people felt, or know what it would be like to be in the same situation as other people--she actually felt what other people felt. Her character is a great illustration of empathy. It's also worth noting that her great empathy was, on account of being half human, half Betazoid, supposed to represent a sort of midpoint between regular "human" empathy and Betazoid telepathy. This is also highly instructive--empathy really is "low grade" telepathy. It's the blurring of boundaries between minds.

I was shocked when I learned that people can actually do this. Since then, I've grilled many people in regard to their ability to empathize. I've found that empathy, like every human characteristic, lies on a "spectrum", meaning that some people are great at it (like my S.O.), some people just can't do it (like myself), and that there are many shades in between.

Keep in mind that I'm able to feel badly for people, but I can only arrive at that feeling as a result of an intellectual process. In other words, when my S.O. and I attend a funeral for someone we didn't really know, we both feel very badly (sad) for that person's loved ones. We both cry. The difference is, I arrive at my "bad feeling" via an intellectual assessment of the situation, while my S.O. feels bad because her imagination provides her with a powerful, vivid, first-person "experience" of whatever it is the dead person's loved ones are experiencing. It's truly as if she leaves her own consciousness and shares the consciousness of another person. Note that the end result is, from each of our points of view, the same. She feels bad, I feel bad. She cries, I cry. It's not the "feeling for others" that separates us, it's the basis for that feeling.

Note also that I can achieve something closer to (but not the same as) empathy when I've actually experienced roughly the same set of circumstances the other person has. That's to say, if I have experienced the death of a parent, then I can come closer to empathizing with someone who's just lost a parent, as I can "remember" how being in that situation felt, and there's less intellectualizing involved. But it's still not "real" empathy, because I still haven't broken out of my self-centered frame of reference. The basis of my "feeling" is still self-reflection.

Part of the problem with understanding empathy for people who can't empathize is that, to us, it really is (in relation to our own cognitive processes) as far-fetched, exotic, and fantastical as telepathy. If a person who lacks the ability to empathize reaches the point that they truly grasp, intellectually, what empathy is, it should make their head spin.

Has the expression "theory of mind" crossed anyone's mind yet?

Stay tuned for "A closer look at empathy, part 2"!

Actually, my objection to the "lack of empathy" thing is truly because I don't think that as a group, we actually necessarily lack empathy. Of the kind you describe. Some of us may, but it's far from a universal attribute of autistic people.

Here's one autistic person describing their thoughts about this:

http://web.archive.org/web/200708061138 ... mpathy.htm

Xe notes that when xe is communicating with a typical person, xe knows that xe doesn't understand the other person, but the other person doesn't know that they don't understand Jim. They think they have empathy for xem but they don't. So the situation is a two-way street. Nonautistic people generally have little ability to empathize with autistic people, and autistic people generally have little ability to empathize with nonautistic people. However, in only one of these situations is it called a "lack of empathy".

When autistic people don't understand nonautistic people automatically, we're said to lack empathy. When they don't understand us, they don't say they lack empathy for us, even though they do. They say that we're just inherently mysterious. Or they may even say that we're "empty" or "blank". They perceive nothing with their empathy so they assume nothing is there because they assume that they always have empathy for everyone, including empathy for people highly different from themselves. This is a wrong assumption for nearly all of them. It is a rare person, autistic or nonautistic, who can truly empathize (rather than just "imaginary empathy") with people whose experiences at that moment are significantly different from their own.

Additionally, there are a lot of autistic people, me included, who have what amounts more to intense, uncontrollable empathy, than lack of empathy. When I am around a lot of people... it's really hard to describe this. But it's as if all these emotions and stuff are bombarding me to the point I can't even pinpoint where each one is coming from. It's incredibly overloading, and stressful on my emotional systems. I've had to learn over time ways of shielding myself from this because it's so intense that it's otherwise pretty debilitating. I've talked to a lot of other autistic people who have this issue. It can leave a person feeling like their nerves are all scraped raw.

I've just typed and deleted several paragraphs worth of attempted explanation because I think it's wrong. Whatever is going on, it's not telepathy. But what it is, is really hard to explain, even though I think I do know what's going on. Nothing supernatural, just an attribute of a brain that's not attuned to concept and language. (When I do have language and concept, it actually gets in the way of my empathy, which is one reason I think there's a connection there.)

Like most people (autistic or nonautistic), my empathy is stronger for people who are the most similar to me. I first realized this when I met in person an autistic guy I knew on the Internet. While with most people I will pick up on both real and hidden emotions to some extent... for this guy it was so multilayered it was bizarre. I knew how he was really feeling deep down. I knew what parts of that feeling he wanted people to be aware of, and what parts of it he wanted to hide. I knew what strategies he was relying on in order to hide them. I knew what emotions he was trying to project. It was intense. Because he knew the same for me. And we both did this instantly. At times this made us terrified of each other, just intense anxiety at being so emotionally naked and exposed in front of each other. And this was someone where it's like... he was somewhat like me but he wasn't anything close to a perfect match, we had significant areas of difference.

