鴉PieFedWhat does empathy feel like?
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As a man formally diagnosed with ASPD, colloquially referred to as being a psychopath, I’m curious to know how you experience this since I don’t feel it at all.
Empathy is like sharing an experience.
Alice is holding a stack of papers, they get a papercut and react (yelp, pull their hand back, maybe suck on the injury). Bob sees Alice's experience and may remember when they had gotten a papercut before or just imagine what that experience is like, and will share in the same feelings (or how Bob would imagine Alice is feeling, anyway). Bob may yelp too, or fidget with their own (uninjured) finger.
And then there’s hyperemparhy. Alice tells about getting a paper cut a year ago, and for a few seconds Bob feels like his guts are being pulled out.
I think I have this.
I feel everything in a social situation. To a painful, heightened degree.
If I was to summarize it (which I would normally not do) I would say empathy is the ability to smile when witnessing some random person being happy, and to cry when seeing some random person crying.
It's being able to feel emotions without any, personal or physical, bounds between those two persons that may not even know each other. It's recognizing oneself in that other, a stranger, despite all the differences. Something along that line.
Many sentient beings extend their predictive modeling capabilities beyond the scope of physical cause and effect which is normally handled by pattern recognition and reconstruction:\
When these capabilities are extended to simulation and emulation of other sentient agents' sensory and logic systems, the brain temporarily borrows your own sensory systems in mostly-contained active hallucinations.
In order to better anticipate the actions, decisions, and behaviors of another being, your own memories of what a similar experience from your own life felt like is automatically and subconsciously indexed and referenced, giving you a contextual "flashback" of that memory--albeit "tagged" with the context that it's not literally happening to you again but rather that it MIGHT be what's happening (or may have happened) to the individual you are observing or interacting with.
You essentially "remember" something that you didn't directly experience, fabricated from extrapolations of bits and pieces that you have experienced. Even though it's just making an informed guess, it has demonstrated a great deal of utility, just as all predictive models do.
While that may be difficult to imagine as I've just (admittedly rather unhelpfully, my apologies) attempted to ask you to empathize with what it's like to have empathy... Bear in mind this is almost entirely automatic and we don't *choose* to do it--not even the organic "augmented reality overlay" effect of literally feeling whatever our pattern recognition subsystems predict another to have felt.
It is, nevertheless, a powerful communal cohesion tool because it disincentivizes interpersonal harm and promotes mutual benefit, which, while not as beneficial for *individuals*, DOES in fact lead to a population outperforming other populations that don't exhibit this trait.
At the end of the day though it's just a very abstract sensory system. There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with being blind or deaf, neither is there with lacking this sensory suite.
Edit to emphasize another point:
Empathy only attempts to *anticipate* how others feel but it's not magic, you don't literally feel the exact same thing as them or the same instance of experience even if you both observed the same events.
Recall touching a cold object...
The object itself cannot feel.
But your skin is detecting *its own* temperature falling.
Even empathy is an individual feeling their own emotions... just in reference to the circumstantial conditions observed in another.\
If I see someone step on a sharp nail, *my pain* is what I anticipate feeling *were I* to step on that nail;
The relief *I wish* would come to assuage that pain is PROBABLY similar to what the person I observed is hoping for. I would not want to walk on an injured foot, and I would wish that someone would perhaps let me lean on them while I hobble to a place where I can sit and tend to any harm. Therefore, I offer this to them.
An interesting additional dimension here is that people with ASPD usually don't respond to negative consequences the way most people do. That might impact their ability to use imagining what their emotional state would be in a situation to understand how it would be for others.
as written by Diane Duane in *Spock's World*
Empathy is not some mere emotion that you feel - a fleeting reaction to some external sensation. Empathy is an *intentional* shifting of perspective, where you experience another's circumstances as if they were your own.
This is a skill, meaning that it is something which you learn through practice, and that you do on purpose, until the doing of it becomes instinctive and no longer requires intent.
To say "I do not feel empathy" is to give yourself an excuse not to practice. This is a cop-out, used by weak people. Do not wait to "feel" it before you practice. Always remember you do not practice only for the sake of other people, but for the sake of your own growth and edification.
Like the other commenter, you had me up until the last paragraph. They admitted they had a diagnosis which often comes with an inability to empathize. It gives me flashbacks of back when I was a kid and everybody convinced me I was a smart kid who was just lazy, when in reality, I was developing ADHD, and had no idea how to control my executive functions.
Take out the judgement at the end, and you've got yourself a solid, helpful response.
Are you a therapist? Are you a psychologist? Are you in psychiatric medicine? If you aren't consider that OP has a clinical diagnosis and saying things like "This is a cop-out, used by weak people." isn't really helpful.
No one arrives at empathy by being judgemental
And yet... You're being judgemental.
