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Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? When I was younger, I was awful at reading people. Very shy with others as a result, because

• the__prestige 11y ago
  Curious: did you train yourself to recognize expressions, or did you do some course?
  • tangled_zans 11y ago
    I'm guessing it was on his own as there's not many any courses on emotions worth a damn. That said, coursera did an amazing course on emotions recently by an Italian AI researcher, Jordi Vallverdú. I think it's been taken offline now, unfortunately.
• angli 11y ago
  It's possible that it's more acute for him because he's not used to it, the same way someone who's lived at high altitude for years doesn't feel out of breath. Most people, I think, are affected by the presence of sad people in some way - we can control or get used to it but the raw material is still there.
  • incongruity 11y ago
    This would be my expectation as well. If we likened this emotional sensitivity to one of the senses, almost every sense has a diminished response, over time, to persistent levels of the stimuli. Our eyes adjust to bright or dim light, our sense of smell can quickly adapt to filter out smells that first seem quite awful, we quickly climate to a range of hot or cold water, etc. etc. So, it seems plausible that neurologically the same sort of sensitivity and then regulation could be at work for someone who had been essentially blind to emotions and then had their visibility switched on suddenly.
• gnaritas 11y ago
  > I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training to recognize expressions, focused on one skill at a time, and viewed every conversation as practice. That's doing with intellect, what most people do naturally and subconsciously. This is how an Aspie learns social skills, using intellect to cover up a natural deficiency. > When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. It likely is you; neuro-typical people don't have to "learn" how to read people, it's innate.
  • tangled_zans 11y ago
    No offence, but you really should avoid "diagnosing" people on the internet. It's incredibly stupid and disrespectful at best, and can lead to actual harm at worst. That goes for anyone who isn't a trained professional. But it goes triple for you, given your rudimentary understanding of aspergers, intellect, or how people learn to recognize emotions.
    • gnaritas 11y ago
      Excuse me, but I didn't diagnose anyone, nor do you know anything about me or my understanding of anything, so take your incredibly inaccurate and rude advice and go shove it somewhere it's wanted. Saying "no offence" isn't an excuse to be offensive, which you intentionally were, so perhaps try learning how to be social as well, you're bad at it.
      • tangled_zans 11y ago
        "It is you; neuro-typical people don't have to "learn" how to read people, it's innate." "I didn't diagnose anyone" Wow, do you even LISTEN to yourself when you say things? "nor do you know anything about me or my understanding of anything" Yes I do. I can infer sufficient from what you've just wrote.
        • gnaritas 11y ago
          All I see is you need a dictionary or you don't know what diagnose means. Your inference abilities are terrible then.
• kbenson 11y ago
  > Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? I would also like to know. I feel for people, but I don't usually feel with people. I sympathize often, but rarely to I empathize with anything but the more mundane. It's worse the more extreme the emotion. I'll "feel" more for someone describing an annoyance I share than for someone that explains their parent just passed. I'll feel bad for the person, but in a very detached way. This may be a defense mechanism. The signals I now picked up about what my fellow humans were feeling overwhelmed me. They seemed scared, alarmed, worried and even greedy. ... As exciting as my new sensory ability was, it cost me customers at work, when I felt them looking at me with contempt. It spoiled friendships when I saw teasing in a different and nastier light. It even ruined memories when I realized that people I remembered as funny were really making fun of me. To me, the article reads as if his newfound ability to sense emotion was very poorly calibrated, at least initially. Or I'm just not seeing signals other people see. I don't find it likely that a customer would stare at you with contempt, that your friends teasing would be nasty, that people are making fun of you. Then again, if I'm mostly blind to these things, then my perception of how often they happen could be way off. > Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment that might be construed as insulting). So have I, but not under any specific plan. It's more are trying to have a detached view of the best outcome of my actions. For example, I usually forego the idea of justice for the sake of punishment, when it may also negatively impacts me, and isn't likely to reduce the problem behavior later. Such as responding to bad or annoying drivers. Letting them know their mistake is fine, but making sure they are aware how much they pissed me off (even if it's a lot) is something I strive to avoid in most cases. I figure if they know they screwed up, they'll either feel bad or not, and me pressing the issue won't change that for the better (indignation at perceived overreaction seems to override shame). > But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills. I feel the same way. I also had a hard time reading situation when younger, and Aspergers has always seemed like it might fit, at least somewhat. For me, social interactions are almost never frictionless, and take non-trivial effort. I feel I get by well, sometimes better than those around me, but mainly because I had to train myself to that point. I find myself not wanting to be around people as much because I don't want to waste the brainpower in layering the correct context over their words (even if it's automatic now, it's still taxing).
