Therapist Wants Me to Express Emotions

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I am having quite a dilemma lately in therapy. My therapist believes I need to openly express my emotions to others, as oftentimes I do not have much of a physical reaction to anything, even if very emotional. He thinks it will help my anxiety and depression as well as connecting with others, but I am often distressed when he brings this up because I have no idea how to do it. I find it awkward and not something that comes naturally, but rather through an intense process of analyzing the situation and then applying the appropriate reaction, only to halfheartedly act it out. He says that because I can cry when I am alone, I can do it in front of others, but I find it a very different process. Am I being stubborn or is he not helping?

I'm a 33 year old woman, I remember when I was a teenager and even as a young adult I really struggled to express my emotions, even with my family. (Although with them i still struggle, haha). I think for me it took a lot of time, going through a marriage and a divorce and moving to a different country to be able to finally express at least some of what is going on inside.

So don't worry if you can't do it just because your therapist orders so.

You can maybe find some simple things, even if non-verbal, to express how you feel about people you like. Don't start with an intense hug, obviously, if you are not feeling comfortable with it. Try to explore your limits and when you feel you are getting a bit anxious just push yourself a little, as much as you think you can easily handle.
I always observed how people express their emotions and copied some things I was okay with. I still do this up to this day and it works. Now I can even hug some people! (Although the anxiety I don't think will ever completely go away when doing it.) But it makes a huge difference for my depression levels.

Yeah, I'd say it's more likely to be this, that your therapist is not being particularly helpful. Don't feel you need to immediately fire him. Do accept him for the limitations he has. And you certainly do not have to do something just because he orders you to. Nor are you required to do something abrupt and clumsy.

In time, you might want to make a move lateral to another therapist. And weirdly, sometimes honest to gosh a bartender (you're too young for that!), or an exercise coach, or a high stylist can actually make a pretty alright informal therapist.

High school is a high stakes environment, or it certainly can be at times. No, I don't think it's the best place for trying things which are abrupt and out of character.

Looking back, I benefited that both my boy scout group and my judo team were in neighboring school districts, and thus not all my social eggs were in the one basket of 'school.' In trying new groups, I sometimes look at every stage of social acceptance being light touch and 50-50

Good luck in your high school years.

Expressing emotions, eek!
Be careful - if you're anything like me, emotions won't come out in an appropriate manner.
I think it's helpful to be in touch with one's emotions, but not necessarily to express them, especially if you get a delay in feeling something a day or two after the event. People won't understand, it will confuse them and make you seem weird.
Well, that's just my take.

I have a very similar expirience. Only with me it was a very particular emotion: anger.
I had no problem swearing at my source code or getting cold fury over some news I read. But getting angry next to a person I'm angry at? Blocked. To the point I thought I was just unable to actually feel anger.
But my therapist was adamant that there is anger I need to find and release. I sweeped through my memories and remembered the last real argument I had had... with my grandmother... I was about 9. It triggered an awful meltdown that granny used to her advantage. I didn't know the word "meltdown" then but I observed that arguing with people makes me brainless and vulnerable, so I invented a broad variety of skills to avoid arguments and used them for the next 20+ years.

I told my therapist anything I thought or felt about it. I'm fairly motivated with my therapy, so I'm doing all I can to be frank with her. From my suspition that I'm just incapable of feeling the emotion, childhood memories about it, endless and pointless quarrels in my extended family that made me believe arguments lead to nowhere... and fear of a meltdown next to a person who may use it to win the fight. I wanted to be anything but vulnerable when fighting someone.

And one bad day I released over 20 years of restricting my anger onto my inlaws :/ I told them I wasn't feeling well and I wanted to be left alone. But they had different plans... I won't go into the details but I couldn't react immadiatelly, I had my usual blockade, I first told my therapist and my psychiatrist what they did. I got validation from both... and then I came back and dropped the bomb. Over 20 years of restricted boiling anger.
They didn't take it well. Actually the only thing they cared for was that the neighbors may hear. And of course that I was mentally ill. After all that I felt ashamed. But somehow satisfied. They got offended. I decided – screw that, not talking to them for a moment would not be at all bad.
Well, the therapy and all is continuing but my inlaws, while still offended, seem to learn to respect my boundaries more. They don't ignore my requests to be left alone anymore. And I got much more contact with my own emotions after that.

When it comes to advice – tell your therapist about all the difficulties. Once a person learned some strategies to live among the people, it's extremely hard to drop them. If you fear your own vulnerability – say it. If you are just blocked once any person enters the room – say it. If you remember crying at primary school that ended in violent bullying – tell the story. The more you explain to your therapist, the more help you can have from him.

