This is going to sound corny, but do you ever get sad when you watch movies or TV shows? Do you ever relate to the characters or feel for them in any way? If so, that's empathy.
In a movie or TV a director is showing you the perspective of people and trying to get you to understand and care about them and what happens to them. And it's so much easier to look at their faces and they are purposefully trying to show you how they feel.
Feeling empathy for people you know is when your brain is able to take the information you know about someone and create a story in your mind so that you can understand where they are coming from and care about what happens to them. I think it might take work to do this, but it is possible to learn to do it.
Empathy for empathy's sake shouldn't be the goal though, learning to care about people who are important to you should be the goal.
It is an interesting topic. I can cry watching a film or listening to a piece of music, especially if it relates to me...but when faced with someone suffering face to face, especially any close to me, there is just a wall there. No feeling at all, other than guilt that I am not feeling anything at all lol. It is frustrating for me as I am aware of the situation, but I cannot force myself to be compassionate and warm. It simply isn't me. Yet, I can feel for people in stories I read about sometimes.
I have always related to characters such as phantom of the opera...any who are disfigured or otherwise outsiders, unable to break into that other world that is so outside their understanding...
Hi.
No & Yes. You can not learn to feel empathy but you can learn to empathize with someone. You can mimic it, as Callista puts it.
I wept for the last time when I was 16 (1981/1982) but I have felt the beginning feelings of it when watching movies with a sort-of sad ending or from watching documentaries on child abuse, except for two times in 1997, I think. It was from a documentary about a swedish batallion of UN peace keepers stationed in Stupni Do in Bosnia during the wars in the former republic of Yugoslavia. It was horrific.
Empathy is making a physical connection between what another might feel in a situation and a vivid example of a physical feeling, may be something you have seen.
And going about not feeling empathy with others does not mean that you are going about being a total backside of a donkey.
Sidestepping my previous post for a while. I do know what empathy is because paradoxically I feel it for those who are the same as me, characters and so on, who themselves feel little empathy. It just occured to me and I find that fact quite confusing, but also quite logical (if you ignore the paradox it creates). Has anybody else noticed this?
Of course such people are rare in reality, so this sort of empathy isn't useful.
Well, I do now when you mentioned it...
Yes - I read a blog of someone describing what it's like to be aspie and I nearly shed a tear... I thought the same thing too, about how I was empathizing with an aspie because I felt so similar. But Aspies aren't supposed to have empathy so how does that compute??
Everything you say makes sense to me - and it clicks with some other things I've been thinking about lately.
The following is a theory I'm exploring based on observation and experience and not something I'm stating as fact... or trying to convince anyone to believe. So give me your feedback be it yay or nay, and take it with a grain of salt.
It seems that NT's (I don't like this term, but for now it's the only thing I know to use) have an external barometer of emotional processing - as if how they feel is strongly effected by what is going on outside of them or the input they are recieving that is telling them how to feel. They thus have strong 'affect' in that they respond immediately (and 'appropriately') to the stimuli in their environment. By 'appropriately' I mean that it corresponds to the expectations placed on them through subtle, nuances of body language, tone and intuition of past experiences.
On the other hand, Aspies (again, best term I have at the moment) have an internal barometer of emotional processing - how they feel is strongly effected by what is going on inside their head and the input they are recieving from the outside must be PROCESSED before they get to a point of knowing what to do with it. Thus, they do not have a strong 'affect' in that they do not respond immediately or appropriately to the the stimuli in their environment UNLESS it has a direct correlation to what is ALREADY IN THEIR HEAD. The inappropriateness of their behavior and statements has to do with their inability to recognize or slow processing of the expectations placed on them through subtle, nuances of body language and tone.
The one thing Aspies and NT's may have in common is their ability to process empathy based on past experiences. So the situation with the terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center.... IT totally makes sense that sitting together facing a new crisis that NEITHER type has any idea how to respond to would put them all on a level playing field and the 'NT's' would look 'aspiesque'. As soon as the NT's start interacting though, they immediately get cues on how to 'appropriately' respond from the others in the room and begin to feedback on each other, while the Aspie is still processing internally and would most likely want and need more information on how to respond.
