Empathy Weirdness?

Hey I'm new to this forum, and I'm just super interested to find out how other people present their empathy. I have deep intense empathy for everyone all the time. That's why I'm a progressive liberal "snowflake" lol and I cry sometimes just thinking about the struggles of other people. That being said, in my personal life I find myself almost completely incapable of feeling genuine empathy or caring at all about my own friends and family's problems. Even if a friend is going through a hard time that I myself can relate to I find myself not really caring about what they are saying or their struggles and find myself just responding the way I assume I'm supposed to but really only thinking about how I wish the conversation would end but it can't because now I've opened the door for someone to be talking about their own struggle and it would be rude to stop talking about that subject. It's a little bit of selfishness I guess? And I find myself only wanting to talk about my own struggles that their struggles remind me of. I don't know I guess I'm a selfish weirdo? Why is it that I sob uncontrollably hearing stories about people of color being shot by police or watch videos of people going through really hard times and am able to find deep, intense (many times hyper intense) empathy for complete strangers but when it comes to friends or associates or family even I can't seem to find actual genuine empathy and care? Is this something anyone else struggles with? I'm literally DYING to know. #SomeonePleaseRelateToMe lol

  • I'm autistic and I can't really put myself in other peoples shoes i.e. imagine what its like to be them or imagine how they might feel if I do something/say something. I watch what I say/do as I have learnt from experience what doing something or saying sometime can lead too and try to avoid that. I also don't try to help people because I think about how they feel but rather because I might see something I think is unfair or unjust and I want to correct it e.g if someone gets hurt and is in pain, i don't act to help because I imagine how they feel but rather that they didn't deserve what happened and should be helped. I hate to say this but if some does/says something and suffers because of it in my eyes that's just and I don't think about it.

  • Friendship is an investment. An ideal friendship is a responsibly I choose to invest in regardless of how I feel because the other is worth-while. I've chosen the friendship and we have similar values and afford each other ideal boundaries. I've found a few types of humans easier to get along with, they're usually engineers or bakers or makers of some sort. A few have ADHD; they're also introverts and intuitive. I don't need many friends and I don't need to see them everyday. Most of them live far away. This is from 45 years being on the planet. My mother was similar to how you describe yourself. Her emotions were all over the place. She'd weep for things which were so distant and removed but have little empathy or desire to understand me. I tried to join into this behaviour as I thought I was supposed to but I couldn't. Vulnerability is a scary state to be in, it requires some kind of security (like a seedling requires from a nursery) and being ok with not being perfect, being loved for who we are. From what I've read humans alike find it easier to care about a thing they're less attached to because there is less weight / responsibly / demand / expectation involved. I think it's a thing you can google. Acting classes can actually help us learn to be vulnerable with the person in front of us as technique. But I've found other internal strengths which help. It's scary but necessary for real connexion. 

  • i can relate to most of that.

  • That's a good theory. I know my reactions to feelings aren't always what people expect or want, so when someone is telling me about their problems my main feeling is utter panic that I will say the wrong thing or make the wrong facial expression. The increased anxiety does make it harder to listen and like my main instinct becomes to run away. I think that reaction is both because I don't want to do the wrong thing, but also so I can both process what they've told me and deal with my own feelings about it. I know that that sounds ridiculously self involved, but sometimes it takes me quite a while to work out what I'm actually feeling and sometimes the emotion can even make me ill before I'll realise what it is.  

  • I cry at films but felt very indifferent when my best friend told me that she had cancer. I describe myself often as feeling anxious at the wrong things and I think my emotional reactions are generally similar too. 

    They aren't always inappropriate but quite often they are. 

  • https://embraceasd.com  there is some useful  info on empathy in the blog section . more than one type ,some you feel some you don't


  • Why is it that I sob uncontrollably hearing stories about people of color being shot by police or watch videos of people going through really hard times and am able to find deep, intense (many times hyper intense) empathy for complete strangers but when it comes to friends or associates or family even I can't seem to find actual genuine empathy and care? Is this something anyone else struggles with? I'm literally DYING to know. #SomeonePleaseRelateToMe lol

    Basically we use a different emotional frequency than vast majority of other people, so we tend to get less according experience using our emotional apparatus with others ~ who continually share emotionally facilitation, intellectually identification and experiential affirmation with each other as a matter of course ~ in order to form contrasts and systems of comparison, involving linguistic patterns consisting of sounds, words and sentences and behavioural routines consisting of anything from tragic to comedic gestures, expressions and narratives.

    So the more this happens for us, our ranges of emotional facilitation, intellectual identification and experiential affirmation become more evenly integrated through our 'sensory~social' repertoire, and reciprocal interactions become progressively more viable and therefore equally as much facilitative.

    So the more monologues we share with others the more experienced we become in having dialogues, sort of thing.

    Or if Aspies were like Normies and Normies were like Aspies in proportional terms, we would not be the ones having the empathy and cognitive glitches regarding our approach to things ~ as it would by default be the majority consensus, and therefore common sense and easy to relate to for us.


  • I cry sometimes just thinking about the struggles of other people.

    But you don't really know the struggles of other people.     Just the story they feed you to promote your response.

    I sob uncontrollably hearing stories about people of color being shot by police

    Because it is designed to manipulate people into knee-jerk emotional reactions knowing you will never, ever look for the truth.   

    Are you sure you are over empathising or are you just finding more ways of indulging your own selfish feelings instead?

  • Sometimes but I also get emotional in front of my partner and sometimes even my friends I don't always actually cry or anything but I feel the emotion. It's like I feel emotion when it comes to strangers and social issues but I can't make myself really "feel" anything more than the desire to make a friend or associate feel better so they stop talking about their problems. I don't know what the deal is:/

  • when watching TV u are on your own and thus allow yourself to release emotion but when face-to-face with your friends your guard is up ------ thats my theory

  • You have basically just described exactly how I feel. I honestly thought it was just me! No sympathy or empathy for people I know but if someone tells me a sad story about someone I have never met or know it can really affect me.