Just read the study from 2009: Aspies have TOO MUCH Empathy

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That's called sympathy.

Cohen has done physical testing in this area (neuro stuff), and it comes up with impaired empathy just the same as the written tests do.

What does impulse control have to do with anything? Your replies to this thread seem random and only barely topical.

Cohen's definitions are poor and his written test doesn't actually seem to test empathy. It seems to be a test with questions about empathy that autistic people tend to score low on.

Well have you read the link I gave or not?

It clarifies nothing for me. I'm sorry if I come across as confrontational, as I do not want to. But: What are you saying?

No, that is not sympathy. Sympathy has nothing to do with hypersensitivity or strong emotions. Sympathy is feeling pity for another person's situation. Empathy is feeling another person's emotions.

For instance, most doctor's have a strong sense of sympathy, but are either naturally absent of or have to repress/reject any feelings of empathy, or they would not be able to do their job's properly. When a doctor sees someone in pain and wants to do something to alleviate that pain, they are experiencing sympathy. However, if a doctor were overly empathetic, if they saw someone crying in pain, they would be overwhelmed with emotion, and unable to perform their job properly.

Sympathy: understanding one's pain or emotion.
Empathy: feeling one's pain or emotion.

While the two are not mutually exclusive, they can and often do occur in the absence of the other.

I'm a very strong empathizer, but a poor sympathizer. If I see someone else in distress, I will feel distressed. That is, until the reason for their distress is introduced, at which point I'll begin analyzing the causation and determine if it fits the emotion. If the emotional response doesn't make sense to me in terms of what caused it, I will shut down and not be able to console the person.

For instance, several months ago, my boyfriend called me in tears. I was shocked to hear him crying, and immediately felt as if I were going to cry myself. My distress level continued to build, until I finally got him to tell me what was wrong. It turned out, his parents had said something really awful to him, something related to a subject that they know he is quite sensitive about. However, his parents are very mean, and always say cruel things, so I didn't get why he should be so surprised or upset. Once I analyzed the cause, I was unable to sympathize with him, because his response didn't make sense to me.

You can be sympathetic towards someone's pain without "understanding" it.

However, it is not possible to "experience" someone else's emotions. If you cry because you see someone else crying, you are experiencing your own emotions, not their's.

I don't "get" why someone would be upset over being dumped by their girlfriend/boyfriend, but I just go along with it and offer "support."

You got sympathy wrong, fragilecover.

Sympathy is feeling something due to actually having firsthand experience with the event/whatever

I.e., I know what it's like for someone to lose a pet they really loved as I have lost one

Empathy is feeling something due to an event that you haven't experienced firsthand

I.e., I don't know what it's like to lose a child as I've never lost one

"Normal" people feel empathy, even though there's no logical reason for them to, i.e., they don't know what it's like to go through it.

I'm sorry to be argumentative, but your above statements are entirely false.

You have the two mixed up. You can easily find definitions of the two words and explanations of their differences with a simple search. I studied the two concepts thoroughly in my course of study.

Empathy literally means 'to feel into' - it's a sharing of another's emotions, not a feeling of pity or condolence.

^ Agreed. And you definitely don't need to have experienced something in order to have sympathy for someone else who is experiencing it (same goes for empathy).

I would still like an explanation as to how it's possible to experience someone else's emotions......

You can experience another's emotions in the sense that the cause of the emotion did not originate in you, but with the other person. It's difficult to describe if you've never experienced it yourself.

I used this example in another thread, but if you've ever felt afraid when the hero or heroine in a horror film is in immediate danger, then you've felt empathy. Most films require at least sympathy on part of their audience to be successful, but horror films require empathy on part of the audience.

When you feel fear in this situation, you are identifying yourself with the hero or heroine, and thus, technically experiencing THEIR fear. After all, YOU are not being chased by the monster...the character is. There is no rational reason to be afraid, but you are, because you are taking on the character's emotions.

If you are unable to connect to a horror film this way, it's either poorly made, or you are unable to properly empathize.

I think it comes from imagining that the same thing has happened to you. For example, my neighbour's 3 yr old son died suddenly. As mother to a little girl, I couldn't help but imagine how she might be feeling. Of course, I was not actually feeling the same emotion as her and my emotions were nowhere near as intense as hers, because it hadn't happened to me, But, I could imagine myself in the shoes of a bereft mother for an instance. How would I feel if it had happened to me instead? You won't know exactly, unless it happens, but you can make a decent a guess at your probable emotional state. Had I not been a mother, I expect it might have been harder to imagine the emotion. I had sympathy for her, which I had to express when I met her, but I also had empathy, which isn't worth expressing, because how can I possibly truly understand. If you have real empathy, you will also be aware of its limits. An expression like 'I know how you feel' is not helpful, unless you have gone through the same thing.

I've gotten into quite a few arguments with people who feel its impossible to be an autistic empath.

I'm very much autistic, and am diagnosed. I'm also very much an emapath.

I don't know how to explain feeling someone else's emotions other than with that description. That's really what it feels like. It's overwhelming, and can be very positive or very negative. I cannot understand the nonverbal cues they're giving at all, but I feel emotions that are other people's.

In my case, alexithymia makes this even more complicated. I feel other people's emotions, I can't read the nonverbal cues to understand them, my emotions and other people's emotions get intertwined with the ones I'm feeling on my own and I can't separate them out, I have no idea what I'm feeling for emotions, even when they're someone else's.

So basically it comes down to I feel other people's emotions, react to them as I'm feeling them, and have the same difficulties with putting words to them or identifying them as I do my native emotions.

It's not sympathizing with them, its not feeling bad for them in a bad situation because you know its a bad situation. It's feeling the pain that the other person is feeling, or the joy. It's... complicated.

And yes, its apparently very common in gifted individuals. What I read today said that it was even a stronger overexcitability than the intellectual one is on average.


At the level I'm talking about its not at all about being able to imagine what is happening to them happening to you. Some people I've talked to have thought the comparision to synestesia is a meaningful one - in that you can hear the color blue, in this, you feel emotions, in the same way you feel native emotions, instead of decoding them into things you can consciously comprehend and process (or as well as).

I'm not saying it's wrong; I just don't like expressing emotion like that publicly.

I strongly relate to this.

There are times when I'm with another person, and I'll very suddenly feel sad or depressed, or some other emotion that doesn't seem to jive with the situation or the thoughts I'd had msot recently. This is very confusing. I'll only later discover that, although the person I was with wasn't making it obvious, they were feeling the same emotion that had suddenly overcome me, but that there had been some event earlier that explains the way they were feeling. The only thing I can conclude is that I'm quite literally feeling the other person's emotion, without being aware of it.

I wonder if, for some of us, alexithymia is the result of the fact that we are times feeling our own emotions, the emotions of others or a combination of the two, and so it becomes quite confusing to determine the cause of the emotions.