Is this me changing, or is it just a lack of empathy?

Post Reply New Topic

A year or so ago when I joined WrongPlanet under a different name I was one of those lonely souls who had a thousand problems and felt like killing myself would be a better way out. I feel differently now. I don't know what has changed, or whether it's just me having a fit where I have no empathy for others.

I have a acquaintance that always comes to my house when she has a fight with her mother, and always tells me that she wants to die. But she makes it all dramatic like she wants my sympathy to make her feel justified in running away from the matter (she's a NT btw). I always help her and try to cheer her up regardless, but sometimes I just want to yell at her that if she wants to die she should go ahead and do it quickly and that whether or not she wants to live is none of my business.

Which, I've been told, is pretty harsh. I'd basically be telling her to go jump off a cliff.

I have these little annoyances niggling at me as well. There are other things, like finger pointing, refusing to see what is right in front of you, blinding running into a situation on your beliefs instead of the facts, and so on. It seems all around me that people are just destroying their own lives, sitting in denial, using others as scape goats, just being very ugly on the inside. Am I justified in thinking this or do you think that I'm just a brat/as*hole for even thinking this way about others?

That's pretty fair, actually. A lot of people talk about suicide because they want the attention. It's a pretty effective form of emotional blackmail. The melodramatic ones you don't usually have to worry about. The ones that really do commit suicide tend to just get on with it, and when they're found later people often say they had no idea there was anything wrong. Sad to say, I suspect us aspies are more likely to do that.

You've got a choice, really. You can either accept that this is how the game is played, offer her the sympathy she craves and let her get it all out of her system, or you can just tell her to grow up. If you do that, she'll call you heartless and mean and she'll run off to sob to someone else. She may call by tomorrow as though nothing happened, or she may bear a grudge. It varies from person to person. It is very unlikely that she will actually kill herself, and any attempt is likely to be half-hearted, like taking a pack of twelve headache tablets (which will only make her sick).



I'd say you've developed a very good sense of how people think. Depressing, isn't it? Try not to let it get you down. Learn from it instead. If you can learn to recognise personality types in people, you'll find them much easier to interact with and even manipulate if you so wish. Just ignore everything you see on television and in films.

I think you are realizing how annoying it is when someone keeps talking about killing themselves and they never do it and how it appears to others. That is why I don't say anymore I want to kill myself or that I feel like it because it looks like manipulation and attention seeking.

Sometimes we see other people doing things we did and when it annoys us, it makes us realize so we stop doing it ourselves. How your mother is making you feel, you are realizing how you have made others feel when you did it.

And sometimes it upsets us because what someone else is doing is something we do and it annoys us as well but unfortunately we can't always just stop it. We are upset because we are realizing how we make others feel and there is nothing we can do about it so we must tolerate it in others and be patient. Sometimes there is something we can do about it and it be called working on it to get better so we aren't as annoying or appear that way to others and make others feel that way we felt.


I've been there done that and I have felt like an as*hole for it but I decide who cares. It doesn't make me bad since feelings are never wrong. I know people sometimes turn into as*holes because they can't take it anymore how they feel from someone. Sometimes I wonder if it's my fault when someone is an ass to me because I did it to them but I won't know when it's my fault since I can't read their minds. I feel I have gotten less nicer over the years because I have gotten so tired of people and how they think and act. I realize no wonder there are as*holes out there, sometimes they are created by society because they get so fed up. I feel my temper is running short.

I understand that this is how people are, but I'm consumed by the question of why.

Why sit in denial when what you want is right in front of you?
Why blame something on someone else when you won't be punished for it?
Why say half truths, or lie outright about being depressed and suicidal to a formerly suicidal person?

What, do they think that such negative things are cool? Are they having delusions? Nobody can really answer these questions. It makes me very annoyed.

I think I may eventually turn into one of those people. Despite have Asperger's Disorder and Clinical Depression, I am currently doing just fine. Yet here's some NT with none of those things, who stands on the edge of a building as if to kill herself but answers her damn phone and laughs at the text (this actually happened). Grr. It feels like some people are just not trying.