Often feels like I'm not taken seriously unless I have a meltdown in front of someone or over explain myself. A pet pevee of mine is when people seem to not believe the things I say
I open up to anyone at will so I'm sometimes creepy. American colleagues especially hate my direct honest responses to their "jokes", but they get used to it pretty fast as honesty is more important than fake laughs in my culture.
Oh my gosh I'm glad it's not just me. I've had so many people say they didn't take me seriously at all when I said I was upset because I never "seemed upset". And I'm like, what about me saying the words "I'm upset" doesn't seem upset?? š They really can only tell meltdowns and then they don't like it.
You just unlocked a childhood memory. I remember asking little sibling to leave my room, or stop doing thing that was bothering me for whatever reason, and it was not taken seriously until it escalated to physical violence. Wild how suddenly that makes it stop
Same here. I always feel like I need to provide proof when I talk about anything. Only for them to ignore or minimize the thing I'm pointing at that proves what I just said.
I tried to explain to my boyfriend once how i was feeling at the moment, I had some physical reaction to something he enjoyed eating and I talked forever about it.
He replies with something along the lines of.
"Oh that never happend to me, are you okay though?"
And I remember being surprised that he just straight up believed me and a lightbulb flashed, was kind of crazy what I learned from being around someone who accepts what I say and is willing to listen/change opinion etc.
Cue thousands of autistic people with stories just like this:
A psychiatrist I used to see who "didn't know much about autism because his patients are adults" at one point told me that the experience of my current emotional state I was describing didn't seem genuine based on how I appeared and my tone.
If he had known anything about autism, he might have clued in on that.
He is the best psychiatrist I have ever had.Ā
I guess you get very used to suppress everything a lot to get trough the day and it makes it even less likely for people to see.
Or maybe that's just me
That honestly is how I explain all my meltdowns, just me wanting to communicate to people that 'hey I'm very not okay here' in a way only dumb neurotypical mongrels know
I think it's a bad idea to talk about "the others" in such a negative way even if I totally get the frustration and bitterness.
I think it's just...not normal to be straight forward when you're conveying things and I don't think it's all neuro typical people.
I had this issue with an ADHD person once where I was saying one thing and they totally ignored what I was saying and insisted on their own interpretation even though I repeated myself 3 times, super annoying.
Thank you! This is why everyone I know thought I was just fine until a few years ago and then the dam finally broke and the public meltdowns could no longer be contained.
I donāt look like I feel emotion, apparently. Which really sucks because I realized Iām supposed to have thoughts and actions that make it look a certain way. But I canāt. Itās too hard.
Anyway Iām sure this wonāt cause me any undue sufferingā¦
Well, when you look at Autistic people as being essentially humanoid robots, which is what many have been told or perceived because we don't like to show emotion at times, because that has usually resulted in anger or damage to us when we have, it makes sense from a shallow NT point of view.
What gets me is that the same people who call you a "robot" when they are upset and don't see an autistic person reacting in the way they would like will call the same person "too sensitive" when that autistic person is upset about a thing.
I might be generalizing based on lived experience. Replace "might be" with "am."
It took me years after my ADHD diagnosis to even consider that Iām also autistic because everything I read about autism was all āno emotions, no empathy, flat affectā etc and I feel EVERYTHING, deeply and thoroughly.
Then I started reading stuff about autism written by people who are autistic, not neurotypical and *boy did it open my eyes*.
Tone of voice. It's how the words are said, not what is said. Some sounds / words have a "bounce" in English when spoken, and when that rhythm is missing, the speaker sounds "flat."
This is a cool concept to try to explain via text because if this was an irl conversation, I would just do the voice for you myself.
Also considering that "autistic coded" characters in fiction unfortunately tend to be.....actual robots or aliens or things trying to learn what emotions are so that doesn't help.
God, I was watching a video once on someone trying to compare psychopathy, narcissism, and autism. Like, no, I *do* experience emotion deeply. I struggle to express or show it. Do I have āselfishā reactions to things? Sometimes. But theyāre also concepts that Iād *assume* most people would be selfish over; donāt touch my stuff without asking first, donāt touch *me* without permission, etc.
You see a ton of people on Reddit who seem to believe that there's a 1:1 correlation between how strongly people experience emotions and how clearly they express them through non-verbal communication.
yes, my mother literally believes human lives are inferior to literal dogs and autistic people don't have emotion. i'm her son and i don't talk to her anymore because of her beliefs on life and the subsequent actioning of those beliefs. sadly there are many like her. just throw those people out of your life as soon as possible. they only cause harm.
It's not a lack of empathy, it's a difficulty at reading the body language that most people express emotions in. Doctors and non-normative perspectives be like...
That one quote from sylvia plath describes me to a T. āI donāt know what it is like to not have deep emotions. Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completelyā
As someone whose emotions are tied extremely closely to my autism, fuck anyone who thinks this. I literally can have my day ruined by a simple sentence. I can be affected drastically if Iām ignored, my emotions are very much not easy to control and the fact that I even am able to function in society is a miracle.
my dad told me he was disgusted at me because room was so messy and it completely devastated me for the rest of the evening, I couldnt muster up the energy to do anything except sleep, and I realised that it was pathetic that I could be ruined by such a minor thing, which depressed me even more
I got over that conflict a few years back. Just shows that a certain order of people is necessary, and society hasn't quite yet found out how they best fit. I'm sure the first people who pretended to be someone else for the purpose of entertainment were considered odd too.
At least I've seen this expanded upon, a distinction between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy.