But then I met someone who is probably as close to a perfect match as it's possible to get. And what we have in the way of empathy is so extreme it's bizarre. We understand all those different layers of emotion, only we're so completely transparent to each other that the anxiety at being exposed isn't there, because such thorough transparency feels just like being alone and undisturbed. We understand each other's motivation. We can read and predict each other's thoughts a lot of the time, each of us fleshing out the things that the other is incapable of saying. She can tell when I'm in physical pain before I'm aware of it myself. We can sense so much about each other that it really feels like telepathy even though we're both clear that it's not. And we can do this even in pure-text-mode over the Internet without webcam-based video chat or anything to show us each other's body language. (When we can see each other's movements or hear the sound of each other's vocalizations, it's even more intense.) When one of us can't put our own thoughts in words, we ask the other one to do it. And it works.

Experiences like this don't seem to be unique to me. I remember meeting several other autistic people in person at a book signing, and the author of the book was talking about the uncontrollable empathy thing, and most of us could relate to her. The first time I met another autistic person who was at least vaguely in my subtype, I remember looking at her and knowing so much about her that it was as if she was three-dimensional and other people were two-dimensional. It's not that I have no empathy or ability to read nonautistic people's emotions, but the more different a person is from me, the less complex and detailed the information I get. And that particular property seems to be true of virtually everyone's empathy, whether they'll admit it or not. (That's why some nonautistic people honestly believe that autistic people aren't very complex and detailed, or don't have emotions at all, or etc. when this isn't the case.)

So... anyway that's my own thoughts about autism and empathy. My reason for saying that not all autistic people "lack empathy" isn't because I'm confusing it with compassion, it's because I and a lot of autistic people I've met have pretty intense empathy. A lot of us seem to be female. And a lot of us seem to have the sort of trouble holding onto language and concept that I have. But not all in either case.

Although I also have to say that the idea of empathy as compassion is not really a misuse of the term, it's just a different use of the term. The way many words have more than one meaning. When sociopaths are said to lack empathy, then in that usage it means compassion. That's one reason I object to the word empathy being used in this context -- people confuse the usages, and suddenly people are equating autistic people with sociopaths (okay a small number of us are, but most of us have plenty of conscience and caring for other people, it's even been studied). Even professionals confuse those two usages and put both together in ways they have no business doing.

Thanks for the post. I am in the group that is confused about this.

Sorry, I meant to say toward the end there that I wasn't suggesting that all autistic people lack empathy. Guess I forgot. In any case, I think it's perfectly possible for an autistic person to have empathy--but, in general, I think that it's true that autistic people have empathy issues. I certainly do.



I understand, but I think what you're describing here is not equally a two-way street. Lacking empathy isn't the same as not being able to relate to someone because their mind is quite different than yours--there's a very fine distinction there, but it's worth noting. Incidentally, I'll be addressing this subject in my next post on empathy.



Once again, "understanding" someone isn't necessarily empathizing with them.



It's not that rare. As I said in my first post, I've talked to many (probably several hundred) people about this, and the ability to empathize in the way I described in my first post seems actually quite common, although, as I said, it's all a matter of degree. I'd say that, if we were ranking empathy ability on a simple, linear scale of 1-10, my lack of real empathy being "1" and my S.O. being a "9" or "10", I'd say that the vast majority of NT's I've asked would be an "8" or so--or just a cut below my S.O. Many report very similar experience to my S.O.--her family, unsurprisingly, is full of people with genius-level empathizing ability.

Of course, this isn't a scientific observation. Just what I've garnered from a whole shedload of conversations.



So, does my description of my S.O.'s empathy resonate with you? For the record, I'm not claiming that empathy is a "supernatural" ability--although it may as well be, for someone who lacks it.



For the sake of accuracy, especially in an area neuropsychology, definitions are very important. It is precisely this willingness to let empathy mean something else that fosters great confusion over statements like, autistic people tend to lack empathy. It's important for autistic people to understand that empathy and compassion are not the same thing. Otherwise, we have autistic people thinking, Gee, I'm not supposed to have empathy, but I'm a very compassionate person! What gives? It should come as a great intellectual relief to that person to know that one can be quite compassionate without the ability to empathize.

Thanks for the description. I knew that I was missing something, but I didn't realize that it could be so profound. I wonder what fraction of the population has empathic abilities comparable to your SO. Still, I imagine that even a tenth of that ability would still be a huge advantage in social situations. This is an area in which I am completely blind. I do not have any empathy at all.

This actually is what causes so many people to tell me I can't possibly be autistic, because of their confusion about empathy and compassion.

I had one person (a psych student who intends to go into therapy) define autistic "lack of empathy" to me as "autists don't realize that people are people." Which is so inaccurate on so many levels (wrong definition of empathy, inaccurate description of autistic people).

