Facial Expression Don't Match Emotions??

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yes. mostley on car rides do people notice im making wierd faces

My facial expressions don't seem to match anything these days. They're deceiving.

i got same emotion on my face almost 24/7...plain

I have. When I don't try hard to display a facial expression, people read all kinds of weird emotions into my face that I don't feel. I never quite know how I look to other people. I do know how to smile now though, I taught myself a big great smiling that has become almost natural over the past year. Now the world knows when I think something is cool, even a teacher has remarked that I seem happy suddenly in the past half year! It's crazy, just because I give people this big smile, they know change their opinion of me.
My therapist has complimented me recently on frowning and screwing up my forehead, but plainly, I think it's a pain. I get headaches from it and it's uncomfortable.

Sooo... I seem to display emotions when I think I display none. Or I my facial expression tells of an entirely different emotion than the one I intended to, especially when I want to express anger or sadness or anything else besides smiling like surprise.

I do grin stupid most of the time. When I'm afraid or feel anxious mostly, but even when I'm dead pan serious. I can't help it, I try to stop doing it as soon as I realise that I'm grinning, but realising that my face looks like this is the crucial part.

(And people constantly tell me that I look angry when I think hard. I say it's my 'think-hard-face'.)

I smile all the time and that does not mean I am happy. In fact I am the total opposite. I laugh a lot of the time as well. My facial expressions do not match my emotions or moods. I can't cry like a normal depressed person. I just laugh everything off. How brain dead of me.

Damo is like that!! He will smile when he is happy, anxious. Or look kinda sad but when asked "how are you" he says "good"
It is so confusing for me.
There are times where his facial expression will match his mood but it is usually when he is feeling an intense emotion.

As a kid and teenager I was frequently asked why I wasn't happy. This perplexed me because I wasn't not happy and I would wonder why they thought I wasn't happy.

Nowadays I have no idea how I appear. I always try to smile though because I know people like that.

Heh, this happens to me too. I get in trouble because I tend to laugh at funerals(! !!), but of course I try to control myself and be discreet. mI also can get very happy about something and look calm and cool on the outside, or smile when I'm nervous. I also don't cry over big things, but cry over the little ones. I've also been told by my family that I often smile like I was in a beauty pageant or something, or that I'm overly formal.

I sometimes seem to be the exact oposite. I have to look at my face to see what type of emotion i'm feeling.

But most of the time I look sad or annoyed to people when I feel ok. At my previuse work place they would tell me to smile and "You look sad, What's Wrong?" Then again I hated the place and thats probably why I looked sad......

I also experience people asking me if I'm mad or sad when really I'm neutral, contented, or deep in thought. A large amount of time, I think my face does match my mood, like if I turn it on on purposes when I'm in a social setting. I'm good at smiling, and even communicating jokes and sarcasm to others with my face. When I feel like it. I also make weird faces when I'm in thought. I'll talk to myself out loud, and make the faces along with it, or I'll keep my voice quiet and act out facial expressions to what I'm thinking. Like, imagining a conversation in my head or something. Sometimes I'm aware of it, sometimes not.

Funny story: In college, I lived in a city and I always wondered why some crazy people walked around muttering nonsense and making weird faces. I figured they were mentally ill. Then one day I realised I was doing the same thing....and had been whenever I was walking around by myself.

I'm told I was very "stone-faced" as a child.

When I watch tv, I often find myself mimicking the facial expressions of the characters, sometimes consciously, sometimes without realizing it.

Age1600, I also have tourrettes and although I've never had a smiling tic, I once had a raise both eyebrows tic which everyone thought was quite comical. I didn't know I had tourrettes at the time (7th grade - the worst!) so everyone was all like "why are you raising your eyebrows at me???" haha. I had another one where I rolled my eyes up as far as they would go. Teachers didn't like that one! Somehow I was able to transfer most of my tics into unnoticable muscle groups like arms and legs, but every so often a facial one will show up.

Sometimes I feel like the velociraptor in Jurassic Park (the first one) . . . particularly this part:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaZ8WwkSu1g[/youtube]

I swear I have that grin on my face sometimes. If someone points it out and the head of my department isn't standing by or someone similar in importance, then I'll actually act out the velociraptor moves and whatnot. hah.

The rest of the time I either look like this:
this:
this: or
this:

I've been told repeatedly to stop scowling all the time when in actuality, I'm either contented or off in my own little dream world. I find I have to force facial expressions from time to time though I'm getting better as time goes by.
My main concern on the subject is my apparent lack of empathy.

Does anyone else find it hard to step into the shoes of another?

Whenever I have to smile for a picture I always think that I am smiling but when I see the picture I am actually not smiling at all. Either that or I have this sort of goofily grotesque overly contrived grin.

Also a girl in my spanish class said that she would amuse herself by watching all of the rediculous faces I would apparantly make while listening to the lecture. She was actually pretty attractive and if I had any notion of that sort of thing, it wouldn't have taken me several years to figure out that she was flirting with me.

Yes, all the time! I assume it's an AS thing because there's nothing else that could explain it (I don't have Tourette's or anything similar).

I accidentally look angry, sad, happy, smug, frightened . . . just about any emotion, when I'm feeling something different (usually completely neutral). This is according to people who comment on it.

It's kind of annoying. I get sick of having to convince people that I'm not sad or whatever they think I am. Sometimes they don't believe me. And of course when I really am sad, I just look tired or some different emotion.

Inappropriate facial expression is a diagnostic point, according to Tony Attwood. I wonder if that's why some aspies get jumped on so hard by their bosses. The voice says, "Roger, wilco." but the face doesn't, so the boss keeps trying harder and harder to get the look of compliance. Both people get frustrated and think the other is an idiot.

What do you think?

When I'm concentrating, I seem to put on a unhappy face because my boyfriend asks me what's wrong and when I say "nothing" and say "why?" and he says it looked like I was upset.

I also seem to put on that expression when I am thinking hard too.

There is this other guy I know and he keeps misreading me. He keeps assuming I am hiding something and not being completely honest, keeps assuming something is wrong, or that I am mad.

When I got my first real job, my boss kept asking me what's wrong and it was so irritating. She even kept asking me if I was alright and my mother suggested to me maybe it's because I am not smiling and I get that way when I was working hard.

In high school I got told "Smile Beth"

Now I don't get that much anymore. Only from a few people. My bf and the other guy.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 19 Feb 2008, 3:21 am, edited 1 time in total.