Am I really sad all the time?

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Often (usually at school; i'm in grade 12) when i'm sitting thinking, reading or working in class someone will ask me "What's wrong?" and I'll reply "Nothing, why?" and they'll say "Just looked like something was up. You sure you're ok?" and I'll be like "Yeah, seriously i'm good".

???

Maybe it's not that you are sad, it's most probably the neutral facial expression you have when doing it. It's happened to me a few times.

I was still asked the same question when I attended elementary school. And what invariably pissed me off was when I saw such a teacher poking her nose into my business didn't seem to be fully convinced I was sincere while telling her that everything was O.K. about me.

I think this quite common among Aspies, it certainly applies to me, fact is our facial expressions often don't match our inner state, that makes us difficult (impossible ?) to read and can produce some misunderstanding. I wouldn't worry about this too much

Sometimes for me it worked in the opposite way as well. I could pass off genuinely crying when my boyfriend dumped me as allergy problems. It seemed to work anyway.

But yeah I get that too, even from strangers. Like I'll pay for something at a convenience store and the clerk will say, "Cheer up! Smile!" and I'm just like "uh... okay."

Maybe for a joke, you could put on an exaggerated smile.

a lack of proactive expression is taken by some people as being depressed/irritable/bored or what not. Try to maintain eye contact and smile every once in a blue moon to clear up misconceptions but if you dont care it definitely ain't no thing either way.

I don't care too much, but I do try to avoid a blank expression when talking with friends, although most people, even if they don't know about my asperger's, seem to have accepted my "different" facial expressions. Also, when I'm in public by myself I always maintain a smile, usually finding something funny like a car number plate etc. that's amusing.

You can also say in a borderline whispering but very firm voice: "Sir/ma'am, I was at a funeral less than an hour ago. I'm not in the mood to cheer up." Most likely, this will make the person feel stupid for telling you to cheer up. And honestly, when someone looks depressed, regardless of reason, "cheer up" is one of the worst things you can say to them.

I get that a lot myself. My family sometimes pesters me because they tend to think something is bothering me even though I'm simply deep in thought. Even when I say "Nothing's wrong; I'm okay", they'll say, "No, you're lying. Tell me what's wrong." My mom has gotten better about it and most of the time she'll leave me alone after asking once. My sister still hasn't gotten it yet, and once broke a pleasant "trance" I had put myself in for three days because she thought I was having serious psychological problems when in actuality all I was doing was playing around in my imaginary world.

I hear that I always look pissed off. I find myself when having conversations with people, really concentrating on how my facial expressions might be looking so that I don't convey the wrong message. The other day, a coworker's brother died and we were talking about it, and I found myself worrying about how my face was looking because I didn't want her to think that I was not sympathetic to her. I just really didn't know how I looked and I was really worrying about it! I figured out when she left that I didn't really know anything she'd said to me because the whole time she was talking, I was worrying about my face. Weird, eh?

This, of course, goes back to the "innappropriate social skills" portion of our story. We never have the right reactions or the right facial expressions. Sigh.

I get that and, "You look tired."

An oldie and a goodie.

I get that all the time, as well as "You look worried."

"you look worried" is pretty similar to "is something wrong?" though...

People ask me the same thing all the time and many don't believe me when I tell them I'm fine. People have even thought I'm depressed or unhappy because of the lack of facial expressions.