• aurelianito 11y ago
  How did you learn to read body language? Can you point us to books, websites or courses? I also would like to know if you notice different body language based on culture, race, gender or not. If so, can you describe how? I am also quite bad at reading body language, and learning some basic acting skills helped me to read body language a bit better, but I would love to have more information about this subject. Thanks!
  • cpeterso 11y ago
    "What Every BODY Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People", written by a former FBI counterintelligence officer, is pretty interesting, though not scientific: https://amzn.com/0061438294 https://amzn.com/0061438294
    • chillacy 11y ago
      Ah I remember after I read that in high school I would overanalyze social interactions. Overtime they started becoming more subconscious and automatic so it doesn't get in the way. Today I can point out the reason why I find someone standoffish or sad based on body language, where my extraverted friends who never formalized their knowledge can know what they're feeling but not necessarily formulate why it is.
      • JohnBooty 11y ago
        where my extraverted friends who never formalized their knowledge can know what they're feeling but not necessarily formulate why it is. Haha yeah. It reminds me of the way that non-native English speakers often have an understanding of English that is deeper and more formal than native English speakers. (I am sure that this happens with all languages; English is simply the one I have experience with)
    • tamana 11y ago
      That's on my bookshelf next to "Polygraph Interpretation for Dummies"
  • 11y ago
• totalrobe 11y ago
  I think all individuals have to build social skills to bring to towards 'socially normal', and it varies from where on the spectrum they started. Very outgoing and empathetic people have to learn to tone it down and vice versa. It seems to me like the author became very self-conscious to the point of anxiety, which is not a healthy opposite of autistic. Possibly because he simply hadn't needed them yet, he hadn't learned to build the emotional defenses that most folks use to navigate the complex social web that is life. Scott Adams explains this better than I can, but the most balanced people are selfish enough to guard their own emotional well-being while still being available enough to positively influence others.
  • tangled_zans 11y ago
    "I think all individuals have to build social skills to bring to towards 'socially normal', and it varies from where on the spectrum they started". That's my observation, too. When I was a teen I would completely rebel against any kind of conformity, especially against the idea of "socially expected" behaviour. However by my 20's I ended up learning that sometimes what is socially expected is expected exactly because it's the smartest thing to do in that situation. Funny how these things work out.
    • lexhaynes 11y ago
      Sounds suspiciously like you grew up. :)
      • tangled_zans 11y ago
        :D
    • wolfgke 11y ago
      > However by my 20's I ended up learning that sometimes what is socially expected is expected exactly because it's the smartest thing to do in that situation. Perhaps you should develop some kind of mathematical model (say, some kind of proof calculus) for computing what is the smartest thing to do, so that teenager in the future can derive mathematical correctness proofs that it really is the best (in a mathematical sense) to do so that they can invest their hate of conformity into things that are much more worth it.
• danielweber 11y ago
  I overfeel others emotions. I can be a real pain. I don't know how to observe them without feeling them. In some ways this makes me very empathic, but it also makes me avoid people expressing strong emotions, so it also makes me very stand-offish.
