Discovery 3 - Empathy (and testing)

This is an interesting thread and one which has helped me understand empathy from an AS point of view a bit more.

I think in general, women like to offer emotional support in situations but as a woman myself i can struggle with this as i dont know how to respond. I try to offer more practical advice. So its hard if i cant identify with the situation or its not one ive been in. Ive found as people have offered me support at different stages of my life, now if others are in a similar situation i can understand what theyre going through and offer support. A bit like ive learned how to do it. 

Its like a double-bind. On the one hand something can really affect me (eg on TV) on the other, sometimes i think maybe in a real life scenario "whats all the fuss about?". Sometimes something only dawns on me much later about the extent of a situation. Like its had time to sink in. Then i start going over how my reaction might not have been strong enough in relation to it. I work with lots of lovely women and i think im learning as i go how to respond to things. I think sometimes my voice might over compensate for my face in reaction to something.

I laughed to tears reading that 

Lotus said:

Cognitive empathy is the ability to know how other people feel and what they might be thinking. Also known as perspective taking

I personally certainly have the ability to understand how other people feel and or what they might tink. I can't necessarily consciously consider that in real time in the heat of the situation, and I can't necessarily  articulate my reaction, respond to the situation in the NT expected way, sometimes I don't know what the NT reaction should be, but I do know my reaction could be wrong, so I start double guessing myself and get paralysis by analysis, I get more anxious, and a sequence of misunderstandings can start.

Rocinante said:

So much nonsense is written about autists and their empathy quotient.  It is largely misunderstanding and misconception based on a neurotypical idea of how empathy should manifest in human beings.  The double empathy problem sums it up for me.  It isn't just we autists who have mindblindness.  It works both ways.  I might not know how to respond if I come across a person in an agony of despair, but it doesn't mean that I don't understand what they're going through

I completely relate to this.

And this " I dislike the pathologising, deficit-based framing of the best-known theories of autism, and I hate the mistakes they lead to in practice: assuming we lack empathy and have no idea what’s going on in anyone else’s head; painting autistic cognition as inherently more ‘male’; expecting skills we’re slow to pick up as kids to be lacking throughout our lives.": https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/me-and-monotropism-unified-theory-autism

The double empathy problem and the recent research that AS/AS people are equally good at empathizing and passing information as NT/NT, but AS/NT are not as good at all. Basically confirming to some extent  the double empathy problem. http://dart.ed.ac.uk/research/nd-iq/

There are so many autism theories and a lot of discussion exists about the interpretation of what is actually happening. The theories often reflect the observation from the outside in, which ignores the lived experience and voices of autistic people themselves. Then there is an additional layer when autistic people learn the theories and internalise them, so start using that language 'I don't have empathy'. At this point it is difficult to know what is really happening.

There is no agreed theory and no evidence that  NT are actually 'feeling' the emotions and 'understanding' the thoughts of others. The theory is they are making a guess and autistic people make guesses too, but our guesses are less confident and less accurate because our experience is so different.

There are so many theories of empathy, how it actually work. It is about directly feeling what other people feel or is it about projecting, and if projecting do you project your own feelings, or what you would feel from your own experience, or do you read the other person's body language or both and in what proportion... Chawn made an entire book of it. 

This article is really good. https://aeon.co/essays/the-autistic-view-of-the-world-is-not-the-neurotypical-cliche: 

It notes that there is a very empathetic discussion going on between autistic people on social media, contrary to the 'theory'. It highlights that the discussion about autism traits and empathy is happening from the NT observer point of view, only looking at NT signals, NT ways of communication, while it should happen from within, from the authentic autistic perspective.

The observation about pain is very poignant and interesting. I read something similar from an autistic blogger about women in labour not 'performing' pain in childbirth and therefore not being helped buy the midwives.

'The DSM goes on to note ‘apparent indifference to pain’, which might well be true if you judge pain and its responses only in neurotypical terms. Many autistic people experience the sensory sensitivities noted in the DSM-5 as pain, hence the ‘extreme distress’. What’s more, autistics routinely report that they are undermedicated or dismissed when they’re in physical pain, possibly because their facial expressions and vocalisations don’t match what doctors expect to see in the general population. A 2009 study by the psychologist Silvie Tordjman at Paris Descartes University and colleagues monitored the heart-rate of autistic children when blood was drawn, finding that they experienced the same levels of pain as nonautistic children, but were half as likely to be given an anaesthetic.'

I read something similar from an autistic blogger about women in labour not 'performing' pain in childbirth and therefore not being helped buy the midwives: .https://autistrhi.com/2017/12/14/autism-labour-and-birth/

So it would seem that autistic people simply don't perform empathy in a NT way

Original Prankster said:

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

OMG, this a basic life fact, like 2+2 = 4, this is such a typical man thing, how on earth you guys don't know the correct answer to that question????   Lol

Is it cognitive empathy though? How many times did you fall for this? Do you ever learn? just kidding

I wonder where I fit in all of that. I know I am not good at all at cognitive empathy, however the quote below is also me...this happened to me recently and I needed crisis intervention. I was already at my limits for sensory overload when I received some really bad news about something that had happened to a family member and I think that was too emotional for me if that makes sense. However, had I not been at my limits already I doubt I would have needed this.

My brain really struggles with the paradoxical nature of ASD. This was one of the reasons I couldn't accept my diagnosis in the beginning, my brain just couldn't make sense of what seemed like lots of contradictions. 

