Overly empathetic?

[Bacon]

I'll keep it short or I will digress. Does anyone get stupidly empathetic over things that you know shouldn't bother you, or know if it is related to dyspraxia?. Feeling guilty for no reason at all is seriously irritating

[kdt2402]

Yeah, seriously, i can feel down for an hour when i hear certain stories on the news.

If someones bein attacked i have to go and sort things out for them, i really feel so bad that its happening to them.

Maybe it is dyspraxia, i just thought that was my character.

[Bacon]

Yeah I try to stay away from any crime related news because it brings my blood to a boil as well as making me feel bad for the victim, ugh I hate criminals so much. I suppose if we are more empathetic it would make sense also having a strong sense of justice.

[kdt2402]

Yeah makes sense, but at the same time id hate to be in the police.

Sometimes you can se a criminals point of view too, right? Confusing!

[Skifflet]

Hi, newbie here. I would say that I'm incredibly prone to feeling guilty about everything and worrying that I'm hurting other people. Social justice is also something that's important to me. I've heard that dyspraxics tend to be very compassionate. But I also have some problems that overlap with autism spectrum traits (which I know is a complicated issue and one that many dyspraxic folk share). I'm not great at working out what other people are feeling unless it's explicitly stated or otherwise pretty obvious (it's part of why my last relationship ended). So I'm crap at that part of empathy. I just saw this study on Asperger syndrome today: http://www.cog.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/papers/2007/Rogers(2007)_JAutismDevDisord.pdf It talks about the difference between "cognitive empathy"- working out what's going through another person's mind- and "affective empathy"-feeling what you perceive another person to feel. It found that the people they studied scored lower than average on cognitive empathy but the same or higher in tests of affective empathy. In particular, they scored higher in a test of personal distress due to affective empathy. Maybe this is something we (or at least some of us) share with people with AS?

Sorry, that link doesnt work. If you'd like to see it, copy the whole thing and paste into a search bar- www.cog.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/papers/2007/Rogers(2007)_JAutismDevDisord.pdf

[Adrastos]

I think people with dyspraxia are more in tuned and able to read more into things than most do and that's why they are more emotional and excitable , I also have frontal lobe damage, I am instinctive about most things and when i make decision about someone i normally correct in that decision

I become very passionate and emotional about things, especially when i watch these lieing low life leaders prime ministers ministers mps and so on with there fake facial expressions,

[AlleyCat]

Hi. I noticed in one of the other discussions you also mentioned you have frontal lobe damage. Did this cause you to have dyspraxia or is this something you have in addition to it? I was wondering how you know you have this kind of damage (ie did you have a brain scan at some point)? The reason I'm interested in this is that, when I was first diagnosed as having dyspraxia (through doing the WAIS assessment administered by a psychologist), I read up about non-verbal learning disorder (NVLD) and discovered that people who have this might have similar results in the WAIS as people who have dyspraxia. I remember reading that NVLD could be caused by damage to the right frontal lobe of the brain, so couldn't help wondering if I had something like that. I've never had a brain scan, so can only speculate as to why I have dyspraxia, but I've often wondered if I had some kind of head injury when I was young.

[Adrastos]

I was first diagnosed with speech disorder before dyspraxia was known of, and then went through years of speech therapy where they simply labeled me as lazy speaker and used to constantly replay my speech to me, then someone realized i had dyspraxia and i started years of physio therapy as i couldn't walk properly or balance hold pens write, the frontal lobe damage they discovered through neurologist i was thrown down the stairs and against a wall as a 3 month year old baby by my blood mother, im adopted, the top of my skull has massive dint in it , the dyspepsia is genetic as is the essential tremor

[AlleyCat]

What a horrible thing to have happened to you when you were very young! I also think it was unfair of your speech therapist to have referred to you as a 'lazy speaker,' as that implies you were consciously choosing how to speak, when you were not. It does not seem helpful for them to have repeatedly played back recordings of your speech, expecting you to just be able to change your speech as a result of listening to them. I have tried it myself, but it doesn't really work and just leads to frustration- in any case, the sound we hear in our own heads when we're talking is rather different from the sound we hear when we listen to our voices played back.

[Tom fod]

On the over empathetic question I know I am. it's a definite disadvantage in this messed up and uncaring world. But then the world really needs more people who care and can think of others for a change!

My opinion based on what I've learned is that 'dyspraxicness' (not necesessarily dyspraxia) can result from a number of problems before/at time of birth and as a result of physical trauma or as result of other illness/injury/incident eg stroke. I feel that the medical profession's ways and terms for describing impairment are not exactly flattering. It's in some ways (IMO) a bit like reading something written by Josef Mengele or Karl Brandt.

I don't have any time for criminals and think compassion all to often seems to be stretched too far for some people. But equally, I'm not really qualified to pass judgement if I don't have the full picture despite being all too ready to swing the axe on those who seem thoroughly evil and uncaring. (Though knowing me I'd probably only manage to cleave my foot in two!)

Tom

[joy]

Pre frontal Lobe Damage alters the ability of people to execute plans and can make them inconsiderate. It can also pacify them.
Frontal lobe damage affects movement since this area contains the pre motor and motor cortices which does affect Dyspraxia.
The scattered collection of regions also plays a part in emotion,mood and general behaviour as well. So Frontal Lobe damage does play a part in dyspraxia.

[bookgirl]

I'm not so hot on the science but doesn't it kind-of make sense that dyspraxic people will be over or under sensitive emotionally when we are in various other ways?
It's also long been suspected in my family that I'm bi-polar (my mum was amazed to learn a couple of years ago this has never been diagnosed - the main reason being I suppose that I only had interventions when I was majorly down) -whether I am or not I do think that I have difficulty (and always, from a very early age) controlling my emotions in either direction - would it be bizarre to suggest that this is also because I have difficulty controlling my movement and my attention etc.?
Just a thought...

[tara]

Yes definitely. also not only to I stay away from horrid news! Since I've had my kids I have never been able to watch any scary films, or films that have children in it unless comedy's I love comedy movies
Tara

[Jim]

I'm definitely not overly empathetic. If anything I'm slightly detached. I struggle with empathy in a lot of situations. Partly because I myself am used to "not having the rub of the green" in life. So when I see someone else over reacting at something relatively trivial I tend to think "pfft! Pull yourself together man!"

Or in the situations when I want to be the shoulder to cry on a great big invisible barrier goes up and I switch to embarrassed and shy mode. I want to say something comforting or give someone in distress a embracing cuddle but I simply do not know how and end up in an awkward shameful silence.

And whilst I do not wish to appear cold and uncaring, I do not waste too much time in feeling bad of the plight of others. The reason being is that there is a lot of suffering out there and I simply can not afford to feel down about something which I have no ability to affect.

On the flip side.. If I have a go at somebody, ilregardless of if I'm right to do so or not, I soon feel guilty for having done so. For example I can remonstrate with somebody for doing a wrong against me and be completely correct in and for doing so yet then ridiculously feel bad for possibly upsetting them in the process.