Emotionally inflexible

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So, ASD folks are supposed to be inflexible about the things we do and how we do them, and also have black-and-white thinking, whereby there is little nuance and something must be either good or bad. This is a generalization of course.

I'm wondering if this kind of thinking also applies to emotions. Because I find, within myself, that I am not able to "roll with the punches" and deal with emotion in a detached way as something that will pass and that I should not get worked up over it and just wait it out. When something affects me emotionally, especially when it's painful or sad, it feels permanent, and in my 59 years of experience, it is permanent.

Therapists never believe me when I say I will always feel a certain way and are always trying to persuade me that I will somehow suddenly turn into a different person, and be able to change how I feel. Even my current therapist, who specializes in neurodivergence and is ND herself. If only! I wish I could stop being in so much emotional pain! If only the therapist saying so would magically make it possible to feel better about something that is ruining my life.

Does black-and-white thinking in people on the spectrum also apply to emotions?

I definitely don't "fake" mine. That to me seems to be nearly the same thing. I'm always feeling a certain way, depending the situation I'm in at any moment, which cannot be "nuanced" and/or "tweaked" in order to please others. Case in point, just two days ago my sis and her son were in a huge rush to get out of town (they literally did this) while her father and I were stuck in this house with NO POWER and a "faulty" generator, that I had to "repair" in order to have fans running. I got gas all over my hands, and they were telling me to just dump the gallons of old gas on the lawn. I was furious, but according to them it was all unwarranted. f**k that noise, as they say.

I'm not sure how much it applies to me.

More like interactions between my neurodivergence, my body's current cocktails of chemicals and the perceived contexts in whatever particular situation.


If anything I'm trying to be more emotionally blank and detached and therefore more "rigid".

Because me being emotionally 'pliant' meant this irrational yet predictable manipulable person. I am not in the best place and constantly not in the best states to be "open".

I hate being that brat who is easily persuaded. And people predicting whatever.

This also means, people can gain the ability to put those stupid buttons in my head as if I'm one of those programmable impressionable child.

To a point that I'm just annoyed, just frustrated that either or both are into the mix... Because of whatever this aspect of humanity this is.

I'd rather be permanently unaffected, permanently rigid after a certain age, and then with no one will be ever adding any more stupid 'emotional bruises' that just festers into an infection.


But no.
I'm still this impressionable brat. Optimistic wanna be. Pessimistic downer.
Make up your damn "mind" already!.. I wish emotions do not influence my thoughts and actions.

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I'm not inflexible. If someone or something makes me feel like shite I know it will pass pretty quickly and then I go back to my usual self.

I feel emotions very strongly, and keep thinking of something that bothers me for a day or more.

If we have made an agreement about what we are going to do today, I will be upset if you want to change it without my agreement. I may not even take well to your suggestion of a change, if I'm already starting to feel stressed.

But I don't think of myself as inflexible or rigid in general. I'm actually very open-minded. I just feel strongly that agreements between people that have actually been made should be taken seriously, until they are changed by mutual consent.

I also do not feel that I experience black-and-white thinking at all. For me, my orientation to detail rules that out. I am somewhat obsessive about getting a high-fidelity picture of things, and that always requires taking lots of subleties into account.

I think of black-and-white thinking as thinking in terms of a small number of all-or-nothing distinctions, and for me attention to detail typically reveals a very large number of distinctions. I see millions of colors, not black and white, but I will be more concerned than an NT person to try to say clearly which of the millions of colors I'm seeing.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant by black-and-white or not. I've seen some people call something like my notion of a high-fidelity view a kind of it, but I disagree with that. In any case, what is key is what we mean by the words we use.

I think I probably also get tunnel vision at times. But this again has nothing to do with the number of distinctions I make.

In another forum recently, someone suggested that maybe the classic small-number-of-distinctions black-and-white seen in some of us comes other conditions that may co-occur with ASD. I thought that made sense.

i feel things extremely strongly and can be affected for days/weeks even months with one bad thought

I get emotionally stuck on a lot of things too. Once I get going, it's hard to change direction. Other times I am very peaceful from happily pursuing my special interests, but once I get upset, it takes a day or more to get it out of my system. It's mostly internalized, but my wife can always tell.