"Hyper" emotional?

[LogicalMind]

I have Alexathymia.
Up until recently, I had believed that every autistic person was emotionally absent...
I'm assuming Alxathymia and low emotional quotient are rare among autistic people?

 

[SusanLR]

I am low on the affective emotional empathy, but, high in cognitive.
This does come in handy when dealing with emergencies.
I can jump right in, think logically and help someone that may be injured.

Low affective empathy makes for good surgeons, doctors, nurses.

My score was low also. An 11.

 

[Fino]

@Fino I’m very curious what you think might be the cause of the total indifference.
I think that happens to me, or something very like that, when I’m processing something else & my brain won’t or can’t deal with the empathy response. It’s like something blew the fuse.

Sometimes I think it's because I just didn't "turn it on," but I'm not sure.

 

[Kalinychta]

I'm very confused by my empathy. Typically, especially with children, and especially when I'm working as a therapist, I feel tremendous empathy for people, sometimes bordering on the excessive. But sometimes, I can be entirely indifferent to someone's suffering, and I don't know. I can't think of an example, but sometimes I just feel nothing, and I could watch them slowly die and feel nothing.

I can completely relate to this. It’s like, if I think someone’s suffering is absurd and self-centered in some superficial way, I feel no empathy and just think they’re stupid. But if someone is truly in pain and suffering, it feels like knives are stabbing into my body. But also if someone is dying and I “get” why they’re dying, I don’t really feel that upset about it. It’s just weird, like you said...I almost can’t explain it. Sometimes I feel tremendous, crippling, utterly overwhelming empathy and compassion, but other times I feel nothing.

 

[Martha Ferris]

I checked the hyper emotion box.
It’s often not a fun place to live. Meditation and mindfulness have helped considerably. I’ve recently found myself able to produce again and that’s good. Painting is also at times draining: requires my intensity to be brought to bear in a focused process.
Form, pattern, color and light have forceful effects on my emotion which goes directly to images, and filed away with their concomitant emotions. Brain tattoos from my lifetime.
Animals’ and other critters’ plights affect me so powerfully that I have to keep my attention away or I’ll lose it - an utter wreck. Other people who lack understanding of this have insisted I should exert control over it. This, in the case of animals, birds, etc. is not possible.
You’d think that I’d pick up on other’s (human) emotions but unless I’m observing obvious body language I don’t.
If they tell me clearly & definitively, I believe them & can’t tell whether what they say is true or not.
Edited to add that I get angry easily and I forgive easily, I don’t like wasting energy on anger it’s not wise.

I have a great deal of empathy; another reason I went into health care and became an activist. Dealing with the plights of others in distress can be overwhelming if you don't let it go. Adopt a mind set that you do what you can to relieve the problem. Focusing on what you can do nothing about serves no useful prupose. All you can do is the best you can do.

 

[dylan_gnome]

I know I have empathy and the capacity for empathy, but only when other’s emotions are very obvious. Personally, I am hyper-emotional in that I tend to over-react to a lot of things that do not need that level of reaction