Im not addressing someone with ASPD trying to explain empathy to them. Im explaining the problem with their approach to explaining empathy to someone with ASPD
Thank you for explaining why I was wrong.
Most people are imperfect emotional mirrors. That meaning in a lot of ways they will replicate the emotions they see around them, with some individual twist, or influence (namely, how one feels towards the others he sees). This is why crowds can be so dangerous, so many mirrors can start amplifying emotions, namely panic, which is usually what leads to stampedes
I learned to do that when I was a kid - to mimic other people’s emotions in order to blend in. Of course it’s all artificial, essentially acting by picking up on the vibes around me, but it helps with assimilation.
You might have schizoid personality disorder. My therapist suggested i might have it but he didn't have the means to obtain the test for me to take.
Hold your breath. I mean really hold it. Keep holding. If you're the sort of person who can do this until you pass out, do try not to do that. Try for a minute. Minute and a half. Stop before you keel over anyway.
When you finally release your breath, is it steady or do you gasp? Either way, do you feel the relief as you begin to breathe normally again?
Some of what you might feel before that relief, that discomfort, that urge to breathe, that's a deep set reflex that is about as close as people like yourself can get to feeling panic or fear.
If you do pass out, remember that loss of control. Empathic response is not easily controllable.
Have you ever been really hungry? I mean over 24 hours without food kind of hungry. There's a bit more of it in there. That yearning. That need.
Ever had an electric shock? The anguished scream of another person in physical or emotional pain has a little something of that to it as well. As blinding or searing as any physical pain.
An empathic response is like being hit in the gut suddenly with pain, panic, hunger and shock all at the same time. Right to the very centre of the being. Like the strong urge to breathe, the urge to be able to do something to ease the other person's pain and thus ease your own pain is incredibly strong.
And in that last sentence you can see, from a detached perspective, why the empathic response evolved, even if you can't feel it yourself. Humans are a pack animal and those in your pack carry your genes. The empathic response preserves the self, just indirectly. And for most people it has the "unintended" side-effect of extending to everyone, not just relatives.
Finally, there's a joke about wishing that someone unpleasant would put a toothpick under their big toenail and then kick a door.
Put yourself in the, uh, shoes of that person - I'm not saying you're necessarily unpleasant, only to imagine yourself doing that. What would stop you from doing so in real life? Any discomfort from thinking about doing that? Explore that feeling.
That'd be self-preservation. Imagine that, outside of your control, extending to other people.
I have no idea if any of this helps as my own empathic response is often crippling, but I hope it does.
I recommend a book, for this.
Blindsight by Peter Watts is an interesting insight in many science fiction topics, but the most important concept in the book is, I think, is the seemingly unfeeling protagonist journeying towards the edge of the solar system to discover his inner world and how he projected it unto others. It might not answers your exact question, but I think it will grant you interesting insight in the matter
I just picked up Blindsight at my county library. What a coincidence
The easiest way I can articulate this is if I see someone step on something sharp, I'll instantly recoil and feel pain in my foot even though I haven't stepped on anything. It's almost like you share a part of their consciousness in a way
When something happens to another person, and you see it, your brain will "imagine" this situation happening to you. Although it's just your brain imagining things, your body will have a very real reaction to it. This reaction, mostly an emotion, will be actually the same as the other person is currently experiencing. That's why people often say "I know how you feel" because they actually felt the same feeling through the subconciousnes.
After reading the other comments, I gotta point out that asking us to describe empathy is like asking a shark what swimming feels like. Its just something we *do*, 24/7. Sure, some people learn to be less empathetic because it interferes with their job, but doing that is sort of like not thinking of a specific thing—you can do it, but you have to take a roundabout method to accomplish it and you have to stay vigilant the entire time.
If i had to try, I would focus on how children experience empathy. The usual path of developing empathy in children has a number of distinct steps:
My understanding of your situation is that you skipped steps 1 and 2. You are capable of putting yourself in other people's shoes, so you can in fact do the stuff that empathy lets us do as long as you take the long way around. You also can read the room perfectly well, and then use that to react appropriately. Similarly, I'm autistic and didn't get to participate in steps 3 and 4, but I can still put myself in other people's shoes with a bit of imagination and a lot of effort. I make serious blunders sometimes by forgetting that other people have different likes and dislikes than me, but most of the time I get things right.
10/10 explanation. I would add two things.
First, there is a massive amount of variation in "normal" people. I'm personally of the belief that we spend too much time classifying people and that can set unreasonable expectations. Just because someone was/wasn't diagnosed as
Second, there are cultural norms and elements that interplay here. I am a New Englander living in the Midwest. I consider my communication style to be direct and frank, which means that I try to objectively say things as they are. I grew up being interacted with this way. This style of communication is somewhat contrary to the norms of the Midwest, which can result in people interpreting me as being confrontational and lacking empathy.