  • ddingus 11y ago
    I have this trouble too. For me, performance arts, music and theater "activated" that emotional sense. At first, I could not process it all, and I raged. Then, being used to it, I find each emotion clear. But, others often confuse them! Disregard, or anger being classified with hate, for example. I feel their anger or loathing, but they express hate to me, and it's all frustrating and painful at times. I feel most people aren't emotionally honest, or just not that capable. Maybe it overwhelms them, or they just don't seem to look at it very deeply. I don't know. Aside from that disconnect, I have learned to manage empathy. It's a strong thing, and it can drain me as much, sometimes more than the person I'm sharing emotion with. An upside is doing things like mentoring or coaching kid sports. When the good, powerful emotions happen, they happen big, and I can share that, amplify it... Those times are very rewarding. People can be so damn beautiful and intoxicating, just as they can be painful and draining.
  • tunap 11y ago
    I believe: "I can be a real pain" = "It can be a real pain" If so, I totally relate. In addition, I avoid most people, including family, b/c they overwhelm me. Manipulating/imploring me to do/see/think the way they do, ad infinum. It's a constant barrage.
    • qb45 11y ago
      > Manipulating/imploring me to do/see/think the way they do Maybe you are too deceptive yourself? ;) I think I was pretty manipulative as a kid and this led me to suspect that everybody messing with my emotions is trying to "engineer" me to do something for them. It drove me insane especially when I utterly couldn't comprehend what they could possibly have out of some particular things. For example, religion totally weirded me out - I just felt like somebody is tricking me and I still haven't even figured out of what :) Anyway, it gets better once you start to see the reasons why people play with you. Most of the time they have no goals besides self-protection and no real intent to influence you as long as you aren't making them feel uncomfortable in some of their stupid ways you would have never imagine possible.
• tangled_zans 11y ago
  "When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills." I've met a lot of people who describe themselves in such a way. I think the problem is that the DSM relies on very arbitrary and subjective behavioural signs to diagnose a lot of what it considers a mental illness. That is something that really annoys me about the psychiatric profession. I would be quite keen to see a more mathematical and objectively grounded theory of mental disorder than the vague, hand waved criteria that we have now. In your case though, I'll quote a character from the Rosie Effect (an amazing book by the way which you might enjoy reading) who said that the main criteria is... pathology. If you are able to maintain an adequate lifestyle (job, education, family, friends) then you're fine. It's only when those "autistic" traits interfere with your life and preclude you from reaching your potential that they're considered abnormal and a diagnosis is apt.
  • rustynails 11y ago
    I have an alternate view is like you to consider. My wife and I had major conflict. My son (at 2) was showing very unusual behaviour. He lacked empathy and my wife felt it was normal. When we got to school, his behaviour exploded into destructiveness. My wife stuck to her guns until someone had the courage to say "he's almost certainly autistic". Then, a few good specialists confirmed it. My wife relented and we helped our son learn to adjust (I focussed heavily on empathy, networking, etc). Now, if we waited until it mattered, he would not be anywhere as capable as he is today. The specialists are amazed at how far he's come. The difference is that people were aware and proactive. They looked for the cues (of which there are many and I see them often - eg. Flapping fingers like a birds wings to release energy/stress). The DSM isn't perfect, but the industry (well, maybe 1 in 5) does a good job of recognising and managing proactively, not retrospectively. Much of what we become is hard wired by the time we are 8. The sooner problems are diagnosed and managed, the better. TL;DR - if you find out when you're going for a job, it's almost certainly too late to influence things.
    • tangled_zans 11y ago
• vinceguidry 11y ago
  > Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? I would say that to go from not feeling them to feeling them full force isn't at all normal. I think the emotions themselves are normal, it's just the neural pathways that process them aren't used to it. So they're experienced far differently than those of other people.
• joepvd 11y ago
  You might be interested in skimming through Part III and Part IV of Ethics, written by Spinoza in 1677[1]. He is a very sharp observer of how states of mind occur, react and develop. His attempt to apply mathematical rigor to his observations is interesting in itself, but might provide for a perspective that is useful. It has been for me ;) [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3800 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3800
  • tangled_zans 11y ago
    Sounds like my kind of guy, thanks for sharing!
