Flat Affect to Hyperemotionality

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How much emotion do you show? One extreme is a perfectly flat affect: monotone voice, blank facial expression, and few expressions of emotion even in words. This is a common associated feature of autism and schizoid personalities, so I predict it will have more votes than the other extreme, which is hyperemotionality. Another name for this is histrionic personality disorder. Histrions show emotion strongly. When they're sad, happy, or angry, you'll definitely know it; they let the whole world know! When they see a dead bird or other roadkill, they might cry profusely. When someone crosses them, they'll throw a fit. (Of course, there's more to histrionic personality disorder than "shallow emotions.")

Show? Or have? I do show emotion, my range of showable emotions is just very limited. Confused, angry, sad, happy, indifferent. But htat's only in conversations and when I'm in a crazy mood. Usually, I have the AS flat effect thing going on.

When I DO show emotion, it's usually too much. It's like I don't know how to regulate it. It's not that I lack emotion, I don't know how to express it properly, so rather than look like an idiot, I shut the emotions down. But then things build up, and sometimes come out at unexpected times, usually when i mis-interpret something someone says to me. I take things way too literally, this results in my feelings getting hurt unintentionally. I'm quick to take things personally.

I rember my little cousin veronica asking me once when she was 3, she said "pete, do you laugh?". Most of the time no. I find something funny, I may even smile, but bust out laughing til tears come to my eyes, only if I'm under the influence of something.

I feel the basic range, anger, jealousy, lust, love, the intense ones. I'm not very good at dealing with them or processng them though. The computer called my brain keeps crashing on me.

Pete

I can be totally flat, and I can be totally readable. I could control it, somewhat, probably, but that would require mindfulness- and, even worse, effort.

How many of us realize that we are diagnosed with flat affect and lack of empathy according to what the therapist sees? We show a different face to authority figures than we do to our pets. One example is like the blandness that people in repressive nations show, so that a stray expression does not get them arrested or shot. We try to show emotional blandness and flatness of affect to authority figures to keep them from hurting us. When some of us learn to distrust our therapists, they see us as getting worse, and it would be the ones who we don't trust who see the worst that can be seen about us. Then those who try to define an illness look for "symptoms." Anything normal isn't going to make it into the next DSM.

I laugh and show anger on some occasions. But nothing else

My tangent to this is: "White-Coat Syndrome", doctor taking your blood pressure in his office is going to make your bp reading increased just because of that situation. How the measurement is taken can skew the result (in this case stress of authority figure/fear of medical office). Not my idea, I heard/read about it.
I've discussed this w/ friends & counselors and they understand. Then I explain that I find this applies to my "mental health" appointments/evaluations. Therapists only see me when I'm "at my best", when I'm able to leave the house. That's a challenge for me constantly. They don't experience me in my "real life", at home, at 11 p.m. or 3 a.m. or the weekend. So I'll always come across as more functional than I usually am.
I can only be how I am at the current moment, and generally my bad moods happen when I'm alone. Since I get along well w/my counselors, I feel slightly better just while talking with them-which starts to fade within hours afterwards. So I seem more "up" in mood when being observed/interacted with-the most "down" aspects of me I experience alone, talking about my mood later never conveys the intensity of it while it was occurring.
Couldn't answer the poll, it seemed biased. I'm visibly emotional, every once in a while i get stuck/frozen/sort of torn & conflicted but that's emotions still. Disdain term histrionic, I do not like drama for it's own sake, nor making a scene. My mundane life is full of emotion-provoking stimuli, but each individual has differing thresholds.

I'm not sure what to answer. I can often tell that I'm not displaying the expected reaction, and I can see it when people are looking at me, trying to figure out what's going on inside my head.

So I try to voluntarily display the emotion that I'm feeling. I try to smile, laugh, etc. I'm sure it's a little unconvincing sometimes, because it's all on manual control, but I think I'm getting better. And it's not really like faking, because I actually am feeling the emotion I try to display.

One emotion I have no problem expressing is anger. Piss me off and you'll know it! Fortunately, it takes an awful lot.

Jeremy

I don't show much emotion to other people except my mother, because with her I feel safe enough. But even with her I prefer to show anger instead of hurt feelings, and I'll only cry at a film if I'm on my own. To people I don't really know I show nothing. To my good friends I'll sometimes show annoyance, amusement, worry, or enjoyment, but mostly I act indifferent or put up a front of cheerful sarcasm.

With my mother I can't be myself at all. Anything that I am concerned about and she doesn't agree with, it doesn't exist or she returns a lot of anger and starts down the psycho path with me. I don't actually like to be around her or want to be around here. There's more than one reason I didn't speak to her for over 10 years.

When people won't let you be yourself around them, they gain a sort of power to write their own stories about you. It's better to stay away from such people entirely.

I feel everything and show almost nothing.

I'm actually capable of both extremes. In fact, sometimes I suddenly go from one extreme to the other - usually when somebody says something that really upsets me.

Because of the PCOS thing I have, my hormones are so f***ed up that I'm sooooo much more emotional than I used to be. So these days, I'm tearing up at a ruddy commercial but IRL, away from tv and soundtrack music, I'm pretty stoic. The real world really doesn't touch me quite as much.

So, for tv world; YES, for emotional. For RL: HARDLY AT ALL.

I can laugh but that's about it. I don't even know what face to make in the rare times when I cry, just leave it normal I guess.

I hate therapy. Yeah, maybe it's good and all but, how can that person possibly understand what you are really thinking/experiencing. I've been to two therapists before, and it ended with the same conclusion...this sucks. I'd rather just take meds and keep my low-profile then to continue seeing a specialist who insists on knowing what my problems are. As far as emotionality vs. flat affect, well i suppose that i have both extremes...all the time. If my day is going well, i tend not to "overeact" to stressors, but if something happens to completly throw a curve ball...then my tendencies shift towards histrionics. As far as i'm concerned, if you are not harming anyone with your behavior then you shouldn't be continuously probed.

I have pretty much one of four things going on emotionally. These are ordered from what I experiance the most to what I experiance the least.

Flat affect-some emotion
Flat affect-no emotion
Wrong emotional presentation for what I'm feeling. Including emotional presentation with no emotion attached. Empty-smiling.
Extreme presentation of emotion. Generally associated with anger and frusteration and at times extreme joy (the happy-flappy dance, you have to see it).