In my experience, when it comes to negative emotions it's kind of like the feeling of cringe.. seeing someone in distress gives me the same feeling of wanting to curl up and look away but finding myself unable to.. also with an added feeling of anxiety
When it comes to happy emotions, I dunno.. it's just sort of a feeling of being unable to stop smiling and having butterflies in your stomach
You see a baby on the second floor in a burning building. It’s crying. Its screams trigger your fight or flight response. Though you know going into that burning building will harm you, your will to act compels you to go save that baby and end its suffering.
You go in, the flames all around you, but you can barely feel them because you are so concentrated on reaching that baby.
You get to the baby. Your flight response now kicks in. You jump out the window. You break your ankle, but you can’t feel it, because your sense of duty and accomplishment of saving that child and the cheers from the community overwhelm your own internal nervous system.
That’s empathy. When your feelings for others override your feelings for yourself. When the extrinsic reward from the community can override your intrinsic experience.
Granted, an extreme example.
I'd start with understanding there is empathy, and sympathy - one means to feel what another feels, one means to intellectual understand what another feels.
You'll find theres not a clear agreement on which meaning is assigned to which word - I use empathy to mean "understand what another feels" and sympathy to mean "feel what another feels".
So from my definitions, empathy is an intellectual function, while sympathy is an emotional response.
My understanding is ASPD (and some other disorders) have difficulty with sympathy, but since empathy is the intellectual process it's "easier" to develop/practice. Then you can work on emulating sympathy.
It helps to think of yourself in a third person sense, and think of your third person self as a good friend whose emotions and desires you try to anticipate and satisfy. Then you can extend a little bit of that to other people.
It depends on who you’re around. If it’s toxic, angry people - like online - it sucks, because that negativity seeps in and poisons my own mood too. But when you're around positive people, you can really feel those good vibes as well.
The thing is, I don’t necessarily feel what other people feel - I feel what I *think* they feel. So if I misread someone, I can end up feeling bad for no reason at all.
Interestingly, my empathy even extends to inanimate objects. A childhood example: if there were four potatoes left in the kettle and I only wanted three, I’d still take all four because I didn’t want the last one to be left alone.
Keep in mind the difference between empathy and sympathy.
One means to feel what another feels, the other means to *understand* what another feels
Well I'm clearly talking of feeling what others feel, aren't I?
If you know.... you know.
Yeah, but this is a person who doesn't know, and wants someone to explain, and quantify it.
Even if they never truly understand, or truly feel it, it would be advantageous to intellectually have an idea of what it is, and to be able to mimic it to fit into common society, and not be ostracized.
Hmmm looks up definition of empathy. Reads my comment. Still doesn't get the joke 😞.
OK, I guess that was a joke. A very abstract joke. But OK.
Ik it's not an answer but. Why get diagnosed? I don't see any advantages and just see downsides from being identified as a psychopath.
I got diagnosed during high school. My parents took me to a psychologist-psychiatrist cause I was an absolute menace (bully, involved with bad crowds, constantly causing trouble, etc). I wasn’t as self-introspective then as I am today at all. For a time I had free rein to do anything I wanted cause they’d always clean up after me, but after it reached a breaking point they said enough is enough - you need help.
Hey there. Something not often talked about is there are a spectrum of personalities with psychopathy that aren’t on the anti social spectrum. Georgetown is studying it right now. Your ASPD can be worked on, and you can do fine in society. Even if you don’t feel empathy, you can experience loyalty as a psychopath- and I would take that and use that as a reference point.
Empathy is imagining how you would feel in another person's place, if they were insulted, or assaulted, or injured. Or even happy, or joyous.
Even if you don't feel it, learn to fake it, and attempt to aid them. Maybe you'll feel it, eventually.
my take on empathy is, if you can't understand being in their shoes, at least experience doing their work.
my kid self was this brat that just throws away stuff she don't like and, as *punishment*, my parents made me clean it up. kid me only thought it was punishment. the more you think about it and see other kids throw stuff the more you see yourself cleaning that shit up. that feeling of you empathizing with the would-be cleaner would be my version of empathy.
i guess, for this to work, you must already be a heavy user of introspection and have a bit more awareness. or at least know that the plan was to get the full experience all along.
Like the others are saying, it's being emotionally affected by other people's emotional states. If I make a stranger happy by doing something nice for them, or even just being around happy people, thta makes me feel good. If someone is upset, it's upsetting to be around them. This can be a positive, because it motivates people to help people in need, or it can be selfish, where people avoid or exclude those who are suffering (e.g. hating the homeless) because it makes them sad to see people in bad situations but they don't want to help them.
What's it like to not have empathy? Is a person being happy or sad completely irrelevant to your emotional state? Is a person's wellbeing emotionally equal to an inanimate object? I have no knowledge of ASPD so I genuinely curious!
