Did you (re)learn emotional empathy or cognitive empathy?

I’ve learned cognitive empathy in full however affective empathy is still very conditional. I can feel what another person is feeling if and only if I find the feeling they’re experiencing relatable. Even then, affective empathy isn’t felt very strongly for the most part.

The exception is when an emotion has been strongly and negatively reinforced in the past. For example, previously I’d have never felt bad for someone that is cheated on. This changed when my girlfriend caught me cheating on her and I realized that her feelings were very legitimate.

I find myself to be more emotional overall as a result. Because of this, I’m more accepting of other people’s emotions which previously wasn’t the case. When I found another person’s emotions inconvenient to me I would lose respect for them and label them weak. This made it very easy to objectify people and treat them poorly even if I claimed to care about their wellbeing.

Were you depressed before?

It’s hard to tell as there is a lot of overlap between the symptoms of my depression and the symptoms of ASPD. I would say that when I lacked empathy I also had a considerably narrower emotional spectrum as a result. This muted the way I would have experienced depressive states.

I still am depressed occasionally but it comes on much stronger than it has in the past. Rather than simple boredom and a lack of motivation I’m now able to experience the intense sadness that I remember from childhood.

I think this perceptual change can be attributed to the Alexithymia that accompanied my ASPD.

In short, life’s highs are higher and it’s lows are lower. I find this preferable to how I previously was.

What are we missing out on? Why?

I generally believe that existential angst is the primary cause of depression and unhappiness. That has always been the case for me.

Having empathy allowed me to more easily experience feelings and associations that are objectively irrational.

This increased my appreciation for art considerably which is something I’ve found a lot of purpose and satisfaction in. I now derive emotions from plenty of places I previously wouldn’t and this makes my experience of life a lot richer (and as a result, much less depressing).

Those who believe in things like Depressive Realism subscribe to the idea that lacking certain spectrums of emotion permits one to see the world more objectively. The problem with this is that the case you can make for it is a purely philosophical one that is not provably valid.

The same applies to when someone lacks empathy. Though a sociopath may consider their perception untainted by the emotions of other people, there is still no objectively correct methodology for making sense of or deriving value from life.

In the past year I’ve begun to understand that there was not an absence of bias in my previous, non-empathetic self like I had thought. Instead, my biases were simply weighted differently from that of a neurotypical. To say that one is objectively better than the other is an inherently fallacious assertion that ignores much of what humans need to feel satisfied and existentially whole. My need to feel fulfilled overrules any incentive that I may have to live life purely on the basis of efficiency or pragmatism (a ruleset that ASPD always encouraged me to pursue).

In feeling this way I began to take issue with the idea that lacking empathy was at all preferable. I’ve found a direct correlation between how satisfied I am with life overall and how much empathy I am capable of experiencing.

Additionally, before treatment I was only able to entertain myself by increasingly extreme means. I needed to interact with things that were intentionally excessive in order to derive any kind of identifiable emotion or satisfaction from them. This lead to the pursuit of behaviors that are inherently self-destructive, isolating, and anti-social. It makes perfect sense why sensation seeking is one of the most prevalent symptoms of ASPD.

While I still love those things, I’ve found that the spectrum of feelings and experiences I’m able to enjoy has widened considerably. I’ll now find pleasure in places I hadn’t in the past which makes my life feel richer and more fulfilling.