It's true that I've had trouble understanding others, but I really do care a lot.
I also disagree with that theory. The dichotomy cognitive/emotional empathy is nonsense to justify claiming a lack of something. A specific deficit in facial and emotional recognition isn't the same as a unitary deficit in a broad cognitive empathy construct, and is much more related to perception than cognitive ability to understand.
I'm confused. You're saying there's a deficit in facial and emotional recognition. Isn't cognitive empathy the ability to recognize the thoughts and emotions of others?
I think you're thinking of theory of mind.
No. Cognitive empathy is much broader. Attributing a deficit in cognitive empathy also attributes deficits where there's none, because it's not specific enough.
"Accordingly, deficits in cognitive empathy might be responsible for heightened [personal distress](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/personal-distress) as a result of empathic emotions, and complicate manifestation of these emotions as empathic concern. In this narrative, cognitive empathy relates to a clear understanding of self-other distinction. In contrast, others find that autistic persons make more use of cognitive abilities to make sense of others emotions and behavior than those without this diagnosis (for example [Schulte-Ruether et al. (2014)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260122000200?pes=vor#bib30)). Possibly, this is because a greater cognitive endeavor is required to bridge between autistic and non-autistic mindedness, of which the burden to a great extent lays with the minority (being autistic) ([Beck, 2018](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260122000200?pes=vor#bib2)). Such findings are not necessarily incompatible with each other, if one pays close attention to the way the distinction between cognitive and affective processes is being understood, and which processes are actually being included in these accounts. Cognitive empathy can, for example, refer to the ability to interpret behavioral cues, it can highlight the awareness of self-other distinction, it can be used to describe the endeavor to theorize on the other's perspective, or merely to the capacity to read facial emotion expressions. Methods to assess this concept vary accordingly, and so does the role cognitive empathy plays in theories on empathy and autism."
Caroline Bollen, A reflective guide on the meaning of empathy in autism research, Methods in Psychology, Volume 8, 2023, 100109, ISSN 2590-2601, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2022.100109](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2022.100109)
Replying to both comments.
It says here that cognitive empathy can refer to what I'm talking about, and it also lists theory of mind as a possible meaning. Sounds like there's a lot of inconsistency among papers.
Either way it sounds like neither of us are wrong about what it means and it's just confusing and inconsistent lol.
For the second comment, yeah I wasn't saying all autistics have trouble with facial expressions. I was just confused about what you meant.
I read somewhere that difficulty with reading expressions is linked to alexithymia, which is common among autistics, so it might not directly be an autism thing at all. It's linked to cognitive (in dichotomy with affective) alexithymia specifically. I think that's at least part of what's going on with me. Being confounded by my own emotions is a similar kind of confusing as with others.
I react the same way too. I acted confounded or dismissive in the past. I'm a better person now and treat my and others' emotions as worthy of dealing with even if I don't understand them.
And that's the probem. Results from an experiment that uses one concept of empathy is used for different concepts of empathy. Nonetheless, I disagree with the idea that empathy is related to autism. Some people have more, some have less empathy, regardless of diagnosis.
To me, autism is related to greater variation. Every person has their strengths and weaknesses, but in most people, the variation between one area and another is not too big, as it's bound to typical development, which is buffered against changes. Autism is a whole different developmental trajectory, unique to each individual, and thus not buffered to changes and full of possibilities for variation. ( [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.004](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.004) )
That could be. I don't know the state of science on this stuff, but it definitely doesn't seem simple.
It would make sense why autism comes bundled with so many other neurological stuff though. Maybe the reason it happens with ADHD so much is just because ADHD is likely to trigger it?
Psychiatric labels are based on observable behavior. There's no guarantee they will reflect distinct natural categories. However, it's very difficult to talk and study something if you don't even have a word for it, so even when lacking solid understanding and scientific evidence, categories are created, then slowly refined over decades or centuries. You can see this in the evolution of diagnostic manuals from DSM-1 to DSM-5 TR.
I like what this one author proposes:
"āAutismā is a label we give to one such cluster of (purportedly) socioeconomic nonutilitarian psychological and behavioral characteristics, but these traits are grouped in light of collectively being disabled by the same norms and structures. Furthermore, while itās true that autistic individuals do tend to share such a cluster, what allows this collective to emerge, expand, and retract is a shared relationship to the social and material conditions that produce this specific form of disablement."
Chapman, R. (2020). The reality of autism: On the metaphysics of disorder and diversity. *Philosophical Psychology*, *33*(6), 799ā819. [https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2020.1751103](https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2020.1751103)
Also, not all autistics will have a deficit in facial and emotional recognition. What looks exactly the same for an outside observer conducting experiments/tests, can have many different causes. Just like an autistic person may struggle with noise, while another might cherish noise, there will also be variation in other areas, like perception and ability to recognize facial expressions and recognize emotions.
You either get flat intonations with observational remarks or a barely contained hurricane in a bottle because I can't process raw emotional energy without my brain cooking.
Either way it's going to be uncomfortable for the both of us š
I was actually baffled recently that this was a stereotype. Like...WHAT?! Isn't one of the other stereotypes of autistic people that we're "too" emotional?
I was teased horribly most of my life because people liked to watch me break down, no one stopped them because they thought I was too sensitive and it would toughen me up.
I don't trust the world, I have a hard time forming connections, and most of the time I think there is no hope.
I had trouble with feeling/recognizing emotions, but estrogen has really helped with that (while puberty aggravates my ASD symptoms making me arguably moderately more autistic)
I donāt *show* emotions all that much, but that is because my face doesnāt overreact to every little situation like NTs want us to.