This may not be exact but I think it's close.
It's putting yourself in someone elses shoes
So imagine you see someone in the pouring rain. One may think "I'm glad I'm not out there" because that sucks. Understanding that it sucks for you means it likely sucks for them too.
While there is more too it, I'd say that is a decent approximation. A more mechanical way to think about empathy
I'm not sure that there is any way to communicate it directly to you. I am autistic and have felt a specific lack of empathy pretty much my whole life. It's a learned skill for me. I had to learn how to remove my own thoughts, feeling and experience from the equation and intentionally put myself into someone elses shoes, so to speak. It has never been easy, but I suppose the difference between me and a sociopath is that I actually want to care.
Sadness when seeing something tragic, such as tent cities.
Come to think of it, I don't know if I really FEEL empathy. Like, maybe I do, but it's hard to say. In my mind, it simply comes down to this: if something shitty happens to me, I know what it feels like. Likewise, I know that other people would feel the exact same way. So if something shitty happens to another human being, it's not necessarily that I FEEL something for them, so much that I can imagine how I would feel in that same situation.
Predicting the emotional state of other people without experiencing that state yourself (even if in a semi-detached way) is not empathy. Sympathy is probably a better description.
It's difficult to describe since for me it just happens but here's my best shot. I think I experience it by imitatiting someones facial expression and other body language. Not completely but just a bit. And then I somehow feel a mix of emotions that I assume is similar to the other persons emotional state. Sometimes people don't show their real emotions though. Another way I experience it is when I know a bit of the persons background I think back to times when I was in a position that was similar. Not exactly the same scenario but more like when I also had a lot of stressors or when I was sourounded by friends or felt bored. Both 'techniques' I do unconsciously though. It lets me better understand others on a non rational level. it can be stressful though. Especially if the other person Isn't being genuine with their emotions. My mother e.g. is constantly puttung on false emotions like an actor. It feels manipulative and gave me trust issues. I still feel a bond to her and care about her though.
Must be lonely if you dont feel any connection to other humans.
I guess its the very foundation of morals. Without empathy, I imagine other people just feel like they are obstacles to you getting what you want?
I can’t speak for every person with ASPD, but yes for me it’s something like that. Some people stand in your way, others benefit you - what they all have in common though is that it’s exclusively about how they revolve around you. I may not make the best human being, but at least I make one hell of a lawyer.
Yep. You didnt choose to be that way, so make the best of the cards you got dealt.
I've been debating whether or not I experience empathy, because I certainly do not do any of that "mirroring" shite the school PD teacher tried to convince me exists (which I'm still not entirely convinced exists as an adult) and most of the time people try to guess how I am feeling they are incredibly wrong and I really have no clue how anyone else is feeling or what the fuck is going on in their heads.
I'm pretty observant and if I think about it I'm usually accurate enough for basically a blind guess, but it seldom if ever involves anything to do with emotions and is definitely not automatic. I definitely do not experience anything resembling their mind state as a sort of dream or hallucination much like how I don't experience memories as visions, it's more like raw data from which different types of constructs can be made, and I analyze them like I analyze the logic of an argument, or the flow of a computer program or any other such system.
I also don't feel feelings by proxy, if anything - if I was having a shit day and someone else was happy I'd probably seethe about the fact I'm not doing well also, the most comforting thing to me in misery is commiseration. E.g. if I sprained my wrist I'd go read stories of others doing so, and feel better because now I know it could be worse and that I'm not alone in the experience. This to me is just basic solidarity. But I wouldn't go reading about people having good days with unsprained wrists because I'd just feel shittier about my own luck then.
And I generally do hate people, at least as individuals, I would pay good money to be as far the fuck away from most of them as possible and I see interactions on the internet as a much needed upgrade to the in-person stuff, but I don't wish any harm to humanity or any particular innate-characteristic-based grouping thereof collectively, in fact I have a really strong sense of justice (and a huge disdain for injustice and inequality) and highly egalitarian values overall, not because I have empathy for some individual(s), but because it's a better future for everyone that we can build, which is just conceptually satisfying for the lack of a better word, and humanism and leftism are just appropriate frameworks for creating such a world I think. I'm def one of those people who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Tribalism is utterly foreign to me, yet at the same time I believe loyalty to your friends and S.O. and any other found family are everything. I'm generally pretty emotional myself, not to like a negative degree, but I do experience them.
So idk, what do you think, random internet stranger I monologues at for five paragraphs?
Someone walks into a room and they have covid. Now the person beside them has covid. But it's super-mega covid so they are immediately infectious. Then I'm sitting next to that person and now I have covid too. We're all feeling bad now because one person had covid and now we all have covid.
Like the same feelings you would feel for yourself, but for somebody else.