Can Autistics Really care?

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Well, in a nutshell, the main thing about it is that when I empathize I have to make an effort to do it. I have to actually decide to empathize.

When I make the decision to empathize I then make a very conscious effort to look at things the way the other person does. I try to imagine what it is that could make a person react or feel the way they do, of course it's a little easier if it is something that I have gone through before. If I think I am seeing something with which I have no experience I then try to work with whatever common ground I can find. For example, if I were to try to empathize with a woman who is on her period I wouldn't really know what it's like to be on a period (bad example, sorry, I'm having a brain fart). I have to try to think about what exactly it is that makes it that way, so even though I have never had a period I can guess that it is very unpleasant by comparing other things. Having had an accident or two when I was younger I can understand that the feeling of wetness in the pants is most unpleasant and can make you feel very anxious around other people. I also know what it's like to have chemical changes in my mind having been on many different medications before. I then imagine that having a period is like having a bad medicine trip combined with wetness in the pants. I then imagine how I would act in that situation. I would act almost exactly like a woman on her period if I did those two things so I conclude that I have empathized successfully because logically if you can imagine a situation in which you would react the same way as another person then you have probably successfully empathized. The final part is I try to respond the way I think they want me to, sometimes I don't know a lot about the situation though so I just try to stay out of the way most of the time because being careful is best because there is no 100% guaranteed way to empathize if you don't know the situation.

It's all situational and I try to consciously imagine the situations in my mind when I decide to empathize, but it doesn't come as naturally to me as it does to most people. I have noticed that when I do try to empathize I usually do a better job than most NTs because I can usually think of more different possibilities and I'm less likely to offend.

That was longer and more confusing than I thought it would be...

I don't care about certain dramas that are self inflicted and the dilemas. I will listen and not be judgemental but I don't feel for that person because it could have been avoided.

I do feel bad for those that have something bad happen to them that was unpreventable and injustice.

If someone I care about cries in front of me, I get sad.

If someone I don't know cries in front of me, I'm not sad.

Then sometimes if someone is feeling something, I feel it and I don't understand how because we are just near each other and I feel it. I'm not looking at them. Sometimes it's bad though like with anger. I react in a bad way to that.

Jainaday:

I would not really say that it is an intrinsically interpersonally emotional act to solidify one's reality within the world. If it means belonging to the "world" as a notion of a herd, group, etc., then yes. But prolonged social isolation, regrettably, seems to yield a degree of blunting of the intellect, and numbing of the senses (which is why I am here). I think it relates more to a notion that thoughts in the absence of followthrough and sensation lose their semantic content more than a need to "socialize".

Perhaps the problem of synchrony isn't a matter of empathy, so much as a problem of eccentricity. But I would say I'm out of synch in that, when talking to someone, I have very little harmony with their emotional state: In an ordinary person (I am given to believe), there is an innate tendency to supplant their feelings with those of a conversant. If no quantity of communication generates in me a mirror response, or even a more than abstract conception of what they're going through, then I am not empathizing. If I am feeling the same thing as someone happens to be feeling, this seems more like a chance agreement. I just don't think it counts unless the abstract realization of another's emotional state generates in me a novel state.

I have no empathy whatsoever for people. I have no desire to help other people. I find this strange. Almost all NTs have the desire to help people.

I'm very empathetic towards animals, but not so much towards most people.

I have a desire to help people but I've lost my patience with people who want your help but then talk about you behind your back.

I have no empathy for people, none. They say those who're near where I am or worst on the spectrum lack empathy (autistic disorder); I've got sympathy however.

Empathy equating to seeing/feeling the pain of others when you haven't experienced the causative agent of said pain.

I can feel empathy, I just don't know how to react to other people's emotions.

I think the crux of the whole empathy issue is that its really easy to "feel" empathy but to "produce" it in the socially expected manner is something that eludes most of us. Why are NT's so keen on canned responses anyway? I may be going more on personal experience here than on common wisdom about autistic spectrum disorders, but I think there's more of a deficit in one's ability or willingness to emulate others or follow a script, than in one's ability to "feel" an emotion such as empathy.

Same.

I feel very strong empathy. To the point that when I was younger on two occassions I've seen someone with nosebleeds and I've started to get a nosebleed as well. If anyone had anything in their eyes, I'd feel it in my eyes.

I doubt this is some sort of psychic phenomenon, becasue it also worked with some inanimate objects. My mother used to torture me by blowing up a balloon and then holding the lip of the balloon taught so it would screech as it deflated - I'd always think it sounded like a scream of pain or a cry for help and my mother would laugh at how I could burst into tears over a balloon.

The difference is, for some people, my senses of empathy and sympathy are removed completely. People who do things I hate seem to be removed from my consciousness as someone I have to feel pain for.

If I saw someone sadistically abusing their child and then get run over by a car, I doubt my heart would even skip a beat, until I thought of the poor kid who feels distraught over their parent's injuries. I'd empathise with the child's empathy for their parent, but not the parent themself.

I can feel what other people are feeling, I have quite a range of empathy. I just do not care.

Empathy is sought to get sympathy.

