Incongruent Emotions.

Post Reply New Topic

Is in common in autism to display emotions that are totally unrepresentative of how one feels inside?

I can be attacked badly by voices and paranoia, to the point that I feel like self-harming, but on the outside I look calm. The voices can be drowned out by talking (they're not especially loud, just persistent) so I start talking to my friend. Nobody knows what goes on in my head unless I tell them.

I say yes.

After all, part of our problem is that we don't react "appropriately" to how we feel.

Yes, absolutely. I think the problem we have is that we have a hard time recognizing in the moment how we feel about stuff, so our reaction doesn't correspond to the external stimulus.

I've also noticed that I tend to work on a time delay--it'll build up and up, and I'll explode at the most random (to other people) times.

I defiantly have delayed emotions. How delayed varies. Could be a few minutes could be a few days. When everybody is ready to move on from some tragedy on I am just starting to feel it. The day I got diagnosed I was pretty numb when she said it. But once I hit the street Wow, it was the strongest emotion I felt in decades, almost like bolts of electricity rushing through.

I believe the answer is: Absolutely Yes, it is common.
It certainly is common for me, and explains a lot of our communication hiccups.

To answer your question something like this.

This is absolutely my problem. I quite often have no idea how I feel in any moment and only realise too late when I end up shouting at some poor person cos the things they have done have built up. I say poor person, it usually is their fault, however I should be able to tell them when they start to annoy me and not when it gets past the point of no return.