Difficulties with sympathy.

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I always find it hard when someone comes to me and says so and so died, or so and so is really ill, I find it hard to know what to say. I often feel nothing, everything I say to them in sympathy feels so forced and awkward. I don't know if this is part of aspergers or not. It isn't to say that I have no empathy, as I quite often am able to put myself in the shoes of someone who is being persecuted, harmed, or someone who I perceive as suffering an injustice, and feel emotions related to that.

I also frequently show that I care about someone by trying to help them solve whatever problem they are dealing with, or offering any resources I have to spare, or I can share an experience that I had that I feel relates to what they are going through so show them that I can relate, but when it comes to feeling sympathetic toward's someone struggle or loss, it feels so foreign to me, and emotionless. I don't know if anyone else experiences this.

You are not alone, I think that most people feel like this, but Aspergers can make that even more difficult to deal with.

I don't know if this is a helpful link or not, but these cards were written by a cancer sufferer and emphasise that she just wanted someone to listen rather than try and fix her.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/empathy-cards#.ra0gVYekw

This is a common thing in autism. I always feel kinda guilty about it. Someone I know mom just died and I had the same thing. I texted "I am sorry for your loss, your mom was such a nice lady and I will miss her". Which is true, but I also felt like I was being phony and just having to come up with something to say. It really didn't effect my feelings at all.

I think that's a common phenomenon among all people.

I think it's best to be honest. Say something like, "I don't know what to say. But, I am here for you, if you need someone to listen/help/provide food/etc.".

I live my verbal life mostly with scripts, so that's mine for this scenario... It can help to have a go-to response.

I know what you mean, I usually just freeze up, try and hug them but they react differently than expected and I freeze again because I don't have a script for it.


I also find it hard to show affection to a peer or someone older than me, babies and animals are much easier for me.

If you can't help, at least do no harm. It's more than many do.

I have actually gotten snippy with a co-worker about signing a card for someone who's mother had died. When they gave me crap about it I explained simply that I never spoke to this person and neither have I spoken to their mother, so what was there to say? Needless to say I hate signing cards in general around the office. Luckily now I work from home for a very small company so I never have to go through any of that again.

I too rely heavily on scripts. The ever-popular "I'm sorry for your loss" is one I like to use.

For illnesses or such it is "I'm sorry to hear (learn) that."

Well because you have House as your avatar, I'm reminded of something he said, which unfortunately I can't find an exact quote of. But the gist of it was that we only have real feelings for the people we are closest too, and there's a reason why we evolved that way, because we would go insane if we tried to care about everyone to that extent.

I feel the same way.

If you grieved over every person who passed away that day, you'd be grieving long into your time in Heaven.

But I believe one must at least acknowledge someone's loss.

This is not something that I'm very good at--so I stick to the conventional.

I would mix in "I'm sorry for you loss" with some positive memory of the person (should you happen to know the person at least slightly).

i can sympathize with empathy, but i can not empathize with sympathy, so since i have no empathy with my sympathy with empathy, then the whole thing cancels itself out.
quite a tidy conclusion really.

Naturally, if someone comes to me with a problem, my instinct is to go "Oh, that sucks", and then go right back to whatever is going on in my own head, which I find way more important and interesting. I try really hard though to actually care and try and help and stuff, but it does not come naturally. I love my friends and family and would never want anything bad to happen to them, but I am always far more interested in what's going on in my own life than what is going on in theirs, and knowing what to say to people in bad situations and how to help is really hard for me. I usually just end up nodding along in silence as they tell me what's happened, and then offer an awkward frowny-smile thing and a hug. For some reason people actually really like coming to me with their problems.