Every negative emotion = anger. Teaching about emotions?

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My 14-year-old son still doesn't seem to understand/differentiate emotions. For him, any negative emotion is just "angry". There is no frustrated, annoyed, anxious, impatient, embarrassed, etc. For him, it's all anger. So he also projects this to other people, which leads to social problems. How can I help him identify his own and others' emotions better?

For example, recently he had a mini-meltdown and said some mean things to me. Later, although he had apologized, I was still feeling hurt and acting a bit more subdued than usual. He got angry with me, insisting I was "still mad" at him, although he had apologized! I tried to explain that I was not still angry, just still feeling rather hurt. He argued that I was angry. He got angry and cried. (I think he interprets my being hurt as angry, and his feeling ashamed as angry, so in his mind we are both still angry at each other.)

Thanks,
Jane

There is scientific evidence that naming emotions can help tame them. For example see this: http://www.livescience.com/7306-brain-s ... works.html

Maybe you can help him to identify emotions so they can be named, better understood, and responded to in healthier ways.

Matching pictures of emotions on faces to scenarios that cause those emotions helps. Lots of exposure to more advanced feelings and having him understand how his actions affect others is super important. We did lots of repetitive matching exercises, along with social stories. Then I would have him identify character's emotions in simple stories. Then identify other's emotions (during role play), and finally his own.

Oh, also....make sure he understand that "negative" emotions are not BAD! My kiddo seems to internalize negative emotions that made him feel very bad about himself, and that turned into anger.

So social stories about how being sad, disappointed, mad, etc are NORMAL emotions and that the most important part is WHAT WE DO with those emotions. He has a choice in how to handle them....show him that he has options and control over the outcome.

Just remember that he does not have the 'preloaded software' to recognise emotions, what they look how they feel and what they look on other people. You need to identify all of those dots and manually help him connect them. Watching tv/movies together is good for this.

"Look how frustrated she is..."
"He looks disappointed. And maybe hurt too..."

Also, when you are feeling something - narrate it. Good bad or otherwise. Talk him through his emotions. "I understand you are angry - can you tell me why?" If you notice that he has assigned 'angry' to another, less dramatic feeling, suggest it. "Maybe you are feeling disappointed." But never tell him - you are not angry, you're XYZ... no one likes to have their feelings invalidiated even if they are assigned incorrectly. It's a learning process for something that most people take for granted.

I do not feel it okay for anyone, Asperger's or not to verbally abuse their loved ones. I am quick the teach and reinforce that with my daughter. BUT - I also consider the intent of her words. Why she has said what she has said. And I must confess, her apologies are the most sincere, heartfelt apologies I have ever received from anyone. I do not know your son but I suspect that may be the case with him too. If you can learn to decipher his intent it may help temper your own hurt feelings. I do not know how mature your son is but he may be old enough to simply sit down and discuss this issue with him with straight, nonjudgemental conversation. Explain your problem, let him express himself and work together to fix the problem. Making him an integral part of the solution may help him learn to self regulate a bit better.

I think that this all comes back to a question of perception.

AS and NT have a different perception. I used to fall into the trap of telling my (AS) daughter that her perception was wrong. It finally struck me one day that her perception isn't wrong, anymore than mine is wrong. We just perceive things (lots of things) differently.

It is as if both of you were to look at a fruit. You see an apple. Your son sees an orange. You can keep telling him it is an apple, but he will still see an orange. Either he has to 'pretend' that he sees the apple to make you happy (ie agree with you) or you have to accept that the two of you see different things.

Your son perceives that you are angry even when you are quiet/subdued. It is very unlikely that you can do anything to change that perception.

Does this help? Probably not. For me I felt better for at least understanding. I no longer try to change my daughter's perception - because it always comes across as my telling her 'that she is wrong'. It can't be easy to have someone telling you that you are wrong all the time.

I tend to equate many negative emotions with anger, too.

With me, it's not that I don't understand the difference - intellectually, that is. I have an intellectual part to me and an emotional part, and the emotional part doesn't listen to the intellectual part. So when my actions come from my emotional self, reasoning with me doesn't work. Most of the time, it means telling the intellectual part of me things it already knows, and has unsuccessfully tried to comnmunicate to the emotional part of me.

When I say that I think someone's mad at me, what I mean is that I'm feeling scared of their emotions. For me, every emotion from someone else that scares me gets translated into anger. So instead of replying with what they're really feeling and explaining the difference between anger and hurt or frustrated or depressed or whatever, what I need from the person is for them to reassure me that I'm safe and that they love me. To offer me a hug, tell me things they like about me, ask me how I feel and then listen without arguing, etc.

A big thing to remember, with me at least, is that it's only my intellectual side that's a literal communicator. My emotional side uses words as 'impressions', not for what they really mean. People think I'm a literal person because 99% of the time my intellectual side is controlling my actions, but that 1% when the emotional side is in control, I'm very definitely not a literal communicator. Every word I say has an impression-meaning that may not fit the actual words, because my emotional side isn't good with words. Every word the other person says is analyzed for hidden meanings, and later I may not even remember their actual words - just the meaning I took from them. Eg if my Mom is really stressed out and I'm talking about what I need and she says 'I have needs too', later on I may remember that as her saying 'you're selfish', or if I elaborate a bit it'll be 'you don't think I have needs - you're selfish'.

Yes, we have this, and didn't even know it until my son took this class:http://www.sst-institute.net/ (which I highly recommend if you can find someone offering it or can afford the video game.) The way they handled it was to come up with a series of random phrases expressing different emotions, e.g. "I just want to give up." (sad) "I HATE him" (angry) "What if I mess it up?" (afraid) "I can do this!" (happy) and they made a video-game with floating bubbles with the phrases and a "thought grabber" that grabbed all of a particular thought for a given emotion.

DS put everything in the category of angry or happy. It was a revelation. He is actually pretty good at understanding what other people are feeling (if he remembers to look) but his own feelings are a complete mystery to him. Our therapist pointed out that it was no wonder we were having behavioral issues if every feeling to him is angry or happy.

They also showed him how to code the physical signs of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness...and to make judgements on the degree of each emotion (they used a picture of a heart and lungs, a picture of body posture, a picture of the face, and a picture of the person doing an activity like running or jumping up and down for each emotion; you might use YouTube to find videos as the action is important) For the degrees, they used a lot of very specific words in a hierarchy, e.g. uncomfortable, tense, impatient, annoyed, frustrated, angry, furious, irate, explosive.

Later on, they worked with him to code the phrases with the correct emotions, and to code what level of emotion he would probably feel in a given situation. DS was able to take in all this information cognitively and put it to use much of the time. It's amazing how far this one simple computer game brought my son: he was in a unique position to receive the information - and now, when he's frustrated or sad, he CRIES! This is an amazing jump forward. (Not every kid in the group responded as well as my son.)

While the computer game was a very simple (if expensive) way to do it, you could do the same thing yourself with worksheets and social stories. This is also often a part of pragmatic speech therapy, so the therapist will take him around and point out emotions in other people - just make sure they know to point out emotional states and their markers in your son (I see your shoulders are down, and you're looking at the floor, and your mouth is tight. Do you think you might be sad about something? Or maybe worried?)