“I feel for you.”

NT Experience

Sympathy is perception or understanding of distress in another being. As opposed to Empathy (feeling with the person), sympathy is feeling for the person.

Sympathy is from your own perspective: you can see that somebody is suffering and intellectually recognize pain – you feel pity. When somebody feels sympathy they may offer to help, give advice or “look on the bright side”.

In NT people sympathy might be used for somebody that you are not close to, while empathy is preferred for close relationships and deeper problems. Empathy is about the connection.

My Experience

If I can understand the emotions that people are feeling I can feel sympathy but not affective Empathy.

Since I don’t receive any social signals I may not understand they have an emotional state. Crying is a high magnitude statement that I can pick up – I can understand that they are sad for some reason. If they state “I am sad because my dog died” I will understand more.

I don’t understand what or how they feel, but I can sometimes experience a parallel feeling using Narrative Affective Resonance.

Typically if somebody is very emotional, I don’t know what to do. I have a bias toward noninterference (assuming doing nothing is less harmful, though in practice I suspect that this is not what NT people expect). If they are feeling distress where a solution is possible, problem solving would be my native state.

Comparison

The trigger threshold is different. NT people can detect very subtle vibes and understand hurt and offer sympathy. I understand crying (roughly as a person stating they are sad) or explicit words. I don’t know why unless I am told.

There is also a difference in the purpose. In NT people it is to validate each other’s emotional state and maintain relationships. I offer problem solving or avoidance. I do wish to help, but it isn’t always possible. Sympathy is more a label of distress or sadness than any understanding of emotions.

Semantic Divergence: yes.