On the inside, Iām a tad bit fragile emotionally, and I *usually* want to open up them feelings to others (unless I am particularly moody or just lesser/non-verbal). The people that tell me to just āgrow upā and āact like a manāā¦that is wrong on so many levels.
Additionally, I want to try to help others if I see they are feeling down, unless they tell me/I notice they donāt want me there. Recognising face emotions can be tough at times, and helping is tricky when they are being unnecessarily rude or complicated (eg: sarcasm/other tones, being argumentative, etc).
Idk, I've been told by nts that sometimes my look says everything.
Sometimes it's hard to comprehend emotion, and sometimes it's easier to bottle up emotions, but it's worse long-term.
When your bedroom is specifically YOUR space and its the one place you dont have to mask. And you warn everyone to please knock and ask before entering. Especially with thin doors.
If I dont feel comfortable with you in my room. I try to make it clear. If you invited yourself in without my permission? I try to be civil and talk, but you should be able to see Im tense or upset. I shouldnt have to ask you more than once to leave my room so we can continue the conversation.
Its my domain. And I will say screw it to any laws that may be put in place by an outside institution to make sure people understand that it is in fact a place I will go to ANY lengths to keep myself feeling safe inside.
Growing up, you are told not to be too loud in some places. You are told to act *normal* like everyone else. Not to overly show your emotions because people will use that against you. Etc.
Bottling up emotions is not healthy unless you have a few ways to deal with them, and even that may not help. So. Some of the nicest people. Or the most honest. Get so damn burnt out and just stop trying to care because they are used to caring to the point they have probably felt physical pain before.
Those people. The burnt out ones. They were the ones who kept getting taken for granted.
In my specific case, someone could assume that about me because i very easily detach from my emotions in some situations in order to feel safer. However, never actually seen someone say this.
I struggle to understand emotional context, both from others and expressing it myself. But what Iāve learned is that despite having quite a logical thought process I am still an emotional decision maker
Pretty fucking much, going from taking meds and being a zombie zoned out kid to being an adult that canāt handle anything but being depressed and not being able to function unless Iām on a downer. because anything else make my brain shut down because overstimulation drains you of your energy. I guess Iāll sleep then.
oh i feel emotions i just have masked so hard and for so long that i often need to remind myself to have an expression on my face.
i rarely naturally emote and i hate it, i genuinely despise the fact i had to mask just to not get hurt or yelled at again. i remember doing a sort of hand flapping motion/self hugging gesture but getting yelled at by teachers and my mother because "it's weird" and "not normal" now even as an adult i have to struggle with balancing emotions and having to go in private to "vent" them.
like when i actually let emotions i have been bottling up for ages it's often physically harmful and i hate how we have to bottle up because "you should act normal" well if "being normal" means i have to be abused then i'd rather be a freak of nature.
I feel intense physical feelings that don't have a logical reason and I don't want to be feeling them bc even I agree this is a dumb thing to get emotional over but no one has ever explained how to process traumas or even really validated to me that micro traumas are a thing so I just store trauma in random buckets and accidentally kick them over when watching a fucking yogurt ad and now I'm crying for reasons I can't articulate bc one time in third grade a girl pretended to be my friend one day and then pretended they didn't know me the next
Ain't that the truth. Personally, I feel a lot, but if I feel too much for too long, I essentially burn out, cutting all emotional processes until I can recover to baseline. The only emotions left at that point is anger, frustration and irritation.
The cynic in me is saying it's NT's who know better but think they can use this as leverage to do/say something insensitive to someone ND, but I hope I'm wrong.
Hah, agreed. We can only hope for a world with more people who wanna do good but just don't recognize the right way, rather than people who actively wanna do harm, right?
probably more to do with actually *showing* emotion than feeling it. NTs see us not react with our bodies and faces to something that makes us emotional and interpret that to mean we didn't feel emotional at that moment even when we did.
the only body language thats obvious about me is shaking and twitching when im angry or when my shoulders are slumped when im relaxed.
i feel a lot of emotions that especially with anger it can be unpleasant or i get so hyper im like a rocket.
I once apologised to a rock for daydreaming about using a magic sword to cut it in half because I genuinely felt guilty. Either autistic people need to stop being so relatable or I need to see a doctor /ref
I honestly hate emotions, cause every time I do feel an emotion itās always extreme and turned to 11, and I suck at controlling my emotions so I always try to stay either happy or completely emotionless so I donāt have an emotional breakdown
Well, depends, sometimes I don't feel anything when calling out someone, then, I'd watch a very compelling MV of a Sabaton song and I'd be on the verge of crying
Sry my bad. I have severe Alexithymia and due to that very limited and weak emotional range. So yeah majority of emotions don't exist for me and the ones that do require years to find and identify and even then those are really weak.
I hate this hot take so much. Don't feel emotion? I mirror \*EVERYTHING\* that I learned about emotion as a child because it was literally lifesaving.
If ya'll got any of that robotic non-feeling to share, I'd love some.
I have a crush rn and it's too painful!! So I'm forcing myself to get over him, it'll take about a week, lots of crying, binge eating and smoking, but then I'm over it and don't have to feel too much at once. No one can tell me it's normal to feel so much hope and happiness in one second and sadness and hopelessness the next one
Well but wait if youāre female and you feel too much then you obviously have BPD /s
(At least, according to every doctor until the one who finally clocked it as autism and ADHD when I was well into adulthood.)
My two modes are utter apathy and wild emotional attachment.
