How do I become more empathetic?

I am not an empathetic person (at least I don’t think I am?)

Recently I have been thinking about a lot of the mistakes I have made in life, and I think a lot of them correlate with a lack of empathy. I think this might also be a reason that I struggle to connect with others, at least beyond surface-level.

I have always cheated a lot in school with little to no guilt. In 7th and 8th grade I cheated on pretty much everything, so there are still some basic concepts that I am unfamiliar with. I would hide tests in bathrooms, look at other people’s papers, sneak things home, sneak notes, pretend that I ran out of time so I could finish the test the next day, but just look up the answers at home, etc. I went many years without getting caught, (although I cheated more of a normal amount in high school). My senior year of high school I almost got written up because I was caught for the first time. I panicked when she said “I technically should write you up for this”. But upon reflection, I am not sure if I actually felt guilty. I just was scared that my academic scholarships would be revoked.

I also went through a phase in middle school where I was a big internet troll. My purpose was never to mainly be a bully. It wasn’t the traditional “keyboard warrior” type of trolling. I more so genuinely wanted to get people at my school talking. Me and my friends just really got a kick out of messing with people. We made probably 25-30 accounts? Some were very innocent, and just weird at the most. Others were worse. We had one account dedicated to making fun of a teacher, who really didn’t do anything that wrong to us. But a lot of people didn’t like her, so it got people talking. I think one or two people even made posts about it being wrong. So we deleted the account. Then revived it later on to get another reaction. There also were a few typical catfish accounts. You know, the kind where you put a pretty girl as the profile picture and talk to a guy for a bit to see if they believe it’s real. I think at one point a classmate was “dating” one of these accounts. We got some classmates to confess things we never would have known about them with these accounts, regarding their home life, grades, etc. A lot of it we didn’t ask for to be fair, but it was still wrong nevertheless to lead people on like that. We had one account where we posted old childhood videos of a classmate, which (rightfully so) really creeped him out. It was really just to confuse people. We had another where we pretended to be a model to “sext” boys, but we didn’t actually send anything or save anything. It was literally just to annoy people I guess (?). We never were “exposed” for running any of the accounts.

Now this is the part that I feel the grossest about sharing. I have a weird fetish for disability, specifically paralysis. It’s like I’m attracted to people being in pain or something? I’m not even sure how this type of fetish comes about, but I don’t think I feel as bad about it as I should. I feel embarrassed, but not super guilty.

I sometimes have a hard time caring about other people’s feelings. When people cry about something they love being over, I feel like I have to fake getting emotional, (even if it is something I enjoyed too). When people get upset over their breakups, I don’t know how to comfort them. I feel like sometimes I have different personalities- one being more cold and introverted, and another more charismatic and bubbly. I can’t tell which one is real at this point. I feel like all of my life goals are more selfish compared to my peers. They want to get married, have kids, and become teachers and nurses. I am not opposed to starting a family, but I am obsessed with the idea of building a name for myself and becoming wealthy. I want to be an entertainer. I don’t have shame in it either, unless it’s a situation where having shame would make me look better to be honest. A lot of my insecurities are shallow and based on a fear of not being able to obtain status versus not being able to please others. For example, I am insecure about being average looking and having average intelligence because I am afraid that I won’t become well-known before dying, versus feeling like I won’t fall in love or having fear that I am a bad friend.

Is this type of behavior normal things that people just don’t normally confess to, or is this abnormal? I am not a violent person. The only person I have ever been violent towards was my mom as a kid, (I think I slapped her in the face once and pushed her down once), but she was verbally abusive and did slap me in the face at one point too, so I had built up anger. It wasn’t for no reason. I have never gotten into a physical fight. I have no desire to hurt any people, or any animals. The only time I hurt animals as a child was pulling worms apart and crushing bugs- you know, normal kid stuff. I think I have a memory of me squeezing a baby chick, but I was only 3 so I think I just didn’t know better, and didn’t know I needed to be gentle upon picking it up. I did not get in trouble as a kid. I was almost truant because I would make excuses to not go to school sometimes, but that’s it. I hid things well, but did nothing majorly bad. What explanations for low empathy are there other than ASPD? How do I know if I actually am lower on the empathy spectrum?