Extreme empathy rather than a lack of?

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I've read several accounts on here of people not crying when close relatives pass away, or at other times where it would be deemed appropriate, even desired. I realized after reading those accounts that I also failed to cry when I learned of the death of my great grandmother, to whom I was very close. However, there was a circumstance surrounding her death that made me break down and sob for several minutes:

My great grandmother died when I was 12 years old. I was sad and missed her, but did not cry. On the day of my high school graduation, at the age of 18, my grandmother gave me a card that contained a savings bond and was signed in my great grandmother's handwriting. It turns out, she had purchased a graduation card for me and signed it 6 years in advance of my graduation, knowing she didn't have long to live. As soon as I saw the signature, I started sobbing, but not from the sadness of missing her, but because I imagined how SHE must have felt purchasing and signing that card. The pain and tears I was experiencing were HERS, not my own.

This sort of thing happens to me often. I was recently upset with my boyfriend for some remarks he made around our friends that typically would not bother me if he made them in private. It took me a couple of days to realize that the discomfort I had felt wasn't my own, but was what I perceived my friend would feel because of the comment. I got angry with my boyfriend because I was reacting as if I were someone else.

Last night, I was out to dinner with my boyfriend and one of our close friends, when an acquaintance of my boyfriend's noticed us and came to take a seat at our table. While I think this acquaintance is a very nice person, I felt angry and irritated when he sat down...because I was feeling my friend's perceived reaction.

Today at my brother's birthday party, he opened one of his gifts, and I knew that it was a duplicate gift. I immediately felt completely embarrassed and annoyed, even though I wasn't the one who had purchased the duplicate. I was super anxious the rest of the time, through him opening the duplicate gift, and only felt better once everyone else seemed to be taking it in stride.

While movies make me cry all the time, it is never the so-called sad events that make me cry, it is the characters' negative reactions to the event that make me cry. i.e. a child is killed, but no one in the film cries, neither will I. If something lesser happens, but someone in the film does cry in response, I will cry. It was not the idea that The Terminator was being destroyed at the end of Judgement Day that made me cry, but Eddie Furlong's tearful reaction. Had he not cried, I would have been emotionally neutral to the event.

Also, when I watch my favorite movies with other people who have not seen them, I almost always react to the movie the way they do. "Halloween" is one of my favorites, and I had the opportunity to see it on the big screen a couple of years ago. This was a big occasion for me, but it turns out the audience was mostly teenagers who spent the movie laughing at inappropriate places and responding with boredom. By the end of the movie, I was annoyed with the audience, yes, but the most upsetting part was that I felt the same way about the movie while watching it that they did. I disliked one of my favorite movies, because the people around me disliked it! When I shared another movie that I loved with my boyfriend, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I had liked about it the first time...I thought it was awful! Well, when the movie ended, my boyfriend revealed he had hated it. I watched it by myself a week later, and loved it just as much as the first time.

So, basically, I feel whatever the other people in the room are feeling, without them having to tell me how they are feeling!

Does anyone else here find that instead of a lack of empathy, you have an intense, almost super-intuitive sense of empathy?

I have primarily the lack of empathy thing going on, however, sometimes I get what I have termed "retrograde empathy" (term I just use with myself), which is just me realizing the emotional things about a situation long after the fact. Often this happens as I go through a day's events, or think about some specific conversation. It's often with some massive conversation blunder, on my part. Or I'll realize I was being mean or something like that when that wasn't my intention at all.

The thing is, it always happens so late after the event, that there's usually nothing I can do to fix the goof-up.

That is actually a theory some have put forward on autism, because research has shown that it is not as clear cut as people with autism have a lack of empathy. In fact studies have shown that in some ways they must do. For example a famous study in this example is one comparing those with autism and those with psychopathic disorder. They were asked something along the lines of something that meant they had to intuatively distinguish between events deemed morally wrong that had no affect of any people and those that did cause some kind of harm to people.

This is one of the basises for empathy. If you can't do this, you can't empathise. If you can then its likely some sort of empathising type behaviour must be going on at some level. The results were clear cut, those with autism distinguished as well as expected for 'NTs' those with psychopathic disorder had a severe difficulty in distinguishing between the two.

This suggests that on some level at least empathy is going on with those with autism. The problem in showing empathy then seems to be less likely to be linked to the ability to feel empathy. So the problem has to be in ability to pick up signals that would trigger empathy, to recognise these feelings in themselves (that seems to be a big one with you - and me funnily enough. I'll often feel sick then realise cognitively that it might be because I am worried what other people are thinking) or ability to show emotions cause by feeling empathy.

One theory put forward in this big debate is that those with autism do feel empathy, but do so on such a large scale that the mind in protection tries to shut out these feelings completely for most of the time. Just imagine if you were feeling other's feelings all the time, it would be terrible.

I think it has something going for it, as it would explain things like why those with autism may get inexplicably irritated when others are. However I don't think its the be all and end all of theories. It may be a part, maybe only with some, maybe with all but some may be on such a high setting that their perception of feeling empathy is shut down pretty much 100 percent of the time.

I don't know as there are so many different theories floating around there, but I personally have felt discomfort that I think was not my own and I can't stand being around people when they are in a bad mood as I get irritated. Though again not sure whether I am getting irritated because they are being illogical or because I am feeling empathy.

Still its something to think about.

People with autism do not lack empathy, although the empathy is shown in different ways.

This myth about people with autism lacking empathy needs to be shattered. It is one of the primary reasons that people justify abuse of people on the autistic spectrum (they have no feelings, so who cares??) Yes, it's stupid, but ignorant people really do believe that.