The NT's are emotionally reacting, the Aspie is intellectually processing.... both are looking to figure out how they 'should' be responding.
I think what happens many times is that NT's go on a feedback loop with each other and get worked up into riots and what not because they are so externally emotionally effected and unable to stop the stimuli from causing them to react.
Where as Aspies might get on internal feedback loops within their head and get all worked up into emotions and/or 'shut down' when they do not know how to react to an internal emotion. (hmmm... still processing this. Not sure that makes total sense to me yet)
I have an opposite but similar example, but I'll start another post so as to not delude this one by making it too long...
My example: I went to the funeral of the Vice President of the company where I worked. He had died of cancer and we all knew it was likely for about a year. There were HUNDREDS of people there walking slowly through this HUGE church. People were talking quietly and wore respectful, but not mournful faces.
I was the only one who cried - and I cried tears (not sobs or noises, just streams of silent tears) for a long time, unable to stop, despite being looked at as if I was strange. I had no special connection to this person other than he was the first, highest ranking boss I had ever had and he had been as kind to me as he had to anyone else. I had met and worked with his son, but there was no special connection there either. Yet - I cried and NOBODY else, not even the family did.
It was obviously inappropriate and awkward for other people, but I couldn't stop myself. When I finally got to the family who were greeting everyone, I was composed more with no tears, but an obvious red face I'm sure, and I planned what to say, something I thought was nice and was very sincere.
"He was a wonderful boss that made everyone feel important." To me that was special because not everyone in the company did that... some were political and snooty.
Anyway, the response of his son (not the one I knew, another I had never met): "Everyone IS important."
Okay - well. What to say to that? I just moved on, wondering if what I said was inappropriate, and why. I still don't know, it felt so strange.
I have still not processed exactly what happened at that funeral or why I responded so differently than everyone else. I didn't really miss him or anything and I had nobody to be empathizing with - nobody I cared about. But I do know that it's not the only time I have not responded the way everyone else seemed to be responding. Sometimes it's with a lack of 'appropriate' emotion, sometimes it's with a stronger emotion that is out of place.
It is funny, as when my gran died.. I felt nothing really. I didn't cry...but one night, maybe a year later, I got to thinking of how like me she was and things I might have spoken to her about and then I cried. But, I always feel a guilt at my inability to show compassion. IF someone comes to me with an illness complaint, or some problem, I feel threatened and anxious to escape that situation...and it is frustrating as I want to be able to be supportive.
It truly does give meaning to the phrase of being wired differently. It is as if our logical sides work overtime to try and make sense of the rest... I would be more explanatory but I am dog tired.
I can't understand why everybody else at the boss's funeral wasn't more upset. Perhaps had the boss been really nasty to me or other people I wouldn't have been too sad but even then I wouldn't have wished a lingering death from cancer upon them.
Dad died 20 years ago. He had cancer and we knew for several months it was terminal. Yet on the day of his funeral, I could hardly cry. Mum said I shouldn't go to the cemetary to see him buried in case I got hysterical.
To this day if I see an old man who looks like him, I get teary eyed.
I couldn't process it all at the time as I'd just had a baby and her father had deserted me when he found out I was pregnant. There was so much going on, I didn't seem to process all the information at once.
No, I had a nervous breakdown and nearly drove mum to one too. I feel very guilty that I wasn't more help to her and was more of a hindrance after she was kind enough to say I could come back home.
About the only jobs I was much good at helping with were the mending and watering her garden. (I was the only one who would water her plants). I had postnatal depression quite badly. The thing that kicked it off was seeing the father again (his parents made him come down and sign the birth certificate).
I certainly am stronger in some ways but also more prone to further breakdowns when there is too much stress: however, at least I bounce back a lot faster than I used to.
I'd also like to know what is so wrong with sympathy. It's as if it's inferior to empathy.
With things such as the September 11th attacks or the Tsunami, I got overwhelmed with grief for quite a long time and eventually had to switch off to cope. I still get upset reading or hearing anything about them.
I'd tend to agree - even if you can't identify exactly with what the other person is feeling, knowing what to do in certain situations is a very valuable tool. Of course, some situations are novel and that is where our coping skills might not work so well.
Maybe that's my trouble as I find it difficult to pretend much of the time.