#hypo empathy

Low empathy is an autism trait that is often misunderstood by neurotypicals, so I'm going to talk about it here.

It's common for autistics to have hypo empathy or hyper empathy. Hypo empathy is having lower empathy levels than the average person, and hyper empathy is the opposite. I myself fluctuate between both.

Someone having low empathy or no empathy at all can sound scary, but it's not what people think. To help explain it, I'm going to explain the difference between empathy, sympathy, and compassion.

Empathy is sharing the emotions of another person. Like if your friend feels sad, you do too. You mirror their emotions.

Sympathy means understanding what another person is feeling. You may or may not share their emotions, but you get why they feel that way.

Compassion is caring about the other person. You want to help them. You want them to feel better whether or not you feel empathy/sympathy.

So if my friend is feeling sad and I'm hypo empathetic at that time, I will not feel sad with them. I will still want them to feel better, even if I don't feel their emotions. I may not understand why they feel that way either, but I will have compassion for them regardless.

If I'm hyper empathetic, I'll receive a great deal of their emotions, to the point where I'm sometimes even more upset than they are.

Tw; death

My teacher unfortunately passed away a while ago. I didn't feel sad because I was experiencing hypo empathy. I knew that this was an unfortunate loss and I wished the best for the family, but I didn't feel their sadness. I cared, I just didn't share the family's emotions because of my hypo empathy.

On the other hand, my dog died in a video game shortly after and I cried, because I was experiencing hyper empathy. It's not that I cared more about my video game dog than a human life, it's that my empathy levels changed.

The day I received the news of my teacher's death, I had compassion for the teacher and his family/friends, I just didn't feel their sadness myself. On the day I was playing the video game, I felt the emotions of my character very intensely.

End of tw

Low empathy is a very misunderstood aspect of autism because people often use empathy when they mean compassion.

People associate empathy with being a good person and assume that the more empathy you have, the more you care about others.

This is not the case. Compassion doesn't require empathy, and compassion without empathy isn't less valuable.

I care deeply about other people whether I feel their emotions or not. I do not have to feel or even understand their emotions to care about them.

So here's some things about hypo-empathic autistic people (like me)

• You are NOT. a monster

• I can't stress this enough you are not a monster or a sociopath if you don't feel empathy because of autism

• Media is very hard to get into because it's really hard to get invested and care about the characters and they're struggles

• Hypo-empathy autistic folx (ime) who have special interests that ARE media, are often attracted to something About the media (for me, the thing that im interested in about BNHA is Quirks. Ask me anything about a quirk, I'll be able to tell you.)

• Also see Pokemon type matchups and movesets, as opposed to actually caring about your pokemon or the characters in the game

• I stress again you are not an emotionless monster for experiencing hypo-empathy.

• ofen times if you are upset (and we realize in the first place that you're upset), our first instinct is to Fix The Problem.

• The difference between hyper-empathy is they come from a place of Please Don't Be Sad Anymore Because It Makes Me Sad (boiled down Very simply)

• Wheras Hypo-empathic autistics will come at it from "I'm going to fix this problem for you because clearly you're incapable of doing it yourself and I'd really like for the both of us to move on with our day, So I will remove this obstacle."

• Whatever you don't feel is normal I promise you're not broken for being hypo-empathic

• It's ok if your own emotional range is shortened by this as well. Personally anger is my strongest emotion and it's really hard for me to feel anything else. You're not broken. You are not broken.

- empathy ≠ kindness.

- empathy ≠ compassion.

- empathy ≠ love.

- empathy ≠ goodness.

- empathy is defined as the ability to feel another's emotions as your own; empathy is not the ability to care about another's emotions.

- being hypo-empathetic (experiencing little to no empathy) does not make someone unloving, uncaring, or bad. we may struggle with detecting and understanding/relating to others' emotions, but that doesn't mean we don't care! if we aren't picking up on something you need us to, just try telling us!

- empathy can assist people in being virtuous, but it certainly isn't necessary!

- using empathy as a synonym for good, loving, caring, ect., is both inaccurate to the definition of the word, and hurtful to those of us who don't experience empathy.

The hyper-empathy phase came first. When I was a child, I was SO much more sensitive than other kids. I would cry hysterically over even thinking about sad things. The other kids and the adults would make fun of me for being so hyper-empathetic.

The hypo-empathy phase is ongoing. I'm way more desensitized than most people and can't bring myself to be sad about things I probably should be sad about, like a death.