Can any of you pinpoint how you feel or why?

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Continuing my questions before bringing up my suspicions of AS with my psych.

I find that I'm mostly in a state of what I refer to as nothing. Like there's no emotion, but I'm happy to be in that state? But when there is an emotion I can differentiate between them really easy. And if I take a few moments I can identify them as anger/depression/this/that. And now I can do it pretty much all the time. I hear that many Aspies have trouble with this, but do any of you not? Can you tell what you're feeling (although maybe you might not be able to describe it) but can you differentiate it between your other feelings/states.

And then when I feel these things I know exactly exactly why. Usually I can't fix it though. I always found many people (NTs I'm assuming) will tell me they feel this or that and not know why. And I'm like, how can you not? I always know exactly why. In my first meeting with my psych she even said I was very very precise about why I felt a certain way and what my issues were and I described it very logically.

But at the same time I feel that any emotions that aren't huge feel dull. It's either the nothingness or extreme excitement/anger, etc, no in between. And it's the same with reading people, I either think they're normal/in the nothing, or they're angry or happy or a strong noticeable emotion, but never the more subtle emotions. When I see anything else on their face I assume something is wrong, or that they are normal and then problems happen because I thought they felt fine.

Last edited by nonames on 20 Nov 2012, 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are many times where I cannot exactly pinpoint why I feel a certain way, but I definitely know HOW I'm feeling at any given time. It takes me time and contemplation to pinpoint what brought about certain emotions, but not all the time.

It always takes me a while and some thought to understand why I am feeling a certain way.

I feel things and I know what those things are but sometimes it is extremely difficult to explain why I am feeling those things.

Sometimes I feel stiff or rigid inside and I feel nothing. My head feel cloudy and I just don't feel anything in particular. That I can't explain at all.

No.
You might be referring to Alexithymia. It is pretty common with Aspies.

I feel nothing most of the time. When I feel something, it is usually happiness or sadness. My feelings are always temporary and it is difficult to identify them.

I can very rarely pinpoint how I feel. I can identify extremes. For example, when my grandfather died (I was VERY close to him), I was devastated and I knew that I was and why. When I get very angry, I can identify that. I can sometimes identify extreme excitement. That's about it. Day-to-day emotions are almost impossible to identify.

A lot of my CBT for OCD has revolved around helping me learn how to do this. Identify when I am feeling stress or anxiety or fear or agitation. Identify the reasons why I feel that way. Hypothesize solutions to the unwanted emotion.

I have extreme anxiety, I feel anxious right now sitting in my living room, there is no reason for me to feel anxiety, for me its like tinnitus (which I also have) its like background noise. I don't think that I feel any other emotion, not fear, or love, or hate, I do get angry but that might just be another aspect of my anxiety. The good thing is that I don't let my anxiety stop me from living my life, I have been married to a wonderful woman for 18 years and we have three amazing children, I love my family in my own way, I was very confused about my emotions, or lack thereof but it helps knowing that I have alexithymia. I have often wondered what it is like to have emotions, but perhaps that is like a person who has been blind from birth trying to imagine what sight is.

Could this mean I don't have AS?

I asked the question to see if any of you were more the exception like me, but none of the replies seem to indicate that.

It does not mean you don't have AS as far as I understand. Alexithymia in which you cannot easily describe or distinguish your emotions is very common in AS but there are about 10-20% of aspies who will not have it. I seem to have this and I am only now beginning to understanding it although I have known there was something emotionally 'off' with me all my life.

It is like I have most of the normal behavioural and physical responses to emotions just like anyone else but my concious brain has been cut out of the loop and has to work it out from the clues - so I often only notice I am happy because I see that I am being quite talkative and my wife will often point out that I am becoming stressed out since I often don't realise until meltdown stage. I am aware of the physical reaction to more powerful emotions once that kicks in but it always just manifests as a uncomfortable tightness in my chest and that physical feeling is what I have always understood my emotions to be with any specifics like guilt or anger having to be inferred by context at a intellectual level. Very odd talking about this actually - I think it sounds nuts but that seems to be the way I am much of the time.

This emotional blindness is usually the case but there are some times where I can see through the fog better than others. Certain things like humour seem to not be affected by this and I enjoy a good laugh and follow comedy with gusto. I am a huge fan of various comedy shows and have seen quite a few live comedians.

My brain is fuzzy mostly - but if i watch something funny ill find that i burst out laughing and then i assume i must be happy. Nothing happens in my head however - the presumption is that normal ppl can feel it somewhere?

I can get upset too - ive cried on occassion. Not as much or in appropriate places however.

