How do you feel when...

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...Someone near you is upset and/or crying? Does it bother you at all?
The psychologist I saw said something that really bothers me, saying that people on the spectrum don't care if someone is crying. They'd be like, "Oh, someone is crying. Whatever." and go back to what they were doing. She seems to be under the impression that it is impossible for aspies to be effected at all by someone else being upset.
(Please note if you were professionally diagnosed as well)

Sometimes it bothers me. Sometimes it does not. Often I don't really register anything and I have to stop and work out what's going on and work out how I need to respond.

I am professionally diagnosed. Your psychologist's generalization is true for me sometimes, false for me sometimes, and irrelevant for me sometimes.

I have not yet been professionally diagnosed.

I find someone crying around me rather annoying because it disrupts other people and things don't get done. Also crying around people is sometimes a cowardly/sneaky way of getting what one wants. IMO crying should be done privately, not in public.

This is really situation-dependent for me. Would go something like this:

- If it is someone I don't know and they have people with them to support them, I don't pay much attention. It's not my business. I might find it annoying if they are being noisy and I'm trying to concentrate.
- If it is someone I don't know and they are all alone I will feel concerned. I may or may not ask if there's anything I can do, depending on whether I feel I could help, whether I feel safe doing so, etc. etc.
- If it is someone I know and I don't think it is serious, or it seems like attention-seeking, I'll find it annoying and would be very reluctant to try to help.
- If it is someone I know and it seems like a genuine issue, I will feel concerned. I will feel very awkward trying to help them but if they are alone I would attempt to do so.

Note this relates only to adults crying.

I'm professionally diagnosed with AS.

I'm not officially diagnosed.

It always bothers me in a way, it's not like I can ignore it after all.
yellowtamarin summed it up perfectly:

I'm undiagnosed.

It bothers me and makes me uncomfortable. (But seeing really strong emotions conveyed by others always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Probably because strong emotions makes people unpredictable.) I have no idea what to do/say. Especially if it's a friend. I want to provide comfort because they are my friend and I hate seeing them hurting, but I don't know how to go about it. Do they want to talk about it? Do they want to be left alone? Do they want me to say something amusing? Do I ask what they want? How do I comfort them? I have no idea how to comfort them! I get incredibly anxious about that.

If it's someone I don't know, I usually just ask if they're okay and if they need help. (If I feel safe enough to do so, and they seem genuinely upset.)

<--- Turns and runs the other way.

It depends entirely on the situation. If the person crying is someone I don’t know, dislike or am indifferent to, I don’t feel anything.
If it’s someone being noisy about it, or someone using tears to get their way or get attention, I’ll get annoyed.
If it’s someone (regardless of who) who cries for what I see as no reason/overreaction, I’ll feel annoyance or even mild contempt.

If the crying person is someone I like (and I think they have reason to cry), I’ll feel sorry for them. How sorry, depends on how much I like them and how bad the reason is.
If the crying person is someone I love (and I don’t know the reason), my first reaction would be intense fear. A seemingly endless list of worst case scenarios would go through my mind until I knew. And then my feelings would depend on what it was.
If someone I love is crying (for a reason), chances are good that the thing they’re crying about is something that are making me cry a lot too (loss of someone we both love for instance). Either way I feel devastated, completely helpless, and desperate to ease their pain.
I’ll be awkward and clueless about what to do. I’ll feel terrible for them but chances are I’ll just be there not knowing what to do.


I'm officially diagnosed.

It also depends on the situation for me. Sometimes I definitely feel bad for them.

edit: I'm officially diagnosed.

It doesn't bother me, its just im so uncertain about WHAT I'M SUPPOSE TO DO. I feel bad, not the same as everyone else, because their empathy seems kind of fake to me, but I do feel bad... yea

If I care about the person, then it bothers me.
Otherwise I'm only bothered because of not knowing what to do.

It bothers me because I don't instinctively know what I'm supposed to do about it. It really invokes no emotional empathy whatsoever. It makes me feel like I'm being put of the spot. These days, I can put an arm around someone and fake being touched by their situation. That's where you get into higher dimensions of acting. But of course I still kind of feel like a heel for not really caring.

Unfortunately, a lot of people - professionals included - don't understand the difference between emotional empathy and reactive empathy. That is, there is a difference between what you FEEL and how you ACT on those feelings.

Autistic people are often extremely emotionally empathic but, being socially clueless and/or easily overwhelmed by their emotions, don't know what to do, so they retreat or don't react and therefore appear unmoved. Neurotypical people tend not to understand this disconnect between feelings and actions, which gave rise to the myth that autistic people lack empathy in situations like these. This myth is perpetuated by professionals who aren't up to date with autism research, as more recent research has demonstrated that if anything, autistic people often feel stronger emotions than neurotypical people in situations like these (due to lack of the emotional inhibition system NTs have), which is often the reason they are immobilised or retreat.

Hope this helps.

I'm officially diagnosed and I do feel things...I'm just not very good at knowing how to react, what to do or what I should feel. I also may not share the emotion of the person but I often have a reaction that is emotional ie: I may well panic so I am feeling fear.

I never really like it when anybody's crying, but I would only really step in to ask what's wrong if I know the person really, really well, just in case the person crying doesn't want anyone to butt in.