Asperger and emotions

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Hello everyone.
Since i got my diagnostic there is a question i'am always asking myself. Why is it so common to hear that autistic people lack emotions? Because from my experience with other aspergers as well as my peronal, i find that it is the other way around. When i was a kid i was over sensitive and crying for almost no reason. Now that i grew up i still feel bad about things people won't normally care. The thing that make me most sad is when i get separated from a person or a place i like. For exemple today it was the last day of a girl in my workplace. I was not in love or anything but liked her as she was a kind person and i was used to see her everyday for almost 6 months. After leaving i had weird feeling thinking that i'am probably never going to see her again. I felt different emotions thinking about how life changes and that somehow people come and goes in one's life.

So is it just that we don't show emotions that people think we have none? Because for exemple while leaving work today i just said "bye, hope everything will be fine for you" and left. I'am not the kind of being over demonstrative and doing huge farewells, but that don't mean i don't get attached to people (or places). I just don't know how to dose those feelings with proper social protocol and am afraid to overdo it, so i just limit myself to the minimum.

Do other aspies feel the same as me about this topic or i'am a weird one?

Wish I could answer that question. If I had to guess, I'd attribute the reason to another outdated stereotype. Either way, based on my personal experience, I can safely say that I'm anything but emotionless. When I hear a good joke, I laugh. When I witness something sad, I cry. When I'm frustrated by something, I show it - sometimes possibly too clearly, if I might add.

Karla McLaren gets it. Her site is under maintenance today but this is basically the same writeup I found there.

"A few years ago, I worked for a group of 22 college-aged students on the autism spectrum (which includes autism, Asperger’s, and PDD-NOS— or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). My job was to help the students with all of their academic needs: scheduling, counseling, learning accommodations, tutoring, social services, transportation … I was hired to create a total support system under and around the students so that they could successfully attend college. To do that, I had to study these students and their needs very intently. What I found surprised me.

The reigning theory is that people on the spectrum are not socially adept because they are “mind blind.” They supposedly don’t have a functioning idea of the “otherness” of people, which would mean that they think everyone knows what they know, likes what they like, and thinks how they think. This mind-blindness, so the story goes, means that spectrum people are insensitive.

In my first few days with these students (who almost immediately became my friends), I looked everywhere for this mind-blindness and a lack of sensitivity— but I didn’t find either one. In fact, I saw hypersensitivity— painful hypersensitivity. And instead of mind-blindness, I saw a continual, time-lagged confusion about what was going on with and between neurotypicals (this is a new term used in the autistic community when referring to “normal” people).

My new friends were incredibly sensitive to sounds (especially very quiet sounds that many neurotypicals can ignore), colors, patterns, vibrations, scents, the wind, movement (their own and that of the people around them), the feeling of their clothing, the sound of their own hair and their breathing, food, touch, numbers, animals, social space, social behavior, electronics, the movement of traffic, the movement of trees and birds, ideas, music, juxtapositions between voice and body movements, and the often emotionally incongruent behaviors neurotypicals exhibit. Many of my friends were struggling to stand upright in turbulent and unmanageable currents of incoming stimuli that could not be stopped, bargained with, ignored, moderated, or organized.

In short, they were overwhelmingly, intensely, unremittingly, outrageously sensitive— not merely in relation to emotions and social cues, but to every possible aspect of their environments. In fact, I wrote a post about this heightened sensitivity at a site called Autism and Empathy. This is a big issue that isn’t being addressed very well.

My friends were essentially on fire most of the time, and this often created a great deal of emotional turmoil, as you can imagine. However, because they struggled with communication and socialization, it was hard for them to address or deal with their often intense reactions. Some would completely withdraw, some would try to connect to others by launching into monologues, some would engage in “stimming” (a repetitive action that can bring some sense of peace and control), and others would lash out. Being on the spectrum is a very difficult thing when the world around you— with its constant noise, confusion, emotional inconsistency, and demands for attention— is built for neurotypical people who simply aren’t as sensitive as you are, and can’t understand why so many things set you off.

