Empathy: Who has it?

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Nope I don't really have no empathy most of the time I am a self proclaimed selfish person but not at narcisistic levels narcisism is pretty much people with huge weaknesses and need to cover their tracks

When in meltdown I have 0 empathy an old women could be stading infront of me and get hit by a bus and I would not give a crap in most cases I would laugh because of the randomness and irony of it

I have total empathy, but I always come across people who don't.

I got rid of most of my empathy about 40 years ago. The little I have I save for my children and grandchildren. I prefer logic and fairness to empathy. Empathy, compassion and pity rot the the soul. They are sentimental twaddle.

ruveyn

My concept of empathy is this. If someone has a problem in their life and they come to me, then they must want me to solve their problem. Apparently this isn't what NT's want. I have been accused of being insensitve after spending a good amount of time trying to help someone fix something wrong with their life, but apparently they didn't want this. They just wanted someone to support them in their being upset. I can care, and I can try to help, but apparently this isn't empathy and not being supportive. I may never understand NT's.

I feel empathy very rarely, for only two people. One, is a friend, who resembled me several years ago; he's the only person who says what people are thinking, he's socially awkward but tries to learn pre-canned responses to get by, and acts mean to people despite the fact it makes him feel bad deep down, in order to mask his own ineptitude. He tries to get other people to hook up with girls because he's too awkward to. Given that I'm a nutjob it's probably not a good thing for me to be able to emphasise with him. The other person I understand is his sister, she has the same emotional reactions as me to negative things At least I can help her when she gets sad.

i'm still trying to figure it out. i seem to feel strong empathy in some situations--to the point where i feel completely helpless when others are in pain, because i want to make the painful situation go away so badly.

but i still have a difficult time grieving when someone dies. it's not that i can't grieve--but it doesn't seem to come naturally. (i usually only start grieving many years after someone has died--and it doesn't seem as complex a process as it does for most people. i have random moments of sadness and pain, and then it goes away.)

i also rarely miss people when they go. i don't know if the last thing has to do with empathy or not.

Rordiway wrote;

I wonder if there's such a thing as "displaced empathy" or "displaced theory of mind": where someone attributes states of mind and feelings to non-human objects and animals.

Like a kind of extended Pareidolia?
So the facial detection "software" gets used in an overgeneralised way and states of mind are applied to the weather (sort of like pathetic fallacy) and physical objects.

Perhaps someone, who's socially rejected, could project empathy onto non-human things as a means of coping with the loneliness?

Perhaps, if that person had real difficulties into looking into real human eyes, perhaps s/he would try and seek out non-human things that superficially represented human eyes and features because that was the only other option?
Because no one else will listen?

Perhaps in drawings, cartoons, animals, objects, etc?

I also wonder about lots of sensory information coming through into the brain.
Perhaps if the world if perceived intensely, empathy and human interactions simply "get pushed" to the bottom of the brain's "priority queue".

Perhaps it's like trying to find a friend's letter in amoungst a pile of junk-mail. It takes a long time, not because the person receiving the letter "doesn't care", but because there's just so much other "irrelevant" stuff to sift through.

Also, if someone has a "one track mind" on a project/idea, the topic of interest might fill the person's mental field of vision to such an extent that that person simply can't see anything else, even if that person deeply cares about others. The person is so engrossed with the interesting topic that s/he "forgets" to empathise or is distracted from socialising. If the person's "mental bandwidth" mostly devoted to the task, so other activities like socialising get pushed to the bottom of the priority queue . There might be an upper limit to mental bandwidth with some people preferring to do one task at once, rather than lots of little tasks simultaneously.

Perhaps, the person's brain sees the physical environmental details in the "foreground", so some social details might be given less consideration just because they seem to be in the "background" (through no conscious fault of the person). A person can have this kind of "back to front" world view and still be very caring.

Perhaps some people's brains simply take longer to process, integrate and make sense of the surrounding environment than others: hence it might take them longer to grasp social concepts and express those concepts back to other people.

It is entirely possible that you are right, Amber. I remember reading about how a favorite anime of mine was ending when I was younger. I was so depressed; I felt like those characters were people that I knew that had died.

I also found myself, a week or two ago, in the odd position of being inclined to thank my laptop and my mom's computer for helping me out so much, so maybe I'm just a little loopy. Then again, what do I lose by thanking them, and what if the various religions that think there is a spirit in everything are right? Or even those who think that it's just electronics or computers that have spirits?

The idea of "misplaced" empathy could also be another reason behind aspie hoarding/collecting. Either we think of these items as companions, or (I don't know if this would count. I am inclined to think not, but it came to mind) we link these items with people and events we cherish. My last two jackets have been gifts from my younger sister, and it's nearly impossible for me to rid myself of this last one (it took a new jacket from my sister to get me to finally rid myself of the last one). To borrow a phrase from a favorite character of mine, this jacket doesn't have a hole or two. It is a hole. Or two.

I wonder about puppet characters and "displaced empathy" too.

I used to find these appealing when I was little, I don't know, maybe because they were easier to understand?

Lots of little kids like puppets, but I was fascinated with them.


I wonder if the television itself could count as an imaginary friend, as well as fictional cartoon characters?

It calmed me down when I was little and otherwise restless.
Perhaps it was seen as a kind of care giver and friend, for when other people were either too busy or too stressed to see me.

With the television, there isn't as much demand for reciprocation: you just watch it.

When my last computer "died" I felt like someone real had died.
It was old, out of date and "on the blink" anyway, but I still felt upset.