Guest guest Posted November 27, 2004 Report Share Posted November 27, 2004 Hi all, You know one of the things at a recent workshop that upset me greatly was when she said that people on the spectrum don’t automatically understand that most communication is NOT intended to inform, teach, or enlighten... it is just for enjoyment. I literally jumped in my seat! It was like she reached across the room and hit me hard... almost fell out of my seat. “WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT?” I looked around the room full of NTs to see if I could detect the same amount of shock the I was feeling. None! They were either calm or nodding in agreement. OMG! Communicate without intent to inform, teach or enlighten? What does this mean? After thinking about it for a while, I filled in my own example... when we took the kids to the amusement park recently for my niece’s birthday party, we were riding a train around the park - my sister’s husband said loudly, “If someone offered you $100,000 to ride this train all day, would you do it?” I thought this was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I couldn’t figure out why in the world he would ask such a question, since nobody would ever make an offer like that! But you know what? Most of the other people thought it was so much fun. They all answered him and were laughing at some of the stupidest answers I ever heard (to one of the stupidest question I ever heard). They all enjoyed the stupidity and meanwhile I was left there trying to figure out what could have lead him to ask the question in the first place, why these people were bothering to answer, and what they found so enjoyable about the whole exchange! A friend and I have been discussing problems that occur when an NT is venting emotionally and the person with AS, instead of commiserating as other NTs would do, goes into problem solving mode. The person with AS usually gets accused of not caring. This is not an example of communication for enjoyment – but still emotional.... looking for emotional satisfaction. When presented with a problem, we go into problem solving mode automatically. They listen with their hearts, we listen with our heads. They sit back and listen, we immediately begin to calculate how to help. We don’t recognize that the actual purpose of passing on this information was to get emotional satisfaction and not to pass on information as a request for help. Just like the lady at the workshop said. It doesn’t occur to us that we were not being asked to help, or that the person would not even WANT help. Why wouldn’t they want help with a problem? Isn’t that why they are telling us about it? Yes it is a different kind of empathy. Problem solving mode is more FUNCTIONAL! Functional empathy. Oooo I like that a lot! Functional empathy! Does that make NT emotional empathy dysfunctional? No, I guess not. I wonder how they’d feel if we called it that?! We’d be attacked as we’ve never been attacked before! Yet they call ours dysfunctional and that is ok with them! NT-emotional empathy is “nonfunctional empathy” or “emotional empathy”. AS-problem-solving empathy is “functional empathy”. (Did I just coin a new phrase? Just did a search – no hits... I guess I did! Should I copy write it? LOL) The thing is, they cannot SEE or FEEL functional empathy. We aren’t responding because we are calculating (how to help). So they think we don’t care at all. Meanwhile we are becoming more involved than the NT and putting in a great deal of mental effort (and probably more involved emotionally too) than the person showing nonfunctional empathy, possibly even being almost consumed by our efforts since we have such a great ability to focus! Nonfunctional empathy seems to fade quickly. Functional empathy stays with us for a long time. And we are accused of being uncaring....... Wendi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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