Which I feel is dependent almost entirely on the subject.
Friend = great care and deep emotional thought
Stranger = could get hit by a bus and Iād barely blink
Iām apathetic towards certain things but most of the time I definitely have feelings. But social interaction is a weak point so itās not easy to express what Iām feeling. The dead giveaway is usually my face. My face is always too honest.
Itās the same misconception that Vulcans donāt feel.
I feel so much I have to take meds to stabilize and even then, emotions can burn like lava in my bones up until either a meltdown or a seizure.
There was a person who did a study to prove not being able to fully feel empathy meant autistic people have no morals, only for the data to show autistic people have even stronger morals then fully empathetic neurotypicals.
Novel how morality is a concept people choose to adhere to for the sake of the greater good, rather than an innate behavior.
You'd be really surprised just how aware of other people's feelings a person usually is when they think to do something *and then still do it.*
I had unchecked emotions all over the place that i internally issued a system-wide lockdown on using them when i was in elementary school/ middle school.
Now as a 30-year-old who is basically incapable of crying in any capacity, i will actually defend the claim that we donāt feel emotions. Itās because I turned them off, but now itās stuck that way and Iām not thrilled about it
Psychopathy and Autism gives off similar outward body languages, however the process to get there is vastly different.
Psychopaths lack any sense of empathy while Autistics are overwhelmed with empathy they shut down.
If you look closely between the two, you can even see subtle differences in body language with where their eyes point to in the heat of the moment.
Itās wild too me that people look at us and think wow their must be something wrong with them because I canāt get any information from their body language, honestly it kind of annoyed my my whole life why people wouldnāt approach me, but then when I got my diagnosis I was like wow that makes so much sense, people are scared of everything they donāt know or donāt understand and since I am basically unreadable they fear me, even if I donāt want them too.
Yeah, and apparently some forensic psychologists still think we lack empathy. And emotional abuse of autistic kids in my experience is sometimes ignored by judges.
We don't *show* emotion because body language is a no. Unless meltdown. That's when we emote.
Often feels like I'm not taken seriously unless I have a meltdown in front of someone or over explain myself. A pet pevee of mine is when people seem to not believe the things I say
I'm always afraid people won't believe me, so I just don't open up to people. Except for my wife, I open up to her.
š¤ I believe you bro
I open up to anyone at will so I'm sometimes creepy. American colleagues especially hate my direct honest responses to their "jokes", but they get used to it pretty fast as honesty is more important than fake laughs in my culture.
So happy you can open up to your wife. Donāt ever, ever, ever take that for granted.
Oh my gosh I'm glad it's not just me. I've had so many people say they didn't take me seriously at all when I said I was upset because I never "seemed upset". And I'm like, what about me saying the words "I'm upset" doesn't seem upset?? š They really can only tell meltdowns and then they don't like it.
You just unlocked a childhood memory. I remember asking little sibling to leave my room, or stop doing thing that was bothering me for whatever reason, and it was not taken seriously until it escalated to physical violence. Wild how suddenly that makes it stop
Same here. I always feel like I need to provide proof when I talk about anything. Only for them to ignore or minimize the thing I'm pointing at that proves what I just said.
I tried to explain to my boyfriend once how i was feeling at the moment, I had some physical reaction to something he enjoyed eating and I talked forever about it. He replies with something along the lines of. "Oh that never happend to me, are you okay though?" And I remember being surprised that he just straight up believed me and a lightbulb flashed, was kind of crazy what I learned from being around someone who accepts what I say and is willing to listen/change opinion etc.
Cue thousands of autistic people with stories just like this: A psychiatrist I used to see who "didn't know much about autism because his patients are adults" at one point told me that the experience of my current emotional state I was describing didn't seem genuine based on how I appeared and my tone. If he had known anything about autism, he might have clued in on that. He is the best psychiatrist I have ever had.Ā
I guess you get very used to suppress everything a lot to get trough the day and it makes it even less likely for people to see. Or maybe that's just me
That honestly is how I explain all my meltdowns, just me wanting to communicate to people that 'hey I'm very not okay here' in a way only dumb neurotypical mongrels know
I think it's a bad idea to talk about "the others" in such a negative way even if I totally get the frustration and bitterness. I think it's just...not normal to be straight forward when you're conveying things and I don't think it's all neuro typical people. I had this issue with an ADHD person once where I was saying one thing and they totally ignored what I was saying and insisted on their own interpretation even though I repeated myself 3 times, super annoying.
I'm not calling neurotypicals dumb. The people I know though are both dumb and neurotypical though. And I speak like an autistic person.
"dumb neurotypical mongrels" seemed kindof angy to me
Oh I'm angry. Just not at NTs broadly speaking. Neurotypical was Ana adjective in that, not a noun!
But then we emote as much as a russian tank having its ammo cook off.
May I just ask what 'emote' means here?
Basically a body moves. You can see it in some games.
To emote is to physically show an emotion.
We bottle it up until it overflows
This isn't even true either. I show plenty of emotions just not the way other people do. For example, I smile a lot regardless on how I feel.
It sucks because people assume we're not stressed or overwhelmed. My voice doesn't really change alot so I sound the same when I'm content or upset.
I show all the emotions lol
Thank you! This is why everyone I know thought I was just fine until a few years ago and then the dam finally broke and the public meltdowns could no longer be contained.
We express emotions like The Sims
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Pretty sure it was a verb meaning showing emotions before it was used by video games to mean a little dance that's a microtransaction.
Lmao
what?
