Are you aware of your own emotional state? & Other Quest

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We recently had a session with a psych who questioned one of my son's Aspergers diagnosis. We were not able to communicate well with this guy, and from his line of questioning, he did not seem particularly knowledgeable about Aspergers in general, still his comments got me wondering. He said that my son seemed to be both too aware of his own emotional state and too sensitive to that of others (my son worries a lot about what other people may think or say) to have Aspergers,and that someone with Aspergers is usually oblivious to these things.

So my questions are:
1. Are you aware of your own emotional state?

My son feels anger, embarrassment, sadness etc. keenly. We and the school have been working a lot with him to be able to identify and articulate his feelings and he has made great progress in both of these areas in the past year. He doesn't always know exactly what he is feeling, but he tries to figure it out, more and more often successfully.

2. Do you have trouble with the concept that other people have feelings/thoughts? Or is the trouble with how you respond to the concept?

My son now realizes that other people think and feel things, and has responded to this realization with what can only be described as a type of paranoia. He doesn't want to speak in front of strangers (for example will not speak in a waiting room full of people or in the grocery store), worries about them looking at him and thinks everything has the potential to be embarrassing (really doesn't understand what your average kid would/would not find embarrassing so it's as if he is "covering all the bases" by avoiding a whole variety of objects, activities etc.). It is not as if this sensitivity to the concept of other people having feelings/thoughts allows him to be perceptive of them, it just makes him very nervous. And if he does actually manage to accurately figure out another person's feelings, he has absolutely no idea what to do with this information (I can sooooo relate to this!).

I think there is a distinction between being sensitive to the idea of people thinking and feeling things (such as worrying that the other kids will think your story is stupid and being too embarrassed to present it), and being sensitive to what other people are in fact thinking and feeling, as in being able to notice and interpret the social cues to correctly extrapolate what another is actually feeling...and then being able to respond in a socially appropriate way to that information is a whole other layer! My son can do the first (understand the concept), but not the others. This does not necessarily seem un-aspie to me, but I would like some feedback about it. Thanks.

1. Yes.

2. No.

I'm on the autism spectrum and as far back as I can remember I don't ever recall being unaware of my own emotions or oblivious to the fact that other people have thoughts and feelings. I've always been rather self-conscious as well.

1. Yes and no. I think it's more of an articulation problem. I think everyone mostly knows how they feel, but there just isn't always the right words to get the point across.
2. That "say nothing because who knows how people will react" description is exactly me.

This is me too. I know what I feel, but am unable/unwilling to express it. I can usually figure out what others are feeling or thinking but have no idea how to be supportive.

I tend to have trouble pinning down exactly how I feel in the heat of the moment. I have had moments in counseling, where the counselor said that I seemed (fill in emotion). And I would get flustered, and deny it. Basically, I felt embarrassed; it felt like being told that your blouse was unbuttoned, or your pants were unzipped, before you had a chance to notice it. But I do struggle with identifying what I am feeling. As for other people, I am improving, somewhat, in noticing what they might be feeling, but I can't rely on it.

1. yes
2. no

The issue I have is not being able to read the present frame of mind of the person accurately; for example can I mistake disgust for rage, and I personally sometimes have the "blank face" that some interpret as haughty/arrogant when in fact I am feeling quite calm/at peace. I also have some Irish blood and my gf can attest I do have a temper once in awhile, so being able to express my emotions has never been a problem.

So it's a blatant myth that people on the spectrum are "bad" at emotions.

1) I am well aware of my emotions.

2) I am well aware that others have emotions, but most times the fact of their emotions doesn't register with me unless my attention is drawn to it for some reason. And even then, it can take me a little while to know what the response is.

Emotions are too complicated, I don't bother.

1. I know what i'm feeling, but i can't always accurately describe it well. It's often a jumbled up mix of things.. If someone asks how i'm feeling, i guess i can find a word closest to describing one of the things i'm feeling(stressed, angry, tired, annoyed, frustrated, happy), but it's usually a mix and not truly that simple. I think that when coming up with words to describe how i'm feeling, i judge which word to use based on the situation that caused the feeling, rather than what i'm actually feeling, if that makes any sense. For example, if someone criticized me for something, i might say i'm "angry" just to simplify it.. Because that seems like an appropriate word to go along with the situation. But what i'm truly feeling isn't that easy. I always hated those little smiley-face charts where people want you to point to which emotion you're feeling for that reason. It's too much of a mix of things, and sometimes nothing at all, to try to give it just a word or smiley face. And, i'm not usually thinking about what i'm feeling(i mean, i'm feeling things, just not thinking about what those feeling themselves are), so if i want to describe it at any given time then it can be difficult.

2. I know that other people have feelings and thoughts. It pretty much just seems logical to me that if i have thoughts and feelings, that others must also have them. I just don't usually know what those feelings and thoughts are, and can have difficulty interpreting them on any kind of complex level. I try to take into consideration that other people have their own thoughts and feelings, try to be nice to other people, and all of that. I think most people basically think i'm a nice person. But sometimes i can get a little bit lost in myself and forget to acknowledge that that other people might be feeling something also. I deeply care about other people and how they feel, i'm just often not connected enough to understand what it is they're feeling and how to react. A lot of times i have thought about what other people might be thinking and it has made me anxious, like your son has. I think that social anxiety like that probably develops with a lot of aspies. We can't really put ourselves in other peoples' shoes in the same way that most people can, so when some of us actually think about what others could be thinking, i think that with some people it tends to be a little bit paranoid because it's so unknown.

