relation between aspergers and extreme empathy?

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bugs aren't a special interest of mine but i saw a worm on the ground when i was walking to class and someone stomped on its head, it felt like someone kicked me in the chest.

there were alot of worms, and most of them were dead but i know i couldn't pick them up and move them where oblivious feet couldn't hurt them.

anyways is there a relation between aspergers and extreme empathy or is it just me? if there is, could it be a result of social conditioning and life experiences or actual brain chemistry?

ar lasa mala revas

It's a trait within the Autism spectrum, it's not universal so not everyone has it, in fact most of us have the average amount of empathy.

The amount of us that are thought to have a heightened sense of Empathy is commonly thought to be 2x the number of us that have a stunted sense of empathy, though from my personal experience, I'd put the numbers closer to 1.5. So by my reckoning, for every to two that are stunted there should be three that are heightened.

I feel like scum just for slightly annoying someone

ahhh i have hyper empathy, it suuuuucks :^/ like if we are watching a movie, literally anythign remotely sad and i will most likely cry, or at least tear up.. one time we watched graveyard of the fireflies in class for free time and i had an emotional meltdown for about 3 hours it was terrible. i also am like?? super sensitive to other people being rude to me in any way i think thats why im super good at reading faces is im analyzing everything someone says to me and try to detect their annoyance with me every way i can :^( i also am super sensitive to offending anyone else, i overanalyze my own actions as well. everything ever is too emotional, i need a break @~@

i think i have about average empathy for living things, but way above average empathy for inanimate things.

I definately have heightened empathy, I can't watch the news because I just can't stand suffering. I even get quite upset when my son kills animals in minecraft for no reason.

Based upon my observations, I have more emotional/affective empathy than most people. I also tend to have more sympathy than most people, when I encounter a situation that I can understand or imagine.

I get very easily upset by news stories, hearing of other's deaths, seeing or hearing of animals being in pain; sad events in movies, television, books, and sad music.

But if I'm unable to imagine another's emotional state or experience, I don't feel much empathy, until it is explained to me or described in detail so that I can understand. I suppose that means my cognitive empathy is not as good as it should be, but I'm working on it.

Interesting. I do not recall this being brought up before. I could see myself maybe thinking gross seeing a worm get stepped on, but that's about all. I remember in day out for a walk and accidentally stepped on a few snails. The sidewalk was covered with them. I felt a little grossed out and bad because they had interesting looking shells (two toned spiral stripe), but did not feel any physical pain.

This is very individual, I've seen people here say they have anything between extreme empathy to nearly none at all.

Personally, I feel sick when it comes to the suffering of animals, and I have had the same kind of reaction as OP describes.
When it comes to people though, my empathy is selective. I need to personally care for or identify with them in order to feel it. Otherwise, while I might understand why they are sad, happy or upset, it doesn't affect me.

lavellan, I'm glad more people than just me care about the humble worm. I once found a worm that had been run over by a car. The last half of its body was a mess and it couldn't move away from it. Knowing that worms can survive being cut in half, I cut off the destroyed part and carried the worm to a flower bed. I still think of it occasionally and hope it lived for however long worms live. If we had a garden I would have taken it home and placed it there, but we don't.

I used to have too much empathy for my girlfriend but she abused that so much that it is very hard now for me to show much empathy for her as when I did before she would eventually turn & start verbally attacking me & telling all the things that she perceived that I did wrong even though often I didn't even say or do what she was accusing me of or she would accuse me based on a statement she didn't even allow me to finish so she didn't know the whole context of what I meant which was very different from her interpretation so I eventually stopped showing empathy toward her &I would just leave the conversation as it would almost always come back to an attack on me.

I still cry though almost every time I hear or read about child abuse as I know exactly how It feels as I was abused myself so I guess I still have too much empathy in some ways.

A suffering animal would bother me. Like one caught in a trap. I would want to rescue it.

I would not call myself an "extremely" empathetic person. Though I'm not unempathetic, by any means.

I've always had cognitive entity. I've always been able to feel sympathy/empathy for someone in a theoretical sense, which sometimes translated to actual sympathetic/empathetic feelings.

When I was younger, my emotive empathy, due to a lack of life experience, and my Spectrum status, was really of a low degree.

However, as I've gained life experience--and, especially--experience things which require empathy, my emotive empathy, in general, has increased.

In a word, I'm not naturally emotively empathetic, but I was able to acquire emotive empathy through a combination of life experience, and the low degree of emotive empathy already present within me.

My emotions are raw and heightened, so when I feel something, I FEEL something. As such, my empathy is off the charts.

My empathy is really strange. I'm really empathetic towards animals, but not at all to humans. When humans cry, I have no idea how to act or feel. Wow, I sound like an alien saying "humans" I mean "other people"

I have extreme empathy. But I don't think it has a connection with AS. I think AS just doesn't affect empathy, so you can be anywhere from psychopathy to extreme empathy just as a non-autistic person can be.