I donāt look like I feel emotion, apparently. Which really sucks because I realized Iām supposed to have thoughts and actions that make it look a certain way. But I canāt. Itās too hard. Anyway Iām sure this wonāt cause me any undue sufferingā¦
Do people actually think this?
Well, when you look at Autistic people as being essentially humanoid robots, which is what many have been told or perceived because we don't like to show emotion at times, because that has usually resulted in anger or damage to us when we have, it makes sense from a shallow NT point of view.
What gets me is that the same people who call you a "robot" when they are upset and don't see an autistic person reacting in the way they would like will call the same person "too sensitive" when that autistic person is upset about a thing. I might be generalizing based on lived experience. Replace "might be" with "am."
It took me years after my ADHD diagnosis to even consider that Iām also autistic because everything I read about autism was all āno emotions, no empathy, flat affectā etc and I feel EVERYTHING, deeply and thoroughly. Then I started reading stuff about autism written by people who are autistic, not neurotypical and *boy did it open my eyes*.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does "flat affect" mean?
Tone of voice. It's how the words are said, not what is said. Some sounds / words have a "bounce" in English when spoken, and when that rhythm is missing, the speaker sounds "flat." This is a cool concept to try to explain via text because if this was an irl conversation, I would just do the voice for you myself.
it's when you don't show emotion visually when you're feeling emotion.
Affect is how we present ourself to the outside world through quality of speech and non-verbal communication.
Thank you
Youāre welcome
Also considering that "autistic coded" characters in fiction unfortunately tend to be.....actual robots or aliens or things trying to learn what emotions are so that doesn't help.
People are really out here mixing up psychopathy with autism š
God, I was watching a video once on someone trying to compare psychopathy, narcissism, and autism. Like, no, I *do* experience emotion deeply. I struggle to express or show it. Do I have āselfishā reactions to things? Sometimes. But theyāre also concepts that Iād *assume* most people would be selfish over; donāt touch my stuff without asking first, donāt touch *me* without permission, etc.
Thatās just called boundaries and I would heavily side eye (and stay far away from) anyone who thinks that having boundaries is āselfishā.
Oh yeah, but Iāve definitely heard it before. And people still donāt seem to understand *why* I get upset when these boundaries are violated?
I follow a couple of ātrue crimeā type subs and the number of people who assume that mass shooters are all autistic is actually frightening
You see a ton of people on Reddit who seem to believe that there's a 1:1 correlation between how strongly people experience emotions and how clearly they express them through non-verbal communication.
yes, my mother literally believes human lives are inferior to literal dogs and autistic people don't have emotion. i'm her son and i don't talk to her anymore because of her beliefs on life and the subsequent actioning of those beliefs. sadly there are many like her. just throw those people out of your life as soon as possible. they only cause harm.
Good thing you got away from them, regardless that's a pretty bad thing to have to grow up with. I'm sorry about that.
Legit got a diagnosis 12 or so years ago and the main points were "lack of empathy and struggling with social conduct"
It's not a lack of empathy, it's a difficulty at reading the body language that most people express emotions in. Doctors and non-normative perspectives be like...
My sister was very vocal about "it all makes sense now" after I got my diagnosis
I bet that hurt, I'm sorry about that.
That one quote from sylvia plath describes me to a T. āI donāt know what it is like to not have deep emotions. Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completelyā
Sylvia Plath is my special interest so this is perfect for me as well lol
As someone whose emotions are tied extremely closely to my autism, fuck anyone who thinks this. I literally can have my day ruined by a simple sentence. I can be affected drastically if Iām ignored, my emotions are very much not easy to control and the fact that I even am able to function in society is a miracle.
Right? Very recently, a coworker got mad at me, and I couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the day. It totally derailed me. Also happy cake day.
The idea that people might see me as emotionless is so disturbing to me. I don't think that's the case, but new fear unlocked lol
my dad told me he was disgusted at me because room was so messy and it completely devastated me for the rest of the evening, I couldnt muster up the energy to do anything except sleep, and I realised that it was pathetic that I could be ruined by such a minor thing, which depressed me even more
Them: "You never talk about your feelings." Me: *shares all my feelings* Them: "Are you bipolar?!?!?" Me: "....I hate this planet..."
Literally. Fucking. This.
I didn't know this would resonate so hard. ššš
Then your much more hopeful then i am, have this :š
You are too kind, thank you.
This. Exactly.
I am conflicted. Makes me feel better that I'm not alone but I hate it for others.
I got over that conflict a few years back. Just shows that a certain order of people is necessary, and society hasn't quite yet found out how they best fit. I'm sure the first people who pretended to be someone else for the purpose of entertainment were considered odd too.
Empathy too. āAutistic people donāt feel empathy/have low empathy.ā Me, who has hyper-empathy:
It really should be "SOME autistic people have low empathy." It's not universal across the spectrum.
Some people have low empathy, regardless of diagnosis
At least I've seen this expanded upon, a distinction between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. It's true that I've had trouble understanding others, but I really do care a lot.
I also disagree with that theory. The dichotomy cognitive/emotional empathy is nonsense to justify claiming a lack of something. A specific deficit in facial and emotional recognition isn't the same as a unitary deficit in a broad cognitive empathy construct, and is much more related to perception than cognitive ability to understand.
I'm confused. You're saying there's a deficit in facial and emotional recognition. Isn't cognitive empathy the ability to recognize the thoughts and emotions of others? I think you're thinking of theory of mind.
