"You seem so laid back..."

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I get this comment sometimes--that I seem laid back and mellow. And yet, I tend to experience lots of anxiety and can get easily upset by things. A coworker was a little surprised thatI was able to pick up nit-picky details readily because she thought I always seemed so easy-going. Does anyone else get comments like this? Do you think it has something to do with not expressing one's emotions appropriately?

I get this all the time. On the inside I am anything bt laid back. Must be the lack of emotions coming through in my facial expressions. I used to get told I looked serious all the time. Now I have this smile constantly plastered on my face so I don't get those comments anymore. No one really knows how I'm feeling inside

Just got this tonight; I was at a bar (for the first time in ages) with two friends when a girl I'd known in high school approached to chit chat. After talking, relatively successfully, for five minutes, she made her exit. Afterwards, I asked my friends how I'd done and they both said I did a great job, made her laugh and she seemed generally interested and calm/cool, so they were shocked to hear that my heart had been beating unnaturally fast, I'd started feeling incredibly hot, mentally taxed, nervous and honestly, was thinking of ways to shoo her off for a breather. I'm exhausted just thinking about it now but anyway, I think plus one for those of us adept at internalizing our social anguish. Also, props to myself because I made great eye contact for once!

I get this all the time too and I'm like, "Ya dude I just smoked a blunt". I'm just joking. I don't smoke blunts. I vaporize.

Yeah, because I'm so un-emotional, I don't get worried by things other people do. For instance in an emergency I'm really calm and can think logically whilst everyone else is panicking and getting emotional. Also I guess it's hard for people who don't know me really well to notice the signs of stress because mine are different to most peoples.

I normally have no idea how others see me because they don't tell me.

Recently one of my doctors told me I'm hard for him to read. I forget if he said I don't show much emotion or I'm not very expressive but he said something like that.

For me I think that I have had to compensate for the delay in processing unexpected things. In order so that I don't look stupid I have the facade of joking around smiling and being cool. I was caught off the other day when a work colleague said something really bizarre and I just continued to smile. He was shocked that I sat there so cool, it was the processing delay that caused it I would have been more reactive if he had given me another 10secs to look appropriately shocked.

Yeah, same here.

Physically, I'm a ragdoll, and "expressing" my emotions takes too much energy.

Therefore, I'm perceived as very "laid-back," or people incorrectly assume I don't have emotions at all. I do. It's just that twisting my facial muscles into certain expressions, or moving my body "properly" to demonstrate a feeling I'm having seems pointless.

If I'm having an emotional reaction, I should just be able to tell people without having to physically "prove" it.

Not at all pointless. Emotions are physiological reactions to move you.

You cant say "i'm ecstatic" over "overjoyed", display no body language of that and expect people to believe it.

As long as you believe its pointless - you wont do it. But it is not pointless.

Emotions are mental processes that provoke feelings. They don't necessarily produce physiological reactions visible to anyone else.

Lack of effective display of emotion is an aspie trait. Lack of emotion is not.



Sure I can. Just because I don't display it visibly doesn't mean I don't feel it. In fact, I HAVE to say it, otherwise they can't know.



It can be pointless if it doesn't come naturally. If it doesn't come naturally, and we force it, it looks fake (because it is faked), and then people really don't believe us.

I get this - absolutely - and I understand this whole thread in accordance with my experience.

The way I look at it

Emotions are reactions of the limbic system
People with AS tend to be more neocortext dominant and so somewhat out of touch with the lowly limbic functions.

Learning to display my emotions through body language has been helpful to me. Emotional reactions are assumed and projected and i notice I caused dissonance when I was emotionless. Faking it is not really great no. I see it as getting rid of stuck emotions from the past as helping create emotional freedom - which is very useful to me.

People tend to think that I'm really happy, relaxed, and having a good time when I'm neutral, and people tend to think that I'm neutral when I'm feeling most negative emotions.

Someone once said to me "You are so laid back you're almost horizontal".

Sometimes when I'm at work and its really busy I hear people mutter that its scary that I'm not at all affected by the stress. I've learned how to deal with stress through life experience, but even if I felt it I wouldn't show it.

I've been told on numerous occasions that I seem laid back, when inside I'm anything but. When I was pregnant (of all times), my boss asked if I wanted to take on the complaints admin job, which had become vacant, because I was calm, had a calm voice and she could see me being able to calm down angry complainants. She was deadly serious and thought I was ideal for the role. Needless to say, I declined. And at interview feedback, I was told that I came across as confident and relaxed, but didn't know enough. But, the truth was that I really had done my homeowrk, but I was a nervous wreck and couldn't access my knowledge because of it.