• Havoc 11y ago
  >I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. Mind elaborating on this? I'm looking for something like this but can't find any good step by step resources suitable for someone who is primarily logic driven. (Don't think I'm on the spectrum, or if I am its too mild to matter)
  • rustynails 11y ago
    Look up Alan Pease for body language. It is a difficult path to walk. I learned most of it intuitively as a young child. When I saw a gesture, it would trigger panic, almost certainly creating a self fulfilling prophecy. I also faked my body language to hide it from others, making me near impossible to read. As a young person (under 10), it was a social disaster. Just so you know, everyone is on the spectrum. There is a threshold that makes it clear if you are autistic or not and often relates to under/over sensitivity of senses. My son is sensitive to sound and light (as an example). He also struggles to string tasks together and can't organise anything. They're all common traits.
    • Havoc 11y ago
      >Look up Alan Pease for body language. Thanks I'll do so. >Just so you know, everyone is on the spectrum. Yeah half knew that but couldn't think of a better way to convey what I needed. After reading the thread a bit more I guess I could have said neuro-typical.
  • graeme 11y ago
    I remember using two resources: * Paul Ekman's course on microexpressons * Whatever came up when I googled resources on body language for shy people, people with anti social disorder or people with aspergers This was in the mid 2000s, so I may have had more academic/professional results than you'd get now. I imagine results now would be cluttered with blogspam. Also, a caveat is that I've seen some doubts expressed against Ekman's microexpressions theory. However, I was just using the course to get feedback on the expressions themselves and develop an intuition for them. The microexpressions in the course are the same as macroexpressions you'd see people make over a prolonged period. I haven't seen anyone say his facial categorizations are wrong. So I did the course, and got feedback identifying expressions. That was one element. Then I'd also go through the other resources and practice things I was bad at individually. For instance, eye contact. I'd have weeks where I just paid attention to eye contact during conversations. I used to not do any, so I focussed on making more. Then I'd pay attention to how people reacted. Too much or too little eye contact will weird people out, in different ways. So you can use reactions to calibrate. Then after doing it long enough, it becomes intuitive and you don't need to work on it consciously. Move on to the next item. Another I remember was smile lines around the eyes. Genuine pleasure will make people smile with their eyes. Fake smiles are mouth only. So I'd pay attention to when people laughed, and check the eyes. Do this long enough and you get an intuition for real smiles vs. fake. Then you don't have to think about it anymore. And so on. 1. Identify weakness 2. Devise way to get feedback 3. Focus on it for a bit 4. Once it becomes intuitive, move on to something else If done correctly, you can learn to do everything at an automatic rather than an intellectual level. I didn't find body language books that helpful, because they don't have focussed practice. I think something that categorizes expressions + asks you to correctly identify expressions is essential. Then something which just lists things involved in social skills, and practice them to mastery. As a result I went from being far worse than average to better than average.
• noir_lord 11y ago
  I have excellent social skills, I'm comfortable talking to a room full of people (as long as the material is something I understand well). I read people well but I don't really emphasise with them on an emotional level, I'm told I'm good at reading people and have worked in sales in the past but its purely for a rational, if I was in this persons position what would I do, likely to be feeling analysis. I don't really have strong emotions either or more correctly I have them but they are transient and then I return to a ground state, neither happy nor sad just a strange sort of equilibrium, I don't understand people who carry hate or anger, I've experienced both (for sound reasons) but think they are a poison you take til the other person dies (read that somewhere).
  • graeme 11y ago
    This sounds exactly like me (I'm the OP). I have a very contented baseline. Momentary divergences to transient emotions, and then I easily return to the baseline.