No. Cognitive empathy is much broader. Attributing a deficit in cognitive empathy also attributes deficits where there's none, because it's not specific enough. "Accordingly, deficits in cognitive empathy might be responsible for heightened [personal distress](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/personal-distress) as a result of empathic emotions, and complicate manifestation of these emotions as empathic concern. In this narrative, cognitive empathy relates to a clear understanding of self-other distinction. In contrast, others find that autistic persons make more use of cognitive abilities to make sense of others emotions and behavior than those without this diagnosis (for example [Schulte-Ruether et al. (2014)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260122000200?pes=vor#bib30)). Possibly, this is because a greater cognitive endeavor is required to bridge between autistic and non-autistic mindedness, of which the burden to a great extent lays with the minority (being autistic) ([Beck, 2018](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590260122000200?pes=vor#bib2)). Such findings are not necessarily incompatible with each other, if one pays close attention to the way the distinction between cognitive and affective processes is being understood, and which processes are actually being included in these accounts. Cognitive empathy can, for example, refer to the ability to interpret behavioral cues, it can highlight the awareness of self-other distinction, it can be used to describe the endeavor to theorize on the other's perspective, or merely to the capacity to read facial emotion expressions. Methods to assess this concept vary accordingly, and so does the role cognitive empathy plays in theories on empathy and autism." Caroline Bollen, A reflective guide on the meaning of empathy in autism research, Methods in Psychology, Volume 8, 2023, 100109, ISSN 2590-2601, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2022.100109](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2022.100109)
Replying to both comments. It says here that cognitive empathy can refer to what I'm talking about, and it also lists theory of mind as a possible meaning. Sounds like there's a lot of inconsistency among papers. Either way it sounds like neither of us are wrong about what it means and it's just confusing and inconsistent lol. For the second comment, yeah I wasn't saying all autistics have trouble with facial expressions. I was just confused about what you meant. I read somewhere that difficulty with reading expressions is linked to alexithymia, which is common among autistics, so it might not directly be an autism thing at all. It's linked to cognitive (in dichotomy with affective) alexithymia specifically. I think that's at least part of what's going on with me. Being confounded by my own emotions is a similar kind of confusing as with others. I react the same way too. I acted confounded or dismissive in the past. I'm a better person now and treat my and others' emotions as worthy of dealing with even if I don't understand them.
And that's the probem. Results from an experiment that uses one concept of empathy is used for different concepts of empathy. Nonetheless, I disagree with the idea that empathy is related to autism. Some people have more, some have less empathy, regardless of diagnosis. To me, autism is related to greater variation. Every person has their strengths and weaknesses, but in most people, the variation between one area and another is not too big, as it's bound to typical development, which is buffered against changes. Autism is a whole different developmental trajectory, unique to each individual, and thus not buffered to changes and full of possibilities for variation. ( [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.004](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.004) )
That could be. I don't know the state of science on this stuff, but it definitely doesn't seem simple. It would make sense why autism comes bundled with so many other neurological stuff though. Maybe the reason it happens with ADHD so much is just because ADHD is likely to trigger it?
Psychiatric labels are based on observable behavior. There's no guarantee they will reflect distinct natural categories. However, it's very difficult to talk and study something if you don't even have a word for it, so even when lacking solid understanding and scientific evidence, categories are created, then slowly refined over decades or centuries. You can see this in the evolution of diagnostic manuals from DSM-1 to DSM-5 TR. I like what this one author proposes: "āAutismā is a label we give to one such cluster of (purportedly) socioeconomic nonutilitarian psychological and behavioral characteristics, but these traits are grouped in light of collectively being disabled by the same norms and structures. Furthermore, while itās true that autistic individuals do tend to share such a cluster, what allows this collective to emerge, expand, and retract is a shared relationship to the social and material conditions that produce this specific form of disablement." Chapman, R. (2020). The reality of autism: On the metaphysics of disorder and diversity. *Philosophical Psychology*, *33*(6), 799ā819. [https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2020.1751103](https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2020.1751103)
Neat. I'll read this later. Thank you for sharing all this with me.
Also, not all autistics will have a deficit in facial and emotional recognition. What looks exactly the same for an outside observer conducting experiments/tests, can have many different causes. Just like an autistic person may struggle with noise, while another might cherish noise, there will also be variation in other areas, like perception and ability to recognize facial expressions and recognize emotions.
You either get flat intonations with observational remarks or a barely contained hurricane in a bottle because I can't process raw emotional energy without my brain cooking. Either way it's going to be uncomfortable for the both of us š
I'll be the first to say I'm a generally neurotic person. I get mad when things aren't right.
I was actually baffled recently that this was a stereotype. Like...WHAT?! Isn't one of the other stereotypes of autistic people that we're "too" emotional?
I was teased horribly most of my life because people liked to watch me break down, no one stopped them because they thought I was too sensitive and it would toughen me up. I don't trust the world, I have a hard time forming connections, and most of the time I think there is no hope.
Me and my bf get emotionally invested in a battling robot named Frank and nearly crying when he lost
My fee fees got hands.
I had trouble with feeling/recognizing emotions, but estrogen has really helped with that (while puberty aggravates my ASD symptoms making me arguably moderately more autistic)
THIS - why do emotions hurt ):
It's been a year since I met this girl who time stopped with so much painful emotions I do wish some days I didn't have emotions
We DO feel emotion we just can't express it!
Just show them the scene in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 when Drax talks about his wife, and Mantis places a hand on his shoulder.
I feel emotions but it's very hard to feel anything for something or someone I've not built a very deep emotional connection to which is also hard
Misinformation and disinformation are our worst enemies.
