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Empathy

E

Eva Bonnes

Active Member
I've been told aspies have no empathy but I think in this area the professionals may have it wrong. I think aspies have so much empathy that we MUST turn it off to survive. I think many have learned to turn it off and on for this reason. What do you think ?
 
It's my belief that we often don't know how to express our empathy---whether we feel an abundance of it or less than the average amount. The medical professionals who really know what they're talking about are aware of this key difference.

Welcome to the forum!
 
Eva Bonnes said:
I've been told aspies have no empathy but I think in this area the professionals may have it wrong. I think aspies have so much empathy that we MUST turn it off to survive. I think many have learned to turn it off and on for this reason. What do you think ?
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I totally agree.
 
Thank you for the welcome. My son was recently diagnosed and as he was diagnosed the doctor made it clear that I too have aspergers. Finally I understand why I cried at loud noises why I can't see well on sunny days and why I become so overwhelmed in crowds. My mother taught me to calm myself using a technique of imagining a bubble around myself when people were overwhelming to me. I use this even today and it really helps prevent melt downs. I taught this to my son but it just wasn't enough for him at school so now we homeschool.
 
I guess I have to in a sense turn off my empathy in crowds, and view them as obstructions rather than people.

Here's how I see it. Most autism spectrum disorders are diagnosed quite young. And people, even neurotypicals, are not born with empathy, it's something that needs to be learnt. People with autism pick it up slower than most, and when it is diagnosed at a young age, most of the kids haven't picked it up yet.
Later in life, around the teenage years, the learning of empathy speeds up, and has the capability to surpass the neurotypical's average empathy level. This is why a lot of us are kind, friendly people and want to do the right thing.
But there is still a barrier to knowing what emotional effect an event has on someone you don't know very well, and without understanding the effect, empathy is impossible to feel. So it is easier for some of us to feel empathy when we know what the other is feeling, but appears less when we don't, and as most psychologists don't know you, and people on the spectrum are less likely to socialise and know many people particularly well, empathy is less evident.
 
Welcome and as an Aspie I have to agree. I think I feel and am more sensitive than most people. I was always told I was super emotional & sensitive. Sounds, light and textures would really affect me. I'm light sensitive, I find the sun irritating. I have switched off becoming more robotic and more detached. It's helped me live in a NT world !
 
I agree with the concept that we are actually more sensitive and sometimes turn it off to survive, but I don't think that's the main factor. I think that our senses are so overwhelmed by our surrounding that we simply miss cues for empathy opportunities in the flood of information. When we know that it's an empathy opportunity and are not flooded, I think most Aspies are very engaged.
 
I have empathy, however I don't handle it in any consistent manner and I know it. So it remains "confusing" to me at best.

Makes me wonder what the medical professionals would surmise if I were to tell them this....:confused:
 
By the way, not all medical professionals subscribe to the opinion that Aspies don't have empathy. I think the more educated ones tend to know better.
 
Atay said:
By the way, not all medical professionals subscribe to the opinion that Aspies don't have empathy. I think the more educated ones tend to know better.
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That's what bothers me. I'd think they should all be on the same page. Neurology should not be handled like economics, IMO.

I guess my bias comes from years of underwriting non-medical professional liability. Where higher standards are expected along with higher legal consequences.
 
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Yep, it's a pretty serious problem. One of the primary issues I've observed is that therapists tend to be skilled in communication and connection, but are less likely to have science-oriented brains. Psychological researchers tend to spend too little time connecting with people to actually understand them below a basic, measurable level. So, their "science brain" doesn't necessarily get utilized for underlying emotional processes.

Also, professors are always trying to publish and get grants, so the areas being studied are very often not applicable to things like emotions and empathy, which tend to be less popular for some reason. In fact, when I recently investigated what the researchers at my local university were studying, almost none of it had to do with emotional processing.
 