It's hard to explain. But i don't think it's something as simple as being totally oblivious to the fact that people have thoughts and feelings.

1. In real time, I am only aware of the most primal and intense emotions, particularly negative ones such as fear and anger, which these days I seldom experience. Less intense, more complicated or multiple emotions don't register in real time, and there is a protracted delay between when I experience them and when I become aware of them. This delay is typically hours to a couple of days, but on some occasions can extend to weeks, months, even years. Often, only through music can I connect to a particular feeling. My overall affect varies from very flat to exaggerated but muted in expression. With such a long delay in recognition, I find discussing emotional issues very difficult, on a good day.

2. Starting about age 10, I almost overnight went from completely oblivious to the fact that other people had thoughts and feelings, and that they might be different from mine (even though I always knew I was very "different"), to keenly aware of other people's feeling and always endeavouring not to hurt them despite my abject cluelessness in understanding how they come about. To this day, that is a tall order, and I fail with dismal regularity. While I have acquired a base of knowledge over the years of how people react to certain things, reading people's emotional states and nonverbal signals is more or less impossible for me, and I frequently find myself in situations where I don't know what the "right" action is. Figuring out what to do is a completely intellectual exercise, like solving a puzzle with many missing pieces, and is quite stressful beyond the smallest of doses. Recovery comes in the form of alone time, which I need in abundance. However, once sufficiently recovered, I do like to foray back into the mysterious and mystifying social world once more, if only for a while.

I have more trouble with the idea that people's feelings need to be "fed" on a regular basis. This can be exhausting. I tend to appear for a while and then go away for some time. Maintaining a relationship where I am expected to nurture feelings on a daily basis is simply beyond my capacity. I can do it in short, intense bursts - then I need to recover by myself and prepare to do it over again.

a good broad definition of asperger's syndrome is that they are people who "do not get the whole social thing." worrying about others does not equal understanding others.

I'm not very good at knowing what my emotions are while they're happening, but can often piece things together later, if I get enough time to ponder over it. Even after the required time has passed, I can still find it very difficult to know my feelings with any certainty. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm feeling at the time, and when that happens I feel I've done something that (for me) is unusually clever....for example, I was once trying to write a computer program, which unexpectedly went wrong, and when I tried to fix it, nothing seemed to do the trick. I noticed I'd begun to feel hot, and suddeny realised that I must be getting stressed out. At the time it was like a huge revelation, and I wondered how many times in the past I'd been through that kind of thing but not noticed.

I have no trouble with the concept that other people have feelings and thoughts, though at 56 years old I've had a long time to get used to the idea. When I was about 8 years old I went up to another child and punched him - not because I wanted to hurt him, but simply because I'd seen people fighting on TV and I thought he'd just join in so we could enjoy the game. But he just burst into tears and ran away. Pretty naive, eh?

I suspect your psychologist is just forcing things to fit into his areas of expertise - you say he doesn't seem to understand Aspergers syndrome very well, and I think that's a common cause of misdiagnosis. If you doubt the original DX then maybe the best thing would be to take another look at the report and see whether the answers to the questions put your son well into the AS domain or not. Nothing you've said about him seems to me to be inconsistent with AS. We are learning animals and we can do a great deal to look neurotypical and to fathom the neurotypical world.

The paranoia angle reminds me very much of myself. I know that people feel and think, but I can't confidently tell what those thoughts and feelings are unless they're explained to me clearly, so I tend to respond by erring on the side of caution. So I tend to try to be nice all the time because I don't know when it's appropriate to be otherwise......

I can't really articulate what I'm thinking or feeling very well. Kinda the same for other people. I can tell if it's positive or negative, but not very specifically. Just broad strokes. Sometimes I can work it out logically based on their actions but not by looking at them.

If they're smiling or laughing, that's a big clue, of course.

1. In general, yes. I may not always know what to call it, though.

2. Don't know. I know other people have thoughts and feelings on a intellectual level, but that's it.

1) I'm aware that something is wrong and can tell whether I'm mad, sad, happy, etc. But maybe only really aware of 4-5 emotions in general. I don't necessarily know quite how angry I am about things. I don't really know how happy I am at times.... in fact, I often try to figure it out and wind up just... miserable because I cannot tell the level of whatever emotion is happening and it is terribly frustrating. I know the obvious ones and that is about it. I also use many different emotions to describe exactly the same thing, because to me there isn't much of a difference.

For instance, if I'm mad, I will identify it as: agitated, annoyed, frustrated, upset, angry, mad, irritable, on edge, and a few others. I'll use the words as if they are different just so I'm not using the same word all of the time, but as far as how I'm feeling, it all comes down to one thing: I'm either mad or I'm not, and there is no real distinction as to exactly how angry I am about something-it all feels the same, and I react the same way no matter what word I'm using to describe it.



2) No. I know other people have feelings and thoughts different than I do. I just have a hard time actually applying that a lot of the time. If I'm mad about something, I figure everyone else would be mad about that, as well. I have a really hard time remembering that others think differently, and have to remind myself by thinking about things like "well, people like different foods, so obviously not everyone will react the same way to things that I would since there are people who like foods I cannot stand". It sounds goofy, but connects for me and I have to remind myself of things like that quite often actually.... yet, in the back of my mind, I KNOW darn good and well that not everyone is going to feel the same way I do about things.