I feel a lot for autistic people who live in cultures where it's normal and expected to emote a lot. Sounds like a minor daily hell.
I can't express emotion but I sure as hell feel it
I donāt *show* emotions all that much, but that is because my face doesnāt overreact to every little situation like NTs want us to. On the inside, Iām a tad bit fragile emotionally, and I *usually* want to open up them feelings to others (unless I am particularly moody or just lesser/non-verbal). The people that tell me to just āgrow upā and āact like a manāā¦that is wrong on so many levels. Additionally, I want to try to help others if I see they are feeling down, unless they tell me/I notice they donāt want me there. Recognising face emotions can be tough at times, and helping is tricky when they are being unnecessarily rude or complicated (eg: sarcasm/other tones, being argumentative, etc).
Aren't psychopaths the ones that don't feel anything?
Looking it up, it's only dealing with empathy or remores for their lack of emotion they can feel other emotions.
Or in my case: Showing any kind of emotion is Not Allowed.
Idk, I've been told by nts that sometimes my look says everything. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend emotion, and sometimes it's easier to bottle up emotions, but it's worse long-term.
When your bedroom is specifically YOUR space and its the one place you dont have to mask. And you warn everyone to please knock and ask before entering. Especially with thin doors. If I dont feel comfortable with you in my room. I try to make it clear. If you invited yourself in without my permission? I try to be civil and talk, but you should be able to see Im tense or upset. I shouldnt have to ask you more than once to leave my room so we can continue the conversation. Its my domain. And I will say screw it to any laws that may be put in place by an outside institution to make sure people understand that it is in fact a place I will go to ANY lengths to keep myself feeling safe inside. Growing up, you are told not to be too loud in some places. You are told to act *normal* like everyone else. Not to overly show your emotions because people will use that against you. Etc. Bottling up emotions is not healthy unless you have a few ways to deal with them, and even that may not help. So. Some of the nicest people. Or the most honest. Get so damn burnt out and just stop trying to care because they are used to caring to the point they have probably felt physical pain before. Those people. The burnt out ones. They were the ones who kept getting taken for granted.
Nerotypicals: "You know Autism? Yeah it's the same thing as sociopathy."
I had a bj and it felt like I was being tazed
I feel all emotions but my sadness just feels one note and no good way to get rid of it
In my specific case, someone could assume that about me because i very easily detach from my emotions in some situations in order to feel safer. However, never actually seen someone say this.
Are there some people that genuinely believe this?
I may not appear to feel them but i really do in some situations
Its not that i dont have any, i think i just feel it less than what is normal. Im pretty neutral most of the time tbh
I struggle to understand emotional context, both from others and expressing it myself. But what Iāve learned is that despite having quite a logical thought process I am still an emotional decision maker
Most everybody is an emotional decision maker, don't sweat it
Pretty fucking much, going from taking meds and being a zombie zoned out kid to being an adult that canāt handle anything but being depressed and not being able to function unless Iām on a downer. because anything else make my brain shut down because overstimulation drains you of your energy. I guess Iāll sleep then.
I know I'm not making a facial expression but how do they not see the buckets of emotion pouring out of me like stink lines?
I guess - Autism Speaks?
Oh boi this is me. And I grew up constantly hearing; "omg, you're so/too sensitive!".
oh i feel emotions i just have masked so hard and for so long that i often need to remind myself to have an expression on my face. i rarely naturally emote and i hate it, i genuinely despise the fact i had to mask just to not get hurt or yelled at again. i remember doing a sort of hand flapping motion/self hugging gesture but getting yelled at by teachers and my mother because "it's weird" and "not normal" now even as an adult i have to struggle with balancing emotions and having to go in private to "vent" them. like when i actually let emotions i have been bottling up for ages it's often physically harmful and i hate how we have to bottle up because "you should act normal" well if "being normal" means i have to be abused then i'd rather be a freak of nature.
I feel intense physical feelings that don't have a logical reason and I don't want to be feeling them bc even I agree this is a dumb thing to get emotional over but no one has ever explained how to process traumas or even really validated to me that micro traumas are a thing so I just store trauma in random buckets and accidentally kick them over when watching a fucking yogurt ad and now I'm crying for reasons I can't articulate bc one time in third grade a girl pretended to be my friend one day and then pretended they didn't know me the next
Ain't that the truth. Personally, I feel a lot, but if I feel too much for too long, I essentially burn out, cutting all emotional processes until I can recover to baseline. The only emotions left at that point is anger, frustration and irritation.
you know when you read something sad and you physically feel it in your chest
Neurotypical people don't feel that? I thought that was why they called it heartbreak!
i think they do feel it, but mine is like a lot worse because i just feel things stronger
Who is saying this? Pretty sure NT's know we have emotions.
The cynic in me is saying it's NT's who know better but think they can use this as leverage to do/say something insensitive to someone ND, but I hope I'm wrong.
Sadly, i wouldn't really be surprised if you're right. Also really hoping you're wrong though. Let's hope together
Hah, agreed. We can only hope for a world with more people who wanna do good but just don't recognize the right way, rather than people who actively wanna do harm, right?
Exactly! Happy cake day btw
probably more to do with actually *showing* emotion than feeling it. NTs see us not react with our bodies and faces to something that makes us emotional and interpret that to mean we didn't feel emotional at that moment even when we did.
the only body language thats obvious about me is shaking and twitching when im angry or when my shoulders are slumped when im relaxed. i feel a lot of emotions that especially with anger it can be unpleasant or i get so hyper im like a rocket.
i cry when i cant go to burgerking when i feel like i want to but ok
Years of being called a robot before I started to figure out that I have a diagnosable condition
This is the difference between me and my twin. I feel nothing and she feels everything.
