I can't fake smiles...

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I think I've read before that aspies have trouble faking their expressions, or so I heard. I can't just smile when someone else greets me, or smiles at me, I just find it extremely uncomfortable, psychically and emotionally I mean. I only smile when I'm genuinely happy or if I find something funny. It actually kind of hurts to fake smile for me, it just feels like I'm stretching my mouth, but not displaying happiness. I rarely smile when I'm taken photos of.

my problem is that i cannot stop myself from smiling. people always think i am enjoying myself when actually i just want to go home. this is mostly just at doctor appointments.

I do naturally smile when greeting somebody. But if I'm in a really depressive mood, I find it hard to smile because I feel like I'm not being honest to myself and it confuses my brain.

I didn't even know fake smiles existed until I was in high school when I joined autism groups on Yahoo. One member posted a child photo of herself and said she was doing a fake smile and it looked like a smile to me in it. I thought either you smile or you don't, it can't be faked. I always found it strange someone would call their smiling fake if they were actually doing it.

I have the opposite problem. My family keeps commenting that I give to much teeth. Like animals when they growl and bare their teeth it shows aggression. Well I can show to much teeth so I look like I'm growling at people when I'm just generally

I smile a lot. When I am told to smile for a picture it always looks like a grimace and people think it's deliberate. It's not.

I had trouble with it for a very long time. My face just didn't feel like something I had much control over, and when I did I found I didn't know what to do with it.

Practice in the mirror a bit. A smile isn't just the mouth; it's also the muscles on the outer corners of the eyes, and your cheeks. You want to scrunch your eyes just a little bit. In fact, you can smile without using your mouth; it gives your face a sort of relaxed look rather than an outright smile. There are diagrams of facial muscles that you can look at to see how to shape a smile.

But if your smile doesn't look right, you don't have to bother to fake it. It's your choice, one way or the other. Only in photographs are you likely to be commanded to smile, and in that case you can use the smile you've practiced in front of the mirror.