I can blow when im stressed - shouting and throwing things around etc. Again, blank in my brain, but its happening. My bigger problem is i maintain a nice healthy level of calm, and just react aggressively. This means nicely calculating insults, snidey remarks, and data i collected from earlier in the week that will now be used as fuel for the main gun, so to speak. I hate myself when this happens - because i cannot control my mouth either, and it spills out. When this happens, i feel im a spectator watching someone else at the controls.
I dont know who you are, but i want you to leave please. Hes not a happy bunny.

what do you mean by it's usually happiness or sadness? how does that feel? i thought people say they're just generally happy it's not a specific occuring feeling. what makes you feel happy sad? these words seem strange to me as i generally feel more animalistic emotions like nervous, or angry. sad when a program i liked ends or something good ends and won't come back. so yeah i'm interested in what you mean by happy/sad is it like on/off - i made a thread asking about it too.

also for the OP, you sound pretty much like me in fact i'll list my known states and what happens. on my own all the time i feel nothing i feel fine, normal, ok, 'happy'. if i do too much thinking ie reading about an interesting thing (right now it's the subject of wrong planet type stuff how the brain works and sensory perception etc) if i just think too much (verbal logic thinking) and just learning too many new things i suddenly realise that and basically i feel a bit down a bit too emotionally fatigued like normal but worse as if there's too much nothing or something... . however if i don't verbally think but actually comprehend meaning by visualising what it is like ok that's the words but now what is iactually describing and then i picture basically ti sounds strange but hte more i imagine and use my mental senses (not real) it puts me into an excited mode where my mind becomes thoughtless and in the moment and frankly it's like above and beyond the normal mode and unbelievably euphoric i think... when in the sensory imagining mode i read faces and get a feeling just by looking at the person wehther in real life, video or a manga face/movement also abstract art has a feel to it and even looking at plain objects like a hand lotion i'll sense them and they're like personified and generally i'm just taking a lot more visual information of my surroundings and with songs i hear more of the song ie more sounds at once - basically i call that mode excited and i can get into it when i used to go out into the street and give people evils (like i thought everyone else gave but i now realise my perception is just hypersensitive they're not trying too - some are aggressive i guess but not as many as i was/still do perceiving) - so i call that state/emotion excited or 'visceral'. then i'll get angry by injustice people being wrong (ie moderators who take a side against you and kick, group mobs attacking one person each taking cheap shots, my mom when she's being f*****g stupid in some type of argument or what she's repeating to me my other siblings too) - and it's pretty obvious anger like punching /destroying stuff makes it go away. lastly and this is why i think the excited mode is different to just an emotional state but could potentially be my general baseline state because when i'm not in that state and just normal mode when i then go around people and see them in person i get nervous anyone doens't matter just the sight of them makes me nervous - sometimes depending on how aggressive i'm perceiving their face body language/how silent or overly loud the people are in the room (ie extremes in volume) - when i notice people staring at me in taht mode it just makes me nervous even more but essentially from normal mode to people around me looking at me or just there's at least some nervousness. however in the excited mode i feel what they feel ie empathy like in that post on eq vs systemising thinking yeah so it's funny because i'm so aware of their state and i'm feeling it because that's what it's not a thought i have it's literally a knowing of their exact ( i assume haven't asked) emotion/state and so i don't feel nervous simply i guess because my mind can't focus on that but essentially it's probably because i'm just not perceiving theirs faces as aggressive owards me i intuitively feel that their visual says stuff about their state not me. and of course there's sexual 'emotion' but that's pretty obvious lol. and that's pretty much it - that pretty much it for me.

I do not know... I think "happiness" is the satisfaction I feel when I do something I like. And "sadness" is the opposite of that... Like when I do not get what I want. Honestly, I am not sure.

Is this not normal in the general population? Surely a typical NT can't be feeling some kind of emotion all the time?!?

That sounds like a truly exhausting way to go through life. How would anyone think, if they're always busy feeling?

For me, I sometimes have to write a letter to myself to figure out my feelings. Sometimes I'm upset and I don't know why (although there is usually a cause) writing out the specifics can help me figure out what's up.

Usually though, if it's not an extreme emotion, I'm not sure what I'm feeling. I spend most of my time in this weird not-happy/not-sad state.

I feel and I can tell my feelings apart and I can tell which ones are good and which ones are bad and what each one does to me, although my descriptions of them are generally longer than other people's descriptions of their own emotions, I think that can just be put down to them being okay with vague descriptions of "happy" and "sad" while I believe firmly that either of those things could mean a hundred things more. I do not always know why I feel what I feel, or at least why I feel up to a certain extent in one situation and not in another, this is when I am experiencing emotions with their foundations in either unrelenting agitation or unreasonable sadness, but I do have working theories on both, and if I am to feel anything other than the usual emotions that I do not wish to describe now then I can usually understand enough of why they form to be able to believe that all is well with my personal comprehension of my emotions; perhaps nobody fully understands anything.