The Intense World Theory of Autism

"The intense world that the autistic person faces could also easily become aversive if the amygdala and related emotional areas are affected with hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity. The lack of social interaction in autism may therefore not be because of deficits in the ability to process social and emotional cues as previously thought, but because a subset of cues are overly intense, compulsively attended to, excessively processed and remembered with frightening clarity and intensity. Autistic people may, therefore, neither at all be mind-blind nor lack empathy for others, but be hyper-aware of selected fragments of the mind, which may be so intense that they avoid eye contact, withdraw from social interactions and stop communicating. In such a scenario, the world may become painfully intense for autistics and we, therefore, propose autism as an Intense World Syndrome."

Simple summary:
A Radical New Autism Theory - The Daily Beast

Research article:
The Intense World Syndrome – an Alternative Hypothesis for Autism
 
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I have plenty of empathy for situations worth empathy. For instance, starving children, cruelty to animals, people struggling with illness or serious difficulties, victims of war/abuse/violence...
However, If you can't find a parking space close to tesco, if you just got a fine for parking on double yellow lines, if the guy at McDonalds forgot your fries, if you gained 10lbs and you can't buy that dress, or you're just stuck in bad traffic and you missed your favourite tv show...then no. I have zero empathy.
 
Atay said:
I agree with the concept that we are actually more sensitive and sometimes turn it off to survive, but I don't think that's the main factor. I think that our senses are so overwhelmed by our surrounding that we simply miss cues for empathy opportunities in the flood of information. When we know that it's an empathy opportunity and are not flooded, I think most Aspies are very engaged.
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This is the way I would summarize things. I have a visceral reactions to being told that people with ASDs aren't capable of empathy. I'm fairly sure I'm capable of empathy and sympathy, and sometimes I feel empathy more often than I can deal with it!
I just don't seem to be choosing the same moments that most people are. I think we get overwhelmed more easily because we are less inhibited... we pick up on a lot of "cues" that have very little significance to people without disorder, which leaves us less able to react appropriately to many emotionally loaded situations.
 
It's a myth that we have no empathy. Professionals know that. NTs, on the other hand… well, they pretend a lot, and if it's real then they misunderstand and then it's false after all.
 
Here’s Simon Baron-Cohen’s definition of empathy, taken from the first chapter of his book The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism.
"Empathizing is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion. Empathizing does not entail just the cold calculation of what someone else thinks and feels (or what is sometimes called mind reading). Psychopaths can do that much. Empathizing occurs when we feel an appropriate emotional reaction, an emotion triggered by the other person’s emotion, and it is done in order to understand another person, to predict their behavior, and to connect or resonate with them emotionally."

"Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty is his third book and by far his most personal – At only six chapters it is a fast read, but don't let this book's slim appearance fool you, for it is weighted with authority. Exposing the lack of empathy that facilitates the objectification of others, dehumanization and cruelty is the nub of Baron-Cohen's research and the reason he has written this book."

"Narcissists, borderline and psychopathic personalities are introduced as people lacking "affective empathy" – the ability to feel others' feelings. Baron-Cohen's new paradigm classifies these personality types as "zero-negative": a zero amount of affective empathy being a negative condition, because the ability to self-regulate the way they treat others is significantly compromised."

"By contrast, Baron-Cohen defines people with Asperger's syndrome or classic autism, which is his own field, as "zero-positive". Like the zero-negatives these people lack affective empathy, but in addition they score zero on "cognitive empathy" – thinking others' thoughts. Because some zero-positive individuals have, through their unusual ability to systemize, pushed human culture forwards with their discoveries (Einstein was late to talk – a sign of classic autism – yet he was an extreme systemizer who discovered E = mc2), Baron-Cohen categorizes them "zero empathy positive".

That is, Asperger's are psychopaths who can sometimes be useful to society if we're smart like Einstein.
 
No, I don't have empathy for humans in the general sense any NT does. I can learn to develop empathy towards a particular individual which requires that I have a tremendous amount of information about her. I need to know her history, likes and dislikes and general mindset, a process that takes at least two years of intense work for me, therefore I consider very carefully whether the effort is worth it.
Basically, why would I need empathy for unimportant (for me and my life) people like colleagues or neighbors?
There's a thing called language, and I expect that an adult can express himself adequately. After all, I'm not a mind reader.
 
He doesn't do a lot of research, then? I mean, he doesn't actually check his hypotheses.
 
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