Slowly starting to realize we don't feel empathy

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We are completely unable to empathize with other people. At all. I'm slowly beginning to truly realize. Every friendship or relationship/connection I have isn't real, its fake. We're like socially impaired sociopaths.

Even worse, because of our mind blindness, we're so unaware and so self-centered that most of us don't even realize the extent of the problem. When we're not coming off that way, its faked, and with no emotional commitment.

Prove me wrong. I want to be proven wrong, and I want to be shown if there's been some success in overcoming this...

Yeah. I've been slowly realising the same thing
Only took me a few decades to get there

My feeling is that there are ways you can give back to people, or if not to individual people then to society, even if they're not the usual ways people express empathy.

I'm thinking of how autists have contributed to advances in maths and science and information technology, or maybe provided healing through art and music, even if they had trouble relating to people on a personal level. Einstein would have to be the classic example.

There must be a reason why genetics throws out the occasional autistic. Maybe that's what those of us who are high functioning are for

Speak for yourself. It's OK to say "I don't feel empathy" if that is your truth, that's fine. Don't say "we".

Some of us are capable of empathy and emotional connection with others. If you are not, that's your thing. I'm not a sociopath, so I don't appreciate being lumped in with them.

I usually feel empathy when I have experienced something another person has experienced.

Unless I've experienced it, I'm frequently limited to "sympathy."

https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpo ... l-empathy/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/auti ... d3fe237413

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ou ... y-disorder

Some reading material you might find helpful.

Not true. Every autistic is different. Though I may not always be able to feel others' feelings viscerally (I don't know what the "normal" is like for that), I care about others and I try to help or encourage them when I can. I'm not really mind-blind, either; I am aware that others have thoughts and feelings, even if I don't know what they are. If I come across as self-centered, it's because I don't think people should be allowed to hurt me. And having no real friendships doesn't mean you don't feel empathy, but rather that you have trouble connecting with others because of social impairments. I had no truly close friends for a long time, but now I do. I bet you do care for others, even if you have trouble showing it. If you didn't, you wouldn't care about how you came across.

^That's a great image.

Like the OP, I would be interested to hear examples of autistics acting towards others in a truly empathetic manner.
I'm not convinced we can really do it, however much we feel as though we are empathetic.
I would love someone to demonstrate that we can.

Speak for yourself.
I feel empathy.

I've started thinking that although I react to others' pain with very strong emotions of my own, which certainly feel to me like empathy, I'm fooling myself.
I consistently fail to act on those feelings in a way that is recognised as being empathetic, so for all practical purposes, I have no empathy.

Perhaps the answer depends on whether you define empathy as an internal emotion, an external emotional response, or a way of acting. I feel the emotion internally but I seem to be impaired in the latter two, which I think are the true definition of empathy.

Don't be hard on yourself. It's often hard for Aspies to know the right way to help someone or to express empathy. And empathy is one of those words that no one seems to agree on how to define, but to me it just means caring about someone's feelings.

I am not a sociopath.