Feel how bad I feel, now you should comfort me, for making you feel bad, because I like it. If you do not, you should feel worse.

If I think you were wronged, I might say, you were wronged. I am not going to join in your emotional wallowing.

Mostly what I feel in others come down to, Please kill me, or please let me rob you. I can read both sides.

One, my life is so bad I should make eveyone around feel just as bad, and make it their responsability to deal with me. If you can't kill me you could at least understand, and beat me up. Then I can deny eveything, the emotional feeding of a trial, and you can go to prison, then you will get out and come kill me.

It's a plan, but I can just walk away.

The second is the first being more agressive, I bet you would not walk away if I stole everything you used to make a living, and if you do anything to me I will call the police. I did it, there is nothing you can do, all you have left is a roll of duct tape, a shovel, and a car trunk.

It is still begging for attention, and I saw it coming, felt it coming, and thanks for taking out the garbage, good by.

The people and dogs who deserve my sympathy, do not use it to suck on my soul. It is I am here, and I am here too. Momma dog knows I will pup sit for her, and she can take a break. Little kid knows that anything, hurt, happy, worried, just feeling it, scared, good, bad, the place in my heart never changes, is warm and comfortable, and she does not misuse it. I am open to both, for it makes me happy.

I do not think we lack empathy, or sympathy, we just ignore Psysic Vampires, who would use it to feed on the emotions of others. When someone who has no connection with you, or someone who does, seeks to make you angry, it is to feed. I say starve them.

Denyed their rightful feed, they are known for attacking us for seeming no reason, and those around with empathy see we have made them unhappy, and sympathy causes them to side with the frustrated feeder.

I walk away, and guess who becomes the new meal.

Total indifferance is my shield. When they show anger I misread, and tell them where the bathroom is.

In the good old days they were called Porlocks, those who feed on the emotional energy of others.

They come on with a burst of feeling, trying to bring out a desire to help them, kill them, hurt, them, sympathise with them, a confusion of emotion, to get you to react, then they feed. They claim it is their right, and if you do not feed them, you do not have a heart, you are cold and unfeeling, and cruel. I am.

I do not owe anyone anything. My feelings and emotions are not your playground.

Humans do this, I do not associate with many. Strangers are guilty till proven otherwise, I only let those into my heart that I wish. They are few, and mostly dogs.

My lack of empathy seems to cause a major demand in some, they will beat me up just to get me to react to them, and will claim it is my fault, something is wrong with me. It is not empathy I lack, but sympathy for blood suckers.

Where I once had feelings, Porlocks fed in my youth, they left me with thick and unfeeling scar tissue, it must have tasted good to suck all the feeling out of a child. I was left to live out my days, feeling empty and robbed, and the demands for more food still come. Emotional rape is legal and socially acceptable. It can be done to children.

I would feel nothing watching their life form a puddle of red in the street, but I would give a little smile.

Porlocks stole the joy from my life, but I can still smile. First I read the Obituary page, getting in a good mood, then the comics.

If indeed these 'mirror neurons' are at the core of empathy then that would just be a neurological basis for the 'if that happened to me' process. Iow, 'if it were me' based empathy is by no means inferior, or fake.

I have developed a kind of secondary empathy. I put myself in the other persons shoes and try and imagine how I would feel if something happened to me.

I dont necessarily get a feeling from it but i get an idea which helps.

Secondly I find that the more i go through life and the older i get, also the more tragedies and heartbreaks that happen to me, the more understanding I get of others pain. I dont feel the pain with them but I understand it and how it feels.

I remember when i did phone counselling some NT girls were saying they were worried that they would start crying if the callers were crying, as they had the tendency to absorb others emotions.

I answered calls for one year and I never absorbed the callers emotions!

I have an extremely difficult time with feeling empathy, but I don't know if that's mostly Asperger's or the severe bullying I experienced when I was younger.
Oddly though, I can feel empathy for animals and young children or those that I feel I can relate with strongly who went through the same pain I did, but other than that I tell them I went through worse and to just stfu.

I can't speak for anyone except myself, but from everything I have read, including on here, I am not at all sure that this is also the case with the majority of autistic people.

There is a HUGE difference between being unable to read body language, and thus missing out on cues that would tell one when one has to empathize, and being unable to emphathize altogether (or not bothering to). Neither would I describe having a differing emotional organization, and not having specific feelings or having them in usual situations, as "insensitivity".

While I don't specifically like the description of autistic and schizotaxic personalities as "wood and glass", it appears accurate here - people who are numbed in some areas are usually surprisingly sensitive in others, much more so than the majority of others.

I personally feel others' emotions very keenly, almost as if they were my own. I may miss out on the implied subtext of what someone is saying, and I may also misinterpret the very nonverbal signs that indicate to me that something is "wrong" - but I do feel that something is "wrong", and quite strongly at that. And, while I tend to go numb at times, apparently due to depression, and appear to have areas where I'm unable to feel anything (e.g. when people suffer, I feel it strongly, but when they die, I barely react at all; on the other hand, when an animal dies, it is devastating), I would not call myself insensitive to others.