• hosh 11y ago
  I also practice mindfulness. In my case, I have had and still have intense emotions. But you know, letting things arise and pass. I can tell you that just because I can naturally feel a lot doesn't mean that I was socially adept. I've had a lot of experience with consciousness shifts and exploring different states. If there is one thing I learned, it would be there is no such thing as "normal". Social norms are largely an illusion, and what lurks in the psyche can wildly vary. Some people don't have intense emotions. Others do. Some have greater empathy than others, in some case edging into parapsychology. This was something my wife and I were talking about today too. For me, the idea of being "socially well-adjusted" is founded on deep flaws. We have this bias that somehow conflates the inability to speak well with being unintelligent. We all have different communication channels in which we can connect to people. An emotional connection is one part of it. The emotions lead to some important things related to the human and spiritual experiences, but just because you can feel emotions doesn't mean you got a handle on them, or yourself.
• jacalata 11y ago
  That's because autism isn't deeply understood yet and so it's diagnosed based on symptoms. But having effective workarounds doesn't mean you don't have the underlying condition - imagine a diagnostic for blindness that said 'cannot safely navigate an unknown area' and then diagnosed a guy with a seeing-eye dog as 'not blind'.
  • orionblastar 11y ago
    I keep hearing that autistic people have no empathy but I find ones that do have it. They can't read people but they care about people when they are hurt or sad. Sometimes they get upset when someone tries to belitte them for being autistic. Working with the public is hard for them.
• spinlock 11y ago
  Our brains are plastic. You took yours in one direction. Good on you.
• JohnBooty 11y ago
  "I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training to recognize expressions, focussed on one skill at a time, and viewed every conversation as practice. I improved to the point that people comment that I'm surprisingly good at reading them." Wow! I thought I was the only one who did this. As a kid, I too felt like I was missing out on something everybody else understood. Similarly to you, I just kind of naturally viewed it as something I could learn and get better at. Over the years, I did, and now I'd consider myself better than average at it. Unlike you said, though, I do feel others' emotions. Sometimes too strongly, I think. "I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills." Poor social skills are a common symptom, but I do strongly believe that for somebody with high intelligence these skills can be learned to an extent, like you and I feel we did. In my by-no-means-professional opinion I would not say that "learned" social skills rule out the presence of autistic symptoms. That said, the lack of ability to share and care about others' feelings does not sound like the mild end of the autism spectrum as I know it. Anecdotally a lot of people with these diagnoses feel others' emotions strongly, they just struggle to understand others' emotions more than the average person does, ie: "Colleen is really sad today, and it's making me sad, and everybody else seems to intuitively understand why she's sad but I don't. And this kind of thing happens a lot."
  • voodootrucker 11y ago
    It's totally two layers of neural networks: The conscious and the unconscious. All of these descriptions fall into those categories. "normal" people learn things intuitively, whereas autistic people have to learn them consciously.
  • graeme 11y ago
    Interesting. The last paragraph sounds nothing at all like me. And for the other comment below, I'd say my learning processes were both conscious and unconscious. I used conscious thinking to note what needed practice and assess progress, but used intuition and practice to actually improve them. From what I've read of skill development this is pretty typical.
• emmanueloga_ 11y ago
  > Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? This question reminded me of a podcast I heard a couple of weeks ago [1] where they talked about people that just couldn't bear to be with others, because of some sort of over amplified sense of empathy [2]. 1: See "Entanglement" at: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-touch_synesthesia#Link_to_empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-touch_synesthesia#Link_...
• mistermann 11y ago
  > I've also practice stoicism and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you Can you recommend any resources? Do you think it could help one become (or adopt a mindset of) apathetic, so office politics and various other nonsense wouldn't be so agitating?
  • graeme 11y ago
    I liked Seneca's letters from a Stoic, and the miracle of mindfulness. There's also some helpful exercises in the four hour workweek (writing down worst case scenarios), and bits of the Black Swan were formative. Of course, a big part of the latter two books was also structuring my life so I don't have situations where I need to deal with office politics as part of my livelihood. But I can confirm that the techniques do work for very real stresses I've had that can't be avoided.