Incidentally, this describes me as well:



Last week my therapist asked me if I felt socially isolated at a party, and I said "no. I felt bombarded." Part of my problem is that I've been losing my "shielding" over the past several months (since August, actually), and it's harder and harder to be around large groups of people, even before getting into the sensory overload. It's still possible to do it, but I was at the party for a few hours before I was able to.

Yes! Exactly. This is why it's important that people understand that "empathy" is not sympathy, pity, feeling bad for people, feeling lots of emotion, etc.--you can do all of those things without empathy.

I think a good synonym for sympathy here is *cognitive empathy.* Simply put, I believe this 'whole phenomenon' is tied to the "nonverbal"--that universal unconscious link or connection between humans.

Whoa, I don't agree. That's an illusion and a projection. You cannot telepathically understand how someone else is feeling. And I have noticed people very commonly making many, many wrong assumptions based on thinking they are being 'empathetic' in that way.

I.e. "if I became cognitively disabled I would be miserable all the time and would kill myself." (I have become cognitively disabled, and while I might off myself one day, it won't be because of that.)
"If I were in a wheelchair, I would kill myself."
"If I went blind, and could never see a sunset again, I would kill myself."

and on and on. -- The point being that, statistically, the above is not true.

Also, as far as the example above, it may not be true that having CP or Parkinson's feels at all like being drunk. (Parkinson's typically involves lots of muscle stiffness.)

I have a relative who survived an infamous historic event where over 100,000 people died. But it doesn't consume her or define her life. She is (by nature, I think) a happy person. But she deliberately doesn't tell people about it, because they start imagining all sort of things that she 'must' feel, but doesn't.

And in the last few years I've been using a cane at times. I suspect that some people think, "oh, it must feel so bad to have to use that," when I frickin' love the thing. I wish I started using it sooner (and don't give a crap about how it looks).


So, if that's empathy, then I say empathy is an illusion -- but which might seem real if two people are similar enough to each other.

(OTOH, if it's about absorbing all sorts of emotional information from people... well, I can relate to that (and wish I could shorten my antenna for it, at times).)

As far as this relates to autistics lacking empathy, I think it's just that the illusion breaks down, not the there is some magical thing that is lacking.

You're putting to much stock in that one example, and not addressing the gestalt of my post.

Again, I'm not saying that empathy is literally "magical" or "telepathy"--but it might as well be for someone who doesn't have it.

I've looked again at the other examples, but I still don't see a difference. The gestalt of your post seems to be, "I assume that X is real and works like Y, and isn't that mind-boggling?" I am just saying that I don't buy the premise that X works like Y.

I could say that I see in 5 dimensions, and you can't because you innately lack the ability. What if I'm fooling myself?

My S.O. and I are being perfectly honest about our abilities, and have the capacity to describe them fairly well. Many people I've spoken to since describe similar abilities. What are you implying, that they're all lying?

I mean, if you just don't believe me/us, fine, but your disbelief is arbitrary. I'm not asking you to accept anything "supernatural", "magical", etc.

If it seems magical to you, perhaps you just don't have it. Try to keep an open mind.

There was thread I was read once where the premise was, "there can be no thought without language." Most commenters were agreeing with that. But then someone described learning a second language to a high degree of fluency, and said it caused him to realize that there is a layer of thought that happened before language, and that he had not been aware of it, previously.

Since it was an American board, I suspect most people there didn't have a second language, and so didn't have access to that experience. It's not that they were lying, it was just outside what they knew.


You seem to think that my objection is that "it's magical and I don't believe in magic." That has nothing to do with it.

And, my point is not to say you are wrong in some profound way -- I just see things differently. I am interested to see essay #2. It's just my POV, and I'm only one person. It's not personal.

I think it's reasonable to question whether one is actually placing themselves into someone else's shoes or simply vividly imagining being someone else in different circumstances based on observations. I'm not going to question whether a cognitive process is actually occurring that can be described as empathy, but I do wonder about the rest.

A big part of it is, simply, when NTs try to imagine what I am thinking, which emotions I have, and so on, they are nearly always wrong. Even my therapist who can be fairly perceptive is more likely to guess the opposite of what I am thinking/feeling than what I am actually thinking/feeling - and I don't really hold it against her because she listens when I explain.

I doubt Apple_in_my_eye is saying you or your SO are lying, just questioning the mechanics in question.

Yeah. I'm not sure if I can comment more on this thread because the things I did say were taken in such odd ways that I can't even begin to explain what I really did mean. But some of what other people are saying gets into parts of what I do mean that were grossly misunderstood in the reply to me (because of faith in certain mechanisms that it's not reasonable to have faith in).

Poke, If you say you can feel what someone else is feeling, you don't have to be lying. You could be correct, or sincerely mistaken. The real test, IMHO, is to ask the person if that is, in fact, how they feel. I can't see where that has been done?

So far, it is Anbuend that has made me feel happy