It was speaking to someone on the NAS helpline who helped me to come to terms with this a bit more in that the way my brain was even having this difficulty was typically autistic too.

To have some kind of mental respite from constantly trying to figure it all it, I have that conversation at the forefront of my mind most of the time.

Lotus said:

However Autistic people may get overcome by their distressing emotions and may shut down emotionally in response to to becoming overloaded.

Ah, thanks neekby.

You can edit: More > Edit > (make the changes) > Reply

It's all about what they say and which emotion they are conveying to me.  As seconds go by, I'm doing my data-gathering of these large, extreme emotions - and my Spider-Senses start to tingle when there's a conflict - especially if they are trying to get something from me.

I hate missing words, and must correct my text or its like an itch on my brain. There should be a ' BE' after 'would'.

Plastic said:

it works with most people but it doesn't work with me because the situation does not match the emotion.  

Can you teach me that Plastic! Just wondering, where do you think emotional lability would fall into this? Given that it's such a feature of several mental health conditions including ASD, it's all so complicated.

Absolutely Rip Van Wrinkle, even with all the work I've done with OT I still have difficulty and rather than the added stress of trying to verbalise these things we call it my 'zones', my blue,  green, yellow and red zones! 

Thankfully, my highly reactive emotional states only combust when I'm on my own, always directed inward when really I wish I could divert it outward to the a******s who trigger it in the first place. Part of the damage caused by ' masking' for years. Maybe the term ' masking' should be replaced with suppression. 

Still, if I had been completely myself I'm sure there would a lot more dead people

Your example prompted me to find this piece of flash fiction I once wrote

FLAP

She walks in, wiggles her ass at me.

'Does this make me look fat?'

'No.'

'You're just saying that.'

'Whaddaya want me to say?'

'The truth.'

'No.  You don't look fat in it.  It's too small for you, though.'

'Christ!  It's too small?  It's my goddamn size!'

Ah, f**k...

'But you're not fat.'

'How can you say that?  I must have put on weight.'

Where's this going?

'Listen... you look fine.  If you've put on weight, it doesn't show.'

'If?  If it's too small, there's no 'if' about it.'

She stomps out.

I look at the paper.  The usual crap.  Deaths.  Beatings.  Robberies.

She comes back in.

'How about this?'

'That's much better.'

'Liar!'

'What?'

'It's the same goddamn skirt, you jerk!'

Ah, s**t.

'Maybe I was wrong before.  It fits you fine.'

'You goddamn liar.'

'So, why'd you ask me, then?'

'Christ knows.  Might as well ask the goddamn cat.'

We look at the cat.  Sitting there.  Eyes blinking.  Bored.

Suddenly it gets up, stretches, goes up to her.

'Lady,' it says 'With an ass like that, just be grateful you don't have to go out the way I do.'

Then it disappears through the catflap, just like that.

Yes.  And it's like if people ask me to listen to a song they've written and performed, or read a poem they've written.  They may be looking for praise or validation, but I can only tell them the truth.  Usually, if it's awful, I'll just say 'It isn't to my taste'.  Which isn't untruthful, because to someone else it might be brilliant.  If they then press me on what I think of it anyway, then I'll tell them straight.  Why ask me otherwise?

NAS49761 said:

How would you know it was an agony of despair?

I think I would understand enough to recognise that.  But I still wouldn't know how to respond to it.

A much clearer explanation than you usually see - thank you.

I can see my issue is with a lack of cognitive empathy e.g.

Wife - "Does this dress make me look fat?"

Me - "Yes, it's very unflattering" (because it is)

Wife - "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT! YOU THINK I'M FAT!?"

Me - "No, I said that that dress makes you LOOK fat"

Wife - <angry tears>

Me - [thinking: WTF just happened? Why is she upset? She asked me if the dress made her look fat - it does so I told her... why is she upset by this fact...]

But equally there are certain songs that just make me spontaneously burst into tears (I have to avoid "Tea and toast" by Lucy Spraggan unless I actively want to feel upset) and when I told my wife and some (NT) friends they simply couldn't understand how a song could have such a dramatic effect on someone.

The other thing is I find it really hard to be around people who are highly emotional it triggers an 'escape' but also a 'disgust' reaction, much like if they were covered in vomit or faeces... I think this is a subversion of that reaction to potential biological/disease contamination... I don't want to risk 'emotional contamination'...

Hi Plastic. I find such situations really frustrating. If I get taken in, then realise later, it used to hurt. Now I am aware it can make me neglect other more positive people. 

Also i have difficulty VERBALISING my emotions, telling people how I feel in a way they can understand. I think lots of people in general have that problem. What I call ‘regretful’ for instance probably means something completely different to the person hearing my words. As with ‘I think I understand’ too. It’s never before occurred to me that there are three ‘flavours’ of empathy. Is there a fourth one? Intuitive empathy? 

What is interesting  though is that I can be highly emotionally reactive  myself to things, especially sensory overload but didn't understand this very well either until I learned more about emotions from my OT.

So not only is there the difficulty understanding other people's emotions, there is also the difficulty understanding my own. 

I use logic to deduce other people's emotions as I can't detect them.  I have to know more about what's going on for them before I can guess how they feel.

If they just appear and are emotional, I'm a bit confused so I have to try 'best fit' reactions until I can work out what's appropriate.

What muddies the water is manipulative people who try to get their own way by getting angry or turning on the waterworks - it works with most people but it doesn't work with me because the situation does not match the emotion.   If anything, I get peed off with them for trying to trick me and I lose respect for them.