Karla McLaren is an author, social science researcher, a cappella arranger, and empath. Her most recent book is The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You."

I can feel and identify my own emotions very well.

Is that common? I haven't heard that so much, except from the occasional troll who has no real knowledge of autism - not that I'm accusing you of being a troll, it's just that I've more often heard the old chestnut about "autistic people having no empathy," of course that's a crock of sheisse, too.

While it's true we're so awkward in social situations that even when we recognize another person's pain or discomfort, we generally are unsure what to do about it, it's much more likely we suffer from too much empathy and merely learn to repress it as a result.

Of course we have emotions, though I have posited more than once that we Aspergians tend to be a people of extreme emotions, rather than subtle ones. In other words, I personally have experienced a great deal of depression, rage, despair and even occasionally joy - but often, more quiet, transitory emotions elude me.

I do experience quite a lot of whimsy, but I sort of consider that the opposite side of the cynicism coin.

I appreciated that. Describes me completely. Internally very sensitive, but tend to not show emotions outwardly, especially if I'm uncomfortable with the situation. Best to just internalize my feelings, and pretend to be okay.

My current therapist is on board the 'autistics don't have emotions' bandwagon, and won't give me a straight answer or definitive diagnosis for that reason. I'm learning to accept that opinions are split on this issue, and the psychiatric profession is of limited value in helping us with our issues.

I don't know why i would troll? This is something i see alot online, on forums, so maybe they are trolls? However it seems people don't understand and i think it is due to our lack of ability to express our emotions properly.

You say we have "extreme emotions" that is very interesting because it is exactly what i always felt. As i said as a kid i was more emotional than every other kids and used to cry alot. However i always had my own reason to feel some emotions about some events, that means in some cricumstances where everyone is supposed to feel sad i was feeling nothing, i rarely enjoy jokes unless they are weird enough or relate to something i personally experience.

However i don't get why people say that we have no or few emotions. In the other hand, and i'am happy you said it, it seems to me that we have emotions that can go from low to extreme. The difference in my opinion is that we cannot control them as much as other people and feel them not always in appropriate cicumstances.

That sensitivity isn't about emotions though, it's about stimulus.
I suppose I am the outdated autistic stereotype - I'm alexithymic and alexithymia is supposedly higher in the autistic population than the neurotypical. Perhaps this is where the common belief comes from? Trouble with expression, definitely difficulty with understanding emotions both in myself and others, but also a fairly limited range, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately that doesn't equal no emotions at all.

Emotionless is a generalisation which is far from helpful.

There are many of us on the spectrum who feel the whole range of emotions. Some feel them more strongly than the population as a whole.

Many on the spectrum report finding it difficult to describe their emotions. This can be perceived incorrectly as not having emotions rather than not having The Words to describe the emotion.

My own family's way has been around feeling emotions sometimes quite deeply but seldom speaking of the emotion at any great length.

I'm not sure I've heard that, but I too have heard the thing about people with autism not having empathy. Neither is true for me. I think I feel emotions too intensely. I think this was cited as the main reason why my mother granted both my younger sisters as power of attorney for her, but I got no such privileges, because I'm too emotional. Now that my mother is recovering from a stroke, one of my younger sisters has pretty much become the head of the household. I'm the only one of my sisters that's actually paying rent(from my disability money) but it often feels like I have little say in what goes on in this house which really isn't right even if I am more emotional.

I know there are people who think that I lack empathy, but this definitely isn't true. I care a lot about other people, and for those that I'm close with, I'll often go out of my way to be supportive of them when I'm able to(though this isn't always reciprocated). I know the reason I can come across as not having empathy is because I can get so overwhelmed with my own stresses and sensitivities that it can be impossible to put others first. An example of this would be if someone in my house is ill and coughing all night long. Not only is this a trigger noise for me and annoying as hell if it goes on for awhile during the day, but it's so much worse if it's preventing me from sleeping, and it can cause me to have a meltdown. So then I get seen as having no empathy for the other person that's suffering. I mean