There’s a distinction that is important to make when it comes to empathy, between ‘cognitive empathy’ and ‘emotional empathy’, that is a good starting place. The empathy divide goes all ways when it comes to neurology—neurotypicals have a harder time understanding autistics and (the opposite neurotype of autistic folk, who might have been diagnosed psychopaths at some point but don’t have a definite entry in the DSM-V).
Cognitive empathy is being able to understand another person’s perspective and mental state. Everyone needs to learn this, but if people think similarly to you it is easier because you have some baseline assumptions that are correct. It is often more urgent to learn this for people who don’t share your neurotype if you are autistic (or the specific neurotype that is psychopathic?-opposite-of-autism) because you aren’t in the majority in most circumstances—and assuming that everyone thinks the same way you do leads to wrong conclusions that cause wrong predictions quite quickly.
Affective or emotional empathy. Responding to another’s mental state with our own emotions, when we are affected by them. Sympathy, concern, and personal distress tend to fall into this. We vary as much as anybody on this one, with some potential complications—we may be hyperempathic, and emotionally respond more than neurotypicals to a wider range of stimuli, including perceiving impossible things like the emotional state of a toaster due to hypersensitivity. We may be alexithymic, and not understand our own emotions enough to be able to express them at all without some aggressive introspection, much less appropriately. We may be too overwhelmed by the emotion to use it to find an appropriate response (try literally feeling your pain under intense world theory). We may not know any appropriate response, or the generally appropriate response for our neurotype is not the appropriate one for yours (whereas it may have been a good guess with minds more like ours). If we do know an appropriate response, expressing ourselves with a script, with nonverbal communication, or any other ‘odd’ way may be more difficult to understand or receive on their end.
There’s a distinction that is important to make when it comes to empathy, between ‘cognitive empathy’ and ‘emotional empathy’, that is a good starting place. The empathy divide goes all ways when it comes to neurology—neurotypicals have a harder time understanding autistics and (the opposite neurotype of autistic folk, who might have been diagnosed psychopaths at some point but don’t have a definite entry in the DSM-V).
Cognitive empathy is being able to understand another person’s perspective and mental state. Everyone needs to learn this, but if people think similarly to you it is easier because you have some baseline assumptions that are correct. It is often more urgent to learn this for people who don’t share your neurotype if you are autistic (or the specific neurotype that is psychopathic?-opposite-of-autism) because you aren’t in the majority in most circumstances—and assuming that everyone thinks the same way you do leads to wrong conclusions that cause wrong predictions quite quickly.
Affective or emotional empathy. Responding to another’s mental state with our own emotions, when we are affected by them. Sympathy, concern, and personal distress tend to fall into this. We vary as much as anybody on this one, with some potential complications—we may be hyperempathic, and emotionally respond more than neurotypicals to a wider range of stimuli, including perceiving impossible things like the emotional state of a toaster due to hypersensitivity. We may be alexithymic, and not understand our own emotions enough to be able to express them at all without some aggressive introspection, much less appropriately. We may be too overwhelmed by the emotion to use it to find an appropriate response (try literally feeling your pain under intense world theory). We may not know any appropriate response, or the generally appropriate response for our neurotype is not the appropriate one for yours (whereas it may have been a good guess with minds more like ours). If we do know an appropriate response, expressing ourselves with a script, with nonverbal communication, or any other ‘odd’ way may be more difficult to understand or receive on their end.