Hi. I can imagine how difficult this is for you. I'm new to the forum but quite a lot older than you (48), with a three-month-old late diagnosis of Asperger's. Believe me when I say therapy can be very difficult for people on the spectrum - I've had lots, and much of it didn't work, and now I know why. Your therapist is probably right that you need to express your emotions, but for people like us that is much easier said than done. So much of the time I just don't know what I'm feeling, and if you're the same then he needs to start with helping you understand, identify and THEN express your emotions. So he needs to be thinking medium or long term, and working to give you skills and tools, not laying burdens on you. Does he have experience working with people on the spectrum, and realise he needs to adapt his approach to the non-neurotypical brain? If not, you probably need a different therapist. This has been my experience anyway. Good luck. You still have time on your side, friend.

There is verbal communication and non-verbal communication and both are important to most people. Your therapist may think you are being too "quiet" in your non verbal communication, or possibly even "mute" and this can certainly negatively affect the quality of your interactions with others. However it sounds like your therapist is misguided in that perhaps he is expecting something of you which is not practical for you to do, and perhaps not really even necessary. Functional sociopaths are fairly devoid of empathy and interpersonal emotions and still often manage to be very personable and "relatable".

Does your therapist want you to better express your emotions or actually connect with people emotionally?

You're not being stubborn you are being reasonable, but he IS helping.
Here's the thing: it's totally fair for you to have a hard time understanding how to do this, and thus believing it is possible, because you haven't learned how to be expressive around other people yet. That's reasonable because you're autistic. I am the exact same way. That said, it's his job to push you out of your comfort zone to show you how much is possible.

Crying in front of other people would be going from one extreme to another. Why don't you start smaller and in controlled situations? You can role play with him and sort of prepare for what you would say. It doesn't need to be spontaneous. Just by going through the motions you'll learn to do it. Baby steps.

You are not being stubborn. You just have a different way of processing emotional content than he does and he might not understand that. One thing I am learning more and more about nts is how much they lack Theory of Mind. But it might be good for you to expand your ability to process emotions. Don't stress or worry if you can't do it the way he wants you to. You can just explore different things and see if they are helpful to you with your anxiety. I find that writing can really help me and sometimes singing does too. You can try different things like that. The point should not be to express them in a particular way. There are no right or wrong ways with this. The point is for you to find ways that work for you so that you can cope with the emotions and things that make you anxious.

This was a huge source of frustration for me with most of the counsellors I had seen over the course of 25 years - until I was fortunate enough to see a counsellor who had a good understanding of autism (the crucial event which eventually led to my diagnosis.) It was when I was seeing her that I first heard the term "alexithymia" - the set of traits which can leave us unable to identify and describe our own emotions. The "autism aware" counsellor did exactly as Alex suggests - helped me to learn to identify the emotions I was feeling, instead of driving me to frustration by pushing me to express things which I couldn't even give a name to.

The previous counsellors I saw just could not understand the concept that a person can be feeling a powerful emotion without being able to identify it, and thus also be unable to begin the process of understanding its causes and seek solutions. I even had counsellors describe me as "uncooperative" and "impossible to work with" because I was so often dumbfounded by the question "how does X make you feel?". The assumption was usually that I was repressing something or too embarrassed to talk about my feelings, when in actual fact, I lacked the words or insight to be able to do so. This was often very counterproductive, as it simply reinforced the idea that I was irreparably "broken" in some fundamental way.

From my experience, people don't care how you feel so expressing them in pointless. I am actually surprised when anyone actually gives a darn. I have also gotten in trouble before for expressing mine. I think there is nothing wrong with hiding them. Lot of people don't care anyway so expressing them would be pointless.

My therapist also thought I should express them or have more of them and I was like "why?" and every time I did, I would just get yelled at about it at home so it didn't matter. I have gotten in trouble for them too as a child. I can cry and yell and scream so I think that is expressing them. I can snap too and that is also expressing them so I don't know what people mean by expressing your emotions when you do it anyway. Maybe they mean appropriate emotions.

... this is actually the way you/autistics express their emotions. But NTs don't get it that you are expressing emotions when you do that because they don't express their emotions that way.

I've had similar experiences. One young MD guy I saw back in the late '80s used the term "resistance," which I think is a Freudian term. And it means you're getting close to what's really bothering you.

Counsellors can certainly have a very narrow view of what constitutes "helping"!

Maybe they need to get to know a person first. And I've long had the idea, let's play to strength and build on a variety of expected and unexpected positives, and just be matter-of-fact about any deficiencies.