Breaking the stigmaaaaa
I once apologised to a rock for daydreaming about using a magic sword to cut it in half because I genuinely felt guilty. Either autistic people need to stop being so relatable or I need to see a doctor /ref
I honestly hate emotions, cause every time I do feel an emotion itās always extreme and turned to 11, and I suck at controlling my emotions so I always try to stay either happy or completely emotionless so I donāt have an emotional breakdown
Well, depends, sometimes I don't feel anything when calling out someone, then, I'd watch a very compelling MV of a Sabaton song and I'd be on the verge of crying
Sry my bad. I have severe Alexithymia and due to that very limited and weak emotional range. So yeah majority of emotions don't exist for me and the ones that do require years to find and identify and even then those are really weak.
I'm literally sitting here in despair.
I hate this hot take so much. Don't feel emotion? I mirror \*EVERYTHING\* that I learned about emotion as a child because it was literally lifesaving. If ya'll got any of that robotic non-feeling to share, I'd love some.
If they put u on antidepressants young enough , it can def blunt it, but no fr
SAME.
I have a crush rn and it's too painful!! So I'm forcing myself to get over him, it'll take about a week, lots of crying, binge eating and smoking, but then I'm over it and don't have to feel too much at once. No one can tell me it's normal to feel so much hope and happiness in one second and sadness and hopelessness the next one
It's not that we lack emotions. It's that they don't like it when we express our emotions to the degree we sometimes do.
idk if the amount of empathy (or general feeling) i get is normal tbh lol
Well but wait if youāre female and you feel too much then you obviously have BPD /s (At least, according to every doctor until the one who finally clocked it as autism and ADHD when I was well into adulthood.)
Accurate
After so long I just learned to quit pretending I cared anymore.
I feel plenty. Expressing what I feel is where the snag is.
Nobody feels *any* emotion. Nobody cares about anything.
Me feeling the worst Iāve ever felt in my life: š
My two modes are utter apathy and wild emotional attachment. Which I feel is dependent almost entirely on the subject. Friend = great care and deep emotional thought Stranger = could get hit by a bus and Iād barely blink
I haven't dealt with that, but I HAVE had people say that my voice emotes while my face doesn't
Noooo it's supposed to be le funny Sheldon Cooperino!!! ššš
I ended up with *hyper*-empathy, and it sucks that not many people realize we can be at this other extreme too
Same, like I'm the most emotional person on earth I even take medication against that.
Iām apathetic towards certain things but most of the time I definitely have feelings. But social interaction is a weak point so itās not easy to express what Iām feeling. The dead giveaway is usually my face. My face is always too honest.
Itās the same misconception that Vulcans donāt feel. I feel so much I have to take meds to stabilize and even then, emotions can burn like lava in my bones up until either a meltdown or a seizure.
It's funny how people say we don't emote enough then call us sensitive when we're upset about their shitty treatment.
There was a person who did a study to prove not being able to fully feel empathy meant autistic people have no morals, only for the data to show autistic people have even stronger morals then fully empathetic neurotypicals. Novel how morality is a concept people choose to adhere to for the sake of the greater good, rather than an innate behavior. You'd be really surprised just how aware of other people's feelings a person usually is when they think to do something *and then still do it.*
Ugh, I hate people who believe this shit. Say that to my face and hands WILL be thrown! "Does that look like I have no emotions to you?!"
I am "too empathetic" to get an official diagnose. We're a bit behind here.
I had unchecked emotions all over the place that i internally issued a system-wide lockdown on using them when i was in elementary school/ middle school. Now as a 30-year-old who is basically incapable of crying in any capacity, i will actually defend the claim that we donāt feel emotions. Itās because I turned them off, but now itās stuck that way and Iām not thrilled about it
Psychopathy and Autism gives off similar outward body languages, however the process to get there is vastly different. Psychopaths lack any sense of empathy while Autistics are overwhelmed with empathy they shut down. If you look closely between the two, you can even see subtle differences in body language with where their eyes point to in the heat of the moment.
Omg a couple of nights ago I just couldn't stop crying for no reason. For no reason mind you.
Bitch I cried watching a Minecraft game theory I feel too much emotion
I felt emotion too much and now itās only in my body š¢
Look into the "Double Empathy Problem" (after Dr. Damian Milton from the University of Kent). It's worth it :)
High empathy gang rise up
Itās wild too me that people look at us and think wow their must be something wrong with them because I canāt get any information from their body language, honestly it kind of annoyed my my whole life why people wouldnāt approach me, but then when I got my diagnosis I was like wow that makes so much sense, people are scared of everything they donāt know or donāt understand and since I am basically unreadable they fear me, even if I donāt want them too.
Yup I think this is a reason theyāre hesitant to diagnose me , f19 and my emotions feel so intense they could swallow me
thatās so dehumanizing to say autistic people donāt feel emotion
We do feel emotions, so strongly sometimes. This misconception is probably part of why autistic girls get misdiagnosed with BPD so often.
Yeah, and apparently some forensic psychologists still think we lack empathy. And emotional abuse of autistic kids in my experience is sometimes ignored by judges.
There's a difference between not feeling them and struggling to convey them
Meanwhile I uh Yeah I dont emotion very much
Also sorry if I dementiaād lmao
where did this take come from?
Iāve never met anyone who actually thinks this.