Do most Aspies have a lack of awareness or emotions or....?

Post Reply New Topic

I am asking this question because I've noticed that out of all the Aspies I've seen or met here, most of them, have a lot of trouble expressing their feelings and come off as lacking sympathy or empathy (even though I know that's not necessarily the case). It's frustrating because whenever I have a conversation with a few Aspies I know, these people tend to give one word responses like "Okay" or "I'm sorry" whenever I pour out my feelings to them and it's so annoying to me because I'm going through so much stuff and I want to have a good conversation. The reason why I came here is because I want to meet people like me, especially around my age, that can relate to the turbulent storms that I am going through in my life, with Aspergers, depression, low self esteem, a mind thats thinking about so many things that make you want to explode. Even now I have to balance my education with my spare time and coming here and I've realized this is more of a priority for me but it seems I'm not getting much out of it. I have met one Aspie that has sent me emails upon emails about their situation and this person always asks me questions and reciprocates my feelings well and I don't mind writing paragraph upon paragraph to them because I know we both express our emotions the same way and they won't be bothered by it. (Speaking of long paragraphs, I am wary of writing them here too because when I was on Reddit and r/aspergers, I think, people were calling me out on it. I feel bad that people here might not like it either)

Anyways, someone told me that it seems I'm just more in touch with my emotions. Ironically, my whole life I had been bottling up my feelings and it was difficult for me to say how I felt as a result, because I didn't trust anyone. Now because of my situation, I've been forced to become more introspective and reflect on my thoughts and my mind and my feelings as a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. I want to understand myself and be honest with myself. I ask myself what's wrong with me. So since I've rarely met people that can reciprocate in our exchanges, it's made me feel worse. When they barely respond, if they do at all, I feel like I'm doing something wrong or that I'm crazy. I think this is why I was subtly treated as a pariah by NTs for years. I never fully saw the other side of coin until now really, since I'm not a great small talker or not the best with conversations irl. I was wondering if anyone had a similiar experience?

As for the lack of emotional reciprocity: Have you ever been at a loss for words?

Many Aspies are like that when they have to deal with emotions. Either of their own or of others. It doesn't mean that they don't care, or they don't understand, or that you're crazy. They just don't know how to give the respond you need.

Alexithymia affects 10% of the general population. The condition can be genetic or environmental.

Wiki is here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia


Online test here:
http://www.alexithymia.us/test-alex.html

I guess many people with Asperger's and Autism are inexperienced in communication. I know I see that allot. As a result they might not be confident or sure with what to say. When I was fourteen and my friend's grandmother died I feel into that situation, all I could say was sorry to hear of your loss. I just didn't know how to deal with the situation. Sometimes I have seen the exact opposite from many people. It has often been at my lowest moments that my autistic friends have talked to me about the anxiety we experience, and have been their for me. I think emotional intelligence is a learned thing I am certainly not the same person I was 2 years ago by far.

Yeah, I struggle with comforting people myself, not knowing what to say to them. I'm okay with sympathizing with people, but I can't empathize unless I've been through what someone else has been through. I also hate small talk and would rather have a deep conversation about something I'm interested in. I remember one time I got yelled at by my stepsister for not showing appreciation towards my dad and stepmom for letting me stay at their place rent free with my daughter. I tried to explain to her that it's not natural for me to show appreciation towards people, but I don't think she gets it. And my stepmom thinks that my Asperger's is bull$#!t. So I can relate to what you're going through. You're not alone.

Empathy is a real mystery to me, so I've learnt to fake it and recognize when you should appear sympathetic. I score REALLY low on the empathy scale. It's not that I can't appreciate the problems people have, it's just that, aside from my immediate family, I really don't care. Yes, that does make me sound like a complete sociopath! I tend to think that I don't do empathy to any great extent because I have enough problems with getting through the day, without taking on other people's problems as well. For me, it's not a problem with expressing myself, because I can fake that (most of the time), I honestly seldom have the energy for others' issues.

Dealing with emotions in other people has always been challenging for me. It's very awkward when someone is crying, and I know I should probably be crying and feel sad for them, but I just feel hungry and anxious for this outburst to end. Or when someone is mad at me, and I can't help but smile and laugh. I remember growing up thinking that people were faking it, until overwhelming evidence led me to conclude that this probably isn't the case. It took me a while to accept the fact that people actually felt emotion more strongly than I did.

I think people realized that I'm not the person to go to when they need to share emotions. The need to share emotions has always been curious to me. I understand the need for expression, but many people actually want me to feel the emotions that they're feeling. If they're mad, they want me to be mad at the source of their anger too. If they're sad, they want me to hold them and feel sad for them and cry with them. They certainly don't want me to just sit there, or offer a reasonable solution to their problem.

The thing is though, I can't. I have a physical inability to do this. No matter how close the person is, I cannot be impacted by their emotional state. When my dad's dad died, I remember being uncomfortable and frustrated even. I knew I was expected to try to comfort my dad, but I knew anything on my part would be forced and false. Later I was able to just put on a solemn demeanor and give him a hug, but it wasn't natural by any stretch.

So I experience emotion, and I assume other people experience emotion. The connection between what they feel and what I feel just doesn't happen. I guess I lack empathy.

I don't know if it's more a lack of awareness or lack of understanding.

Even recently I've made told that I wasn't aware someone I was talking to needed their own space, including some signs that in hindsight I can tell I've missed. Other times not so much. Similarly I've had trouble reading expressions and emotions and it can be very easy to misread them.

I have had very similar experiences to other contributors. I have often felt the emotions of the other person but I have struggled to find the right words to say.

I don't think the majority of us Aspies have a lack of emotions, and I wouldn't say that we necessarily always have a lack of awareness, but how do you put a word to an emotion? Sure, we've got definitions in dictionaries and such, but definitions are just that, another jumble of words. Real world objects, say a car, they are easy to match a word to, someone can point at an object, or show it to you, and say "this is a car", but they can't show you sadness (as much as some artists may try). It's got no physical being, for some of us, piecing that word to the precise emotion could be quite tricky, especially for some of the more unusual emotions. It's like me trying to explain warping of space time or a four dimensional hypercube. Because you can't see it and clearly experience it and know that you've seen or experienced it, you can't patch a word to it.

So if someone says they're feeling some specific unusual emotion, the best I would probably get is they're feeling good or feeling bad. At that point it'd just be a case of repeating some phrases from the most applicable conversations that seemed to go well and hoping for the best (or they could see a psychiatrist? Those guys are meant to understand emotion right?)