Something I've noticed quite concretely

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Quite often when and if someone does show me affection or interest, and especially if the conversation or tone of it goes past my armor and especially when it's on a profound level - I get physically nauseous. I've had this happen a few times in the past and as I understand it its an anxiety over the mismatch of modes, overall brittleness of communication, quite often because the emotional trajectory of the communication (from her side) is one that's quite painful for me to engage in.

Why? Its the high-low functioning bit, certain finite plains of functioning rather than being 29 or even closer to 30 something, I melt down, have nothing to say, all I can do is give it an absent smile and when that's taken as - cute - and things emotionally go in the maternal flirtatious kind of direction, that compounds it 3x. Part of it is miscommunication, its not that they want to project on me something I'm not but they don't have anything better to go on realistically, overall though when it does happen it means a) I'm not in control and b) I'm being thrown into a particular angle of the emotional realm that's not only not my bag - it makes me want sit in the corner of the shower for the rest of the day. For some reason when someone really beams emotion and especially when having a place to put it or a way to utilize it appropriately, I end up feeling it so intensely that it pretty much invades, overwhelms, and practically dominates me. Its not immaturity, its not a choice, believe me - I'd love to have another way about it because I know exactly how destructive it is, a lot of these emotional areas and my hypersensitivity to uncontrolled positive emotions will realistically knock me out of the game entirely and I know that its my issue to handle.

The other part of it, someone could want to show me affection but for some ungodly reason its like my emotions are on lockdown. I know what I should be feeling, I know what I want to be feeling, but nothing helps and of course, I feel terribly embarrassed because I'm acting like a flake and an as*hole by not reciprocating it and quite often acting as if I'm politely trying to cover revulsion. I hear from people that to an extent this is normal, that you won't be attracted to everyone, I do feel a push and its a lot of times personality or energy driven. On the other hand, I find someone who I have a magnetic pull toward maybe once every two or three years - so that's a no go.

I'm bringing this all up in the usual context - for anyone who's had this, have you been able to make heads or tales of what to do with it?

Also, anyone reading this biting back &%*%@&*@$! ! STOP THINKING SO MUCH....I'm just going to take it that you haven't felt these things and because of that are stuck in a position where super-obsessing is the only way someone could have these experiences. I *don't*, just bite your tongue and wrestle with the idea that maybe these things really can happen with some people.

It's because you're so nervous. Maybe try not to take things so seriously, after all if you don't know these girls well enough you might not be aware just how serious or interested they really are. Just keep things in perspective and don't look too far ahead.

It doesn't necessarily have to do with AS, either. There's a depiction of this in South Park where Stan pukes whenever Wendy Testaburger talks to him - exaggerated, of course, but pointedly not absurd.

Yeah, what Hector said. The nausea is caused by the fight-or-flight response--you feel threatened, so the body shuts down non-essential stuff like digestion and ramps up systems you need to run away or do combat.

Bleh I get nauseous for everything

I don't get nauseous, but I do basically "freeze" in position if sufficiently nervous...

Yeah, your probably right. I know sometimes at work even if I have too much caffeine I'll feel like I have bricks on my chest, had periodic involuntary mutism in my early 20's. I guess its hard to place then whether that's what's shutting down my emotions or if its the AS shutting me down and the anxiety as a byproduct.

Like your neck locks up or your afraid to move your face otherwise you'll have a huge twitch? That's what I used to get either first days in certain college classes, particularly when I had no friends from around the way in them.

You don't get all bright-eyed and Howdy Doody looking do ya? I had that simultaneously as well, like anytime I had an anxiety attack I'd look like twice the space cadet or weirdo that I might have otherwise, huge reason why I had a sense of urgency to break the ice and talk to people - get my personality out before appearances actually create their own drama and force me toward even more strenuous cleanup and damage control.

I've felt what you're talking about, though generally not to the point of an anxiety attack. It would happen when I was on dates in college, especially while driving and trying to talk. For me, the cold sweat is the worst part. The shaky voice was also bad. It's just nereves -- but in the same sense that a coach tells you to "walk off" a concussion.

The only solution I've found is, for lack of a better term, method acting. The disingenuity bothers me a great deal, since it is too close for comfort to being a psychopath, especially where relationships are concerned. It can lead to all sorts of problems, as the other person gets to know the "real" you.

BTW, by method acting, I mean spending extensive time visualizing and reliving particular experiences, putting yourself in those positions once more, accustoming yourself to those feelings by being as hypersensitive as possible, coming up with a different approach to behaving in those situations, and then trying out these techniques in throw-away, isolated situations.

Very good advice. I think what I've noticed is that between the two options - either method acting or just pushing the empathy through and searching for 'what would I rather have done' - the later has to be it, method acting has the ability for dealing with situations that you technically wouldn't do period but have to; I'm still trying to figure out how to get around that. Overall my empathy skills for imagining as such are pretty good, I do make a routine exercise of it though yes, its draining and I still have difficulty utilizing that awareness in terms of being smooth.

My fears with method acting though are like what you indicated; I learned to do it well enough to where I could get by with practically anyone if I put enough focus into it - maybe one or two times. The scary part then is "Well, what about next time? Will it hold up?". I was able to, just by hammering myself through my early 20's, to commit most of it to intuition and particularly learn the mechanics behind the things that were driving me crazy like that. With acquaintances yeah, its pretty normal to keep a mask up there and so far I'm not particularly hurting on guy friends because of that skill. I do notice though, especially with the disconnect between facial expression (subtle) and behavior seems to throw women for a loop though - it can survive acquaintanceship (not as well as with guys) but as far as actually having a female 'friend' who isn't a friend's long-term other or having a girlfriend - it seems like that takes a rather minimal degree of nonverbal dissonance, otherwise you scare the bejesus out of people.

Other then that, when looking at the situations we're talking about up top: Can I handling a situation altruistically and sincerely? yes. Are there times when I can think about what I was really feeling and can think of a much more precise way of articulating it? Yes, I've had better luck with my 'descriptive' verbal intimacy and making sense of my own emotions as of late. Using method acting to *really* pass on NT level rather than semi-shy, very difficult in most crowds and still feels like it demands an apparatus that either does not exist or the thickness of that neurological channel is about 8 times the gauge that it would be for an NT.