description of some internal experiences

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I don't know whether this applies to anyone else at all. I don't know whether this will help anyone, or whether it will be at all useful. On the off-chance that it will, I'm finally putting this into words and posting it here.

I suspect that happiness and social relationships work differently for me on a fundamental level. First of all, I suspect that my definition of happiness is not like most NTs' definitions. There are two feelings that I sometimes call happiness.

The first is the bright yellow of a smiley-face. The sun. Up. Energy. Focused, intense energy. A buzz. Sort of like what caffeine does to me, but not quite. I feel this way on most birthdays, I felt this way when I went to a friend's for Passover, and I've felt this way on Christmas and with friends at other times. It's a wonderful feeling in moderation, but it's very draining and too exciting for me. I've never been a thrill-seeker. This often happens during my most successful social encounters. For the purposes of this post, we'll call this happiness.

The second is different. I can even feel sad, but only a little sad. If I were a glass of water, instead of being made of glass I would be made of dialysis membrane and would be level with my environment. In tune. Blue, cool grayish-green, even a little black. The black of bare branches in winter, and winter itself. Rain. Solitude. Calm, but more than that, or less than that, I can't tell, but not exactly that. Little details, but congruent details. The real world, but not the parts others perceive. Sometimes a flat affect. Sometimes a smile. Generally not unbroken-- sometimes a weakened and diluted form of the first feeling I described breaks in for a second, or a yellow light shines and spoils it (though if the whole place is yellow and brown and closed and cozy and warm, that's also good). The first part of the I Am Autism video, as Autism is speaking. I can't seem to get enough of this one. For the purposes of this post, we'll call this Calm Moss-Colored Dialysis Tubing, or CMCDT for short.

So, it's not that being alone makes me happy. When I'm alone I'm rarely happy. When I'm alone I'm often Calm Moss-Colored Dialysis Tubing. (Except when I'm reading jokes. That's kind of like feeling happy except instead of bright yellow it's more cream-colored. Or sometimes more orangish-relaxedish. Or even blue, if it's amusement welling up. But we have a word for that feeling already, and anyway, it's irrelevant except that sometimes people tell jokes.)

Then another thing.

So when I'm alone, as mentioned, I'm spread out. I'm still aware of my body, but I'm relaxed and I'm kind of going beyond its bounds. My thoughts and environment spread out in different directions, including nonexistent directions. I'm aware of my body, and I'm aware of the same things about it as otherwise. It's nice. My body is a sensory playground. I don't identify with it as part of me, but have full control over it.

When someone enters my space, one of a couple things can happen. In public or with strangers, I can withdraw into myself. I can forcibly turn the dialysis tubing into glass and suck in everything, to some extent. My body's flaws become flaws. If I have a ratty-looking, blue-grey bottom lip, this becomes bad. People look, and I have to shrink away. This happens even in my most successful social encounters, or perhaps especially then.

Unfortunately, people I'm really accustomed to, like family, can fail to trigger it, and in doing so walk into me. Inside of me. Or I can do it, but it's not enough. In that case, they're walking through the fuzzy outer coating of thoughts to my body to criticize it, and my thoughts, and to invade my space. Worse still is if they touch me. (Touching them isn't always bad, but being touched often is...) Then I seem really irritable, because enemy troops have waltzed over the borders. Go away, now. Whatever you're asking for I'll do later. Don't want to talk to you. Don't want to hear you breathe. Don't want you to dare come into the same room. This is the absolute antithesis of CMCDT, even more than being around strangers.

So strangers make me scared of what they'll do to me (murder, rape, call the police, 5150, steal my stuff...). My family can make me feel violated and threatened by tresspasses, if they're not careful. (Some people trigger that more than others. Mom triggers it in every interaction to some degree. Dad never triggers it as badly as Mom's maximum level, but can trigger it sometimes, though not all the time. Grandma almost never does at all, and when she does, only mildly. There's no one else close enough to trigger the trespassing response at all; my friends are too close to trigger my stranger response, but not close enough to trigger this one.)

Anyone else feel this way?

I think I understand to some degree. I do think my emotions work a little differently from the average person.

