#it is not easy to be a pwaspd who masks at all

[aspd-culture]

ASPD culture is: the fact that I know what words are expected to be said in certain situations does not mean I have or feel empathy or sympathy. It just means that I know what to do/say to pass as pro-social.

aspd-culture is

[aspd-culture]

I am from a home where an abusive Mormon father treated me inhumanely if I didn't fake empathy, and as an amazing person if I did. I have severe alexithymia but I always assumed that deep down, I felt what others said they did. As an adult, I am realizing that may not be true.

Because I learned through trauma that to be empathetic is to be safe and good, I have sought out highly empathetic close friends, and represented myself as sharing that trait, even to the point of mimicking them. I liked how much stuff I could make them do for me and having "nice" people think I was nice, and we had fun together. Over time, these friends became very unsettled as I could not maintain masking much of the time once the friendship stopped being so new and exciting, and I was still presenting myself one way, very empathetic... But behaving another, hypoempathetic.

I make very hurtful social mistakes that make sense for someone without empathy, but not for someone with empathy, and then I explain them with elaborate lies that I want to believe are true. I still don't want to give up on my idea of myself as the person my father would approve of, a very caring being. I don't know what to do. What would others do in this situation?

I think the main thing to remember is that what you experienced was abuse based on something you cannot control. In fact, empathy in allistic children (possibly autistic children as well, but I haven't yet researched what causes some autistic people to be low-empathy) is a learned behavior that can only be learned during a critical period in early childhood brain development. If you are low-empathy or without empathy, it is probably your parents' fault in the first place.

I know it's not easy to hear, but being low-empathy or without empathy is not anything against you. Likely, you weren't so much learning empathy as much as gaining a couple skills that mimicked empathy, as many pwASPD do - cognitive empathy, sympathy, and masking. The first two can be very helpful at appearing as though you have affective empathy (the kind people mean when they just say "empathy"), but the last one is important to take breaks on and find safe people to be around who understand that part of you and don't judge you in any way for it. If not, you *will* burn out, as you mention has already happened.

Another thing to remember is that whether or not you do research and (if you do have it) admit to yourself that you have low empathy or no empathy, that will still be the case. Nothing about not acknowledging it will not make it any less true, you will just be keeping yourself away from the community and resources that exist to help you more effectively communicate with others. The best way to avoid accidentally showing your low/no empathy in places where it's not safe to is to work to understand it and find healthy ways to cope, which will be much harder if you deny it.

If you don't have low/no empathy, the way to reaffirm that is the same - doing your unbiased research into the experience of people who do.

I would recommend you continue to do your research and compare against your life/symptoms and try and also make your peace with the fact that pleasing someone who abused or still is abusive to you is not only nearly impossible, but also extremely unhealthy and damaging to your mental health. It is likely this abuse around empathy that caused it to fail to develop properly in the first place, and they don't deserve you putting them at such a high value.

Lastly do your best to internalize (although all of this will of course take time, and that's 100% ok and valid!) that empathy is a morally neutral trait. You are still able to be a deeply caring person with ASPD and/or low/no empathy, even if it takes more work. Many, many terrible people have perfect affective empathy, which only means they recognize how horribly they hurt people and still do nothing about it. Meanwhile many people with low/no empathy work 100x as hard as everyone else to be a "good" person even when they have to jump through so many hoops to even figure out when they've caused pain.

Who sounds like a better person to you? Someone who makes sure not to hurt people because they can feel that hurt too and it bothers them, or someone who isn't able to feel when they hurt people and has no emotional consequences to hurting people and still works their butt off to not do so?

Thank you for this question, I hope this helps! Good luck on your healing journey :)