Can Aspies develop empathy?

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No, it is not. What is actually a myth is autistic people "not having the capacity to care and be concerned about people’s feelings."

Who is this "they"? I've only ever heard that said on this forum, and only as a precursor to regurgitate patronising pseudoscience and even more myths about people with AS having "too much" empathy, then the thread turns into an identical thread to all other others on this subject where the original premise stated is never even proven.

You must have never ventured outside of this forum in order to have come to that conclusion.

i'm relatively good at having empathy much of the time, but relatively poor at expressing it appropriately much of the time.

That's the end of that then...

I have plenty of empathy. It just so happens that I'm really good at turning a blind eye on anything that doesn't impact me directly.

The real questions should be:

Are you a kind and considerate person? For me, the answer is sometimes.

Am I tolerant and forgiving of other people's failings? Not so much.

Am I emotionally available and helpful when others are in trouble? For some people.

Am I willing to do the hard work to improve? Not so much.

Does this make me a bad person? Not so much.

Does this mean I lack empathy and compassion? I have no idea.

To answer the original question, yes! It just might appear different.

Such as other on-line forums\groups where the same people with the same toxic opinions hang out? If so why are they any different from this place? I was referring to the real world.

This really made me laugh, so I repeated it out loud.

I then realised that you had (perhaps inadvertently) invented a new tongue twister.

phD can tish my tushy
phD can kish my tushy
phD can tish my cushy

LOL

This lack-of-empathy nonsense was cooked up by arrogant neurotypicals who think their clinical observations reveal the inner workings of another person's mind. In "Be Different", John Elder Robison suggests this myth started when researchers noticed that people on the spectrum don't instantly mirror another person's facial expressions. I have an intellectual empathy - when I understand another person's hardship, I empathize. As a child I felt great anxiety when I learned about starving children, burn victims, and others in great physical or emotional pain. I couldn't stop thinking about the horror they must be experiencing. I still have a strong sense of empathy, but I no longer obsess over the hardship of others.

I have empathy but I often get annoyed at what I perceive to be false empathy in neurotypicals. For example, if a disaster or deaths are reported on the news and everybody acts genuinely sad, it annoys me because I cannot see how this sadness can be genuine. Events affecting people you have no connection to or prior knowledge of is unlikely to elicit genuine empathy, unless you share some other thing in common with them: i.e. I can feel empathy for a victim of misogyny, because I am a woman, but not feel any for a drowning victim I never met.

When I have voiced these opinions I have been told they are inappropriate. Maybe it's just me.

I sometimes have to work harder to express empathy in personal situations. For example, a lovely colleague of mine is being bullied by another colleague, and told me all about it, tears and all. I was sorry it happened but I didn't know what to do or how to express that empathy; I listened, offered practical support, apologised I could not be more of an emotional comfort, and hugged her when she asked for a hug (I do not hug, it took effort ). I think I did an OK job, as my empathy was genuine, but as I say I struggled to express it naturally.

Empathy? Who cares...

What I mean is that I've had to work long and hard even partially stop being afraid of what others are feeling and how it might affect me. Granted, it's "fear of others' feelings" instead of "feeling others feelings". But I'm a happier person with less empathy except for those close to me.

Very eloquently and accurately put, IMO.

It's not just you. This happens to me as well.

For example, I am British, and on the day that Lady Diana died, I was abroad on holiday in Spain. The Spanish family with whom I was staying came and approached me soberly and told me "we have some terrible news for you." I got very worried, thinking one of my family might have died. But they told me gently that Lady Diana had died. Then they watched me carefully as though expecting me to break down and burst into tears.

I was puzzled, and said to them "why are you telling me this?" and they also got very puzzled by my response. They said to me "why don't you care? Aren't you sad?" I said to them "why would I be sad? I don't know her"

They looked at me strangely like I was very weird. I kept having to defend myself and explain over and over again that I had never met Lady Diana, and didn't know her personally so her death was not a personal loss for me.

However, I then returned back to the UK, and in my family's house in Britain, the TV was on and everybody was watching the televised funeral procession and my whole family was crying. The TV presenters were sounding so sad, and the TV cameras were showing footage of mass mourning showing the British public weeping on the streets. This mass outpouring of emotion infected me, and I also became sad and also cried.

Lesson I learned:

1. Irrational displays of overwhelming mass emotion can be infectious, and media coverage of tragedies can manipulate us into feeling emotions that we did not originally feel.

2. When not being infected and swept along by NTs' mass emotions, my own individual emotional response to the death of a perfect stranger tends to be a very logical and rational response, which for some reason tends to offend NTs.

Of course I felt very sorry for Princess Diana's sons for losing their mother at such a young age. However, millions of children all over the world are bereaved of their parents every single day, and people don't go crying about them. Seemingly, they all wanted to cry about Lady Diana purely because she was famous.

I find it unreasonable for people like me and racheypie666 to be depicted as "heartless" for not crying about the death of one specific famous woman, when millions of non-famous unknown women die every year, and the world doesn't pause to mourn their deaths en masse.

^
I don't think I knew anybody who got significantly emotional about the death of Princess Diana. One good thing about my choosing "alternative types" as friends is that I can voice my true feelings about such matters without any fear of being considered non-empathic. Here's an alternative comedian's take on the thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1H913UqQ6w

I was upset/bothered by the death of Diana, but much more so by Robin Williams' suicide. I actually cried during my psychiatrist appointment talking about it.