Relating to the pain of others

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I have never really thought this was something I was bad at. I can obviously tell if someone gets hurt that it is a bad thing and thus they feel bad. (for lack of a better way to describe it).

Well a few days back my gf hurt her lip piercing area and her lip was in bad shape. It had a certain ammount of swelling and she had to clean the wound. She had a bad reaction to a new ring she put on.

She was talking to me about it and I was responding, you know. And this included a how I understood when such wounds healed or got irritated it caused a certain degree of pain, after all I had a wound on my arm that has been bothering me as well.

She said I always "do that" when there is something wrong with her, Bring up things that are wrong with me, instead of being there for her, when she is hurt.

I just took a few mental steps back and blinked slowly. How was this not relating and being there for her?

She explained to me that talking like that made her pain seemed inconsequential when it was more grave than mine. I told her I never stated my issue to be worse than hers. She said I implied it. And I am not exactly sure how this came about?

But It made me surly and so the next day I was feeling pretty sick we did not have time to grab breakfast as we left the house in a hurry and my sugar got real low. I told her I would get a candy bar at the store. She sighed. I am thinking okay, maybe this is a bad sign. I say or a juice or something. She said something that, in other similar situations, has meant that she is displeased, so Is aid nevermind. She got angry about me always changing my mind when she does not respond to me. BUt watever the point is, I had no idea all of this was "not relating to others".

What exactly then do people frinking mean about ability to relate? What exactly is to relate?

It seems like you are unintentionally engaging in the practice known as "one-upping". It is a pretty common NT practice to, when someone mentions an experience they've had, you mention a similar experience of your own. This is usually done for 1 of 2 possible reasons. The first is done as an attempt to relate and find common ground. The second is to dismiss their experience by comparing it to an experience of your own that is better/worse. For example, "Your fender got dented? That's nothing! I had my car completely totaled last week."

Whether you meant to or not, your response to her pain came off as dismissive when you meant to be supportive. Don't feel too bad about it. This kind of thing happens all the time to NT's as well.

I didn't know it was called "one-upping", but I knew that was the problem when I read the OP. It (the second one) is a really bad habit and is very frustrating. I think some of them are not aware of their doing it.

It was never my intention to do this! I did not even know it had a name! But the only inference I have had to relate to other people is to make categorical comparisons between their experiences and mine as to get an idea of what the situation is, what sort of emotional display it asks for,etc. I do most of this routinely now, takes a bit less thinking, but I had no idea I was doing this so often. Any advice as to how to relate sympathy without comparative analogies? Because I have none that do not sound bland and uncaring.

Also I know now that when most people complain they do not really want solutions, more so to be heard adn talked to about it, and I suck at this, and I used to get people upset over my suggestions (people thought I was treating them like they where stupid). So if comparisons do not help, and neither does giving constructive advice, what the heck do I do?

I do this too (I think I am doing it right now!) but I find it really frustrating when people take it to mean I am trying to talk about myself or shift the focus to me, when I am actually saying "I understand some of what you are dealing with because I have dealt with something like it myself." I don't do it in a bid for sympathy or one-upping or any other such thing, but people seem to take it in that light.

I found a blog post in which the blogger said that this was an autistic trait, and it led to me trying not to continue with why I can relate. It's annoying, but it also minimizes the annoying or mistaken responses. I can draw the connection for myself, but I don't have to explain it.

It's hard to internalize the "I don't have to explain it" part, though.

I think comparative analogies can work well as long as you can explain why you're talking about yourself.

I find the best way to avoid this kind of misunderstanding is try to explicitly say things like:

• "If I imagine/think about [my experience] it helps me imagine [how you feel/your experience/what you're going through],"
  
• "[Your experience] reminds me of [my experience] -- I know it's not the same but it gives me some idea of {how you feel/your experience/what you're going through/what [your experience] might be like/how [good/bad/sad/frustrating/amazing/awesome/other-feeling-word] that is}."
  
• (After listening to them talk about what they're going through:) "[My experience] -- is it anything like that/is that anything like what you're going through?"

Finding word-patterns to explicitly relate my experience to another person's is very difficult for me in practice (there's actually only one context where I could ever both remember to do it consistently, and apply it well...even in that context I didn't do it often because it's so hard)...but if it can be done it works to show people that I'm not just trying to talk about myself.

Otherwise the only way I know to show someone I care and understand involves something that's a bit like delayed echolalia -- saying back to the person some seemingly key part of what they've said, changing a word or two if you can (this only works with sound bites of words...if that makes sense?). Or saying generic things that match the emotional tone/context of the situation (e.g. "That's great/awful", "Oh no", "Yikes", "Yay!" etc.)....I used to do this when I couldn't understand people -- actually I still do this when I can't understand people, but I try not to (meaning I try to let people know when I don't understand them)....anyways my point is that saying generic things that match the emotional tone/context of the situation often works for showing empathy.



It's not one-upping if a person shares their own experience of pain/misfortune in an attempt to show empathy to another person.

If the other person misunderstands such an attempt to relate as engaging in a game of "my pain is bigger than yours", that's just misunderstanding -- not one-upping. Someone is only "one-upping" if their intent is to say, "I have more [x] than you do" (x can be something good or bad -- doesn't matter).

Last edited by animalcrackers on 27 Apr 2013, 7:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry, Mirror21. I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest you were intentionally doing something annoying.

My suggestion is you can briefly mention you have had similar experience, but don't go into detail about your experience. Instead I think you can just go back to talk about the other person's problem so he/she knows that you are really thinking about his/her problem. That's what I usually try to do. I think the important thing is that you keep talking about the other person's problem and give responses that indicate that you are really seriously thinking about it. As you said, they usually want to be listened to. So you give responses that show that.

Bringing your own stuff up for comparison as the first step toward showing sympathy is a fairly normal thing to do. After all, we develop empathy through our own experience and the notion, that most people will experience more or less the same.
Tactically it might be better to just express your sympathy without mentioning your own experience.
Sometimes we are not asked for solutions and explanations

I do this:

Person 1 - I lost my phone
Person 2 - Full of emotion, an unexpected level of emotion as if they themselves had experienced the lose of the phone, oh no bla bla bla
Me - (mental shift to memory of time I lost my phone) I tell them about this.
Person 1 & 2 - Oh er did you have it insured
Me - Wonders why the convesation shifted to me I was only showing understanding, answers question no.

Yeah it's annoying to find self doing this

People like to feel special and unique, keep the conversation on them.

^That is pretty much what I do. Sometimes I can just see that what I am saying is a disaster about to happen and find myself unable to close my mouth.

Everyone's advise has been great thus far =)

Can you explain how to do that?

i'm NT and am understanding my (new) aspie bf more and more and in the meantime learning so much more about myself. i love it! anyhoo, my bf tells me this ^ all the time! i understand his perspective (since it's true) and can allay my "pain" since i understand him....

There is a third one too: Narcissism.

Girl says something about herself, her struggles, or just her life.
Boy stays quiet or answers in 1-2 word replies and sounds dismissive until he sees an opportunity to shoot in something about himself and turn the conversation to his favorite subject: Himself. No part of her life that he isn't part of, is of any interest to him.

I am not accusing OP, I'm just passing on my experience with my ex.

That is one of many reasons why I don't bother dating or having a significant other. What does your girlfriend do for you, anyway, other than guilt trip you?

"Oh, that´s too bad" (hug?), "Can I do something?", "I´d like to help you. What do you need?",
"I feel for you. Been there myself".
Anything, that expresses understanding and doesn´t lead to comparisons or lectures