There was recently a thread (link) about an article which suggests a reduction in Cognitive Empathy but an increase in Emotional Empathy. That would mean having problems to understand the emotions of others. But in the cases in which you perceive an emotion you are enormously affected by it.

i feel sorry for inanimate objects. when i am grocery-shopping and i see food items carelessly dumped on the floor, i must stoop [OUCH!] and pick those items up and place them back upon the shelf. when i was shopping in the back rows of the seattle goodwill store, in the miscellaneous bins that would be ground into scrap if they were not purchased, i saw a forlorn-looking dolly hand reaching up and out of the pile of various unwanted junk, so i reached down and grabbed the hand and picked it up out of the pile- it was attached to a sound cylinder with a reeded piston sliding up and down inside of it, that would go "MEE-OOOOWWWWW!" when you tilted it straight up or down- it was a curious kind of backscratcher that meowed when you scratch your back with it. i couldn't resist, i felt so sorry for it just lying in there, that i had to rescue it. i gave it a good bath and since then i keep it on a nice soft pillow next to a stuffed little toy i found one day. i talk to my car, though i didn't give it a name. i do not name objects of other sentient beings. my cats have always been addressed as "cat." i baby my car, such as when i climb hills i turn off the a/c to make it easier on the engine. i kiss my car now and then, and give it love pats often. i try to hug it. my old house [my parents's house], when i had to leave it upon their passing, i missed it terribly. i talked to the walls and kissed them goodbye on my last day there. i told the house i'd miss it. i carressed the walls and tried to hug them. i still miss it. the new owner carved it up and that perturbed me. this all reminds me of the hari kuyo [needle shrine] [shinto buddhism] "festival mass of broken needles" where "retired" sewing machine needles rest in vats of warm soft tofu and are prayed over by shinto priests, in gratitude for their years of hard and selfless service for their masters, and whose remaining years are spent in assured comfort. that made me cry when i first read about it. i guess i express my empathy/compassion this way because the normal ways for me are frustrated in various ways.

These threads keep popping up...

People with autism do not lack empathy. In some ways they actually tend to have more empathy than the general population.

I still don't know how I'd deal with death. Maybe like the OP, but maybe I won't be able to respond and have a lot of negative attention drawn to me. I haven't lost someone close to me.

Last edited by Bun on 12 Feb 2012, 7:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

... I just remembered that a while ago the door rang and my mum didn't wake up, and I tried to wake her for a very long time... I *did* cry thinking something had happened, so maybe I do cry at times of crisis.

I think you are thinking about a different kind of empathy, empathy shouldn't be confused with sympathy. The lack of empathy aspect means lack of social empathy, to not see how the other person is socially feeling and reciprocating at that direct moment.

My experience with Death

I understood death at a very young age. When i was 5 my mother found me late at night totally destraught in bed i was crying my eyes out in a state panic repeating "i dont want to die, i dont want to die" because i relised what death ment and how final it was, gone for ever


When my Grandad died a few year ago I felt bad but only for my dad because i was able to easily imagine how i would feel if my dad died. At the funeral i was just looking around watching family members reactions , especially the men thinking i should just copy how they looked

When i was 20 i was seeing a girl whose Grandma had died. She was very close to her and understandably very upset. I didnt comfort her or mention or even acknowledge it to her and she thought me very cold but i just didnt know what to say or do and i thought if it was me i would like to be left alone and not talk about it so thats what i did

When i was 21 a co-worker of mine called Tony died of cancer. I knew i felt bad and very sad deep down because he was someone i had managed to build up a bit of a connection but it felt somewhat disconected and it was somewhat fleeting and didnt think about it again. Then over a year later when i was having a bad bout of depression and anxiety it hit me, Tony is dead! hes had his time, gone for ever, i then had a panic attack

Im not sure if this shows i have empathy , sympathy or lack of ,or maybe im just thinking of myself

What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?

I think empathy requires some degree of identification while sympathy does not, but I may be confusing the two, or getting it wrong.

I don't express strong emotion when someone dies, but I think it's because I immediately detach. I don't consciously feel that I don't care that the person died or that the person didn't mean anything to me.

I refuse to use the word sympathy as we cannot agree on a definite distinction between it and empathy. I am perfectly aware of what the so called lack of empathy in autism is, but in the normal sense of the word people with autism do not lack empathy. I admit I didn't actually read the entire original post as it was too long and I've seen enough of these threads already.

Oh I hate it when people say Aspies lack empathy as though having empathy is the norm. Most NTs can't deal with people who are different or slower than they are, therefore they only have empathy for those who are similar to them. So it is not an Aspie trait to lack empathy for those who are different. NTs are different from Aspies, so that is why we don't understand them, just like NTs don't understand Aspies. Don't you see?

But I know where this thread is getting at, I just had to say my point. I have extreme empathy. I hate other people feeling stupid (even though they might not), so I have to reduce what I say in order to not feel guilty about the other person (even though it's not my fault).
For example, I left the charity shop where I volunteered at last year, and about a week after I left, I came in just to quickly say hello, but the lady who was on the till didn't know that I had left (she only came in once a week), and after I said hello and everything, she handed me a donated bag of clothes and said, ''here, you can take this upstairs'', but I didn't want to say, ''no, I'm not actually working here any more, I just came to say hi'' because I didn't want her to feel stupid. I knew she probably wouldn't, but I would, so I always think other people would.

I've got to stop treating everybody like they have Social Anxiety.