#maltreatment

Call for NZ experts to help care for Paora the kiwi after US zoo sparks ...

Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Sympathy - feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.

(these are the first definitions that show up when you google the terms)

Feeling sad in response to people or animals getting mistreated, as described in your ask, would thus fall under sympathy. Not feeling much in response to someone coming to you with a problem could be either related to empathy (not understanding or sharing their emotional state at that moment) or sympathy (not feeling pity or sorrow for them and their situation at that moment).

My guess is that thinking about a specific scenario you cognitively understand and know the details of (i.e.people or animals being mistreated as a general concept you understand is wrong / hurtful, or specific individuals being mistreated or being mistreated in specific ways) will make it easier for you to sympathize / empathize with those involved, whereas we often don’t have that knowledge or the processing time we need when interacting with others in real time. Empathy can be further separated into three core types: cognitive, affective and compassionate, cognitive meaning recognising how the person is feeling, affective meaning the sharing of that emotional state and compassionate empathy being about being driven to help. This is also, generally speaking, the order this would occur in in a situation: you see (recognise) someone is feeling sad (cognitive empathy), allowing you to then share their emotional state and also feel sad (affective / emotional empathy), moving you to action in wanting to help the other person (compassionate empathy).

With autistic individuals, however, due to difficulties reading social and non-verbal cues and needing more time to process information, we may struggle to fully understand a (social) situation or recognise how someone is feeling, or we may need more time or have to put in conscious effort to be able to do this. Cognitive empathy also encompasses perspective-taking (putting yourself in another person’s shoes, figuratively speaking), which is something many autistics struggle with. Many autistic people want to help and are capable of affective empathy as well, but sometimes navigating cognitive empathy can get in the way. You can still comfort or support someone without sharing someone’s emotional state though, as you described you do when someone comes to you with a problem.

✅ Meta Description (Within 155 characters) Maltreatment—an invisible form of abuse that deeply harms children without physical violence. A blog exploring support systems and parenting from a disabled blogger’s perspective. —  SEO Target Keywords (Naturally integrated) What is maltreatment Invisible abuse Types of child abuse Emotional abuse signs Parenting stress and limits Causes of…

African migrants maltreated in video after trying to cross Morocco to Spain

A trending video on the internet gives a heartbreaking account of some illegal African migrants being maltreated. According to reports, these individuals were captured after they tried to cross the Morocco Penisula into Spain in search of greener pastures. In the video, the illegal migrants were maltreated by the immigration officials who held them captives. They were thrown about, hit, booted…

‘Investigate maltreatment, illegal detention of Royal Times Publisher, Ranti Thomas’ – NAJUC

By Francis IWUCHUKWU A call was on Thursday extended to the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Usman Alkali Baba, to investigate the maltreatment and illegal detention of the Publisher of Royal Times Magazine, Ranti Thomas for four days without valid reasons. The call came from the National Association of Judiciary Correspondents, NAJUC, which equally condemned the unlawful detention of the Royal…