Most of my happiness is an excitement, energy type feeling. Kind of a confidence and optimism, a sense of things "clicking" and moving forward. Kind of like rafting down a river or driving in a car along a long, straight stretch of road. I mostly feel it when I discover something or accomplish something creative. It is also mimicked to a significant degree by caffeine, and that's why I like it so much. I wouldn't say that feeling like this wears me out, as much as it seems there is a limit to how much I can feel this way, and so sooner or later I feel bored and rather depressed--from the "inside" rather than the outside, in that the same things that excited me before seem too mundane.

I wouldn't connect it with the sun, that I more relate to a kind of warmth. That warm kind of contentment I feel rather rarely, at least when sober. Though when I do, it makes me feel at ease. I think my ability to feel this one is sometimes limited by a physical health issue that irritates my nerves. I believe that most people feel primarily like this when in a positive mood, and they tend to misread the more excited kind of happiness as nervousness, which makes them uneasy. On the other hand, they read calmness and sitting still as happiness, which more often means I'm actually a little depressed. I really wish that others would appreciate being excited/hyper more.

I also have a very rare sort of mood where I'm very giggly and silly, though this only lasts for a short while, and this is the only one that I feel is kind of unreal and "symptomatic", in the sense of not really being an actual emotion that's connected to anything, but rather just being due to my brain having like a temporary "spasm". I used to get this more as a kid when I was put on medication to try and "treat" me.

I also sometimes feel just OK, not particularly happy but not sad either. But in this state I'm not really motivated to do anything. When I'm in the excitement mode, I'm motivated to do ambitious and/or interesting things while the energy lasts. The good thing about feeling sunny and warm is that in this state, I am fine with doing things that are a little boring, and it doesn't feel like I'm missing out.

DandelionFireworks, I am not that sensitive, but can easily relate to your excellent description of how you feel.

Yes. Absolutely.


Excellent writeup.


I love being different to the core. ---really, other people's attempt to assess my thoughts and feelings with the usual social thinking when they enter my space simply cannot accurately engage me, thus, a possible retreat occurs that is esoteric & strange. I'm gradually learning more about how to be more myself in the presence of others, but some elements of me simply travel in an ungraspable realm and so I will always have this internal distance even when I am making a lot of effort to engage others in the social thinking process for the purpose of sharing who I am with them.

lol, i think that is hysterical to ask after such a very specific explanation.

i wouldnt call any of it Calm Moss-Colored Dialysis Tubing (lol again) but i understand the end part of what you are describing as some kind of force field that sometimes doesn't function right around people leaving you vulnerable. your people "walking inside you" bit sounds like a semi-meltdown state where i cannot tolerate someone else's voice (even my own).

i find it hard to respond to this in a tired state as i experience so much variation throughout a typical day in terms of how i feel and see and perceive input, whether i feel i have a skin (physically or the force field i mentioned) or not from one minute to the next, even as i type this i am getting confused having no idea where to start describing my internal process / dialogue of relationship to my feelings or to the world or to other people. and my nervous system seems so directly tied to my state of mind that i have difficulty separating emotional experience from sensory experience. when i close my eyes i have trouble speaking.

i guess i'm responding because it's a very interesting post. i wish i could break all that down into words. my experience is sometimes so abstract and i have such trouble understanding the abstract that it grounds me and is helpful to read posts where people can explain their experience in more complex relationship than seeing, feeling, hearing, thinking. i seem to only be able to describe one type of experience at a time.

Very interesting and poetic description. I like the way you used the colors to describe your emotions and dialysis tubing (I think) how your separated from others. I could relate to what your saying to an extent except my emotional ranges are strangely stronger feeling and I'd describe more with touch/physical reactions and sound (I'm not that visually oriented). I can definitely relate to the reactions to having your space invaded by certain people, though I also have a component of what I would describe as an airy, probably (if I have to pick a color) light purple obliviousness.

You description also seems to be very visually oriented. I think aspies/auties give very different, yet interesting descriptions based on what senses they mainly rely on. Personally, I hear/feel as much if not more than I visually process (to the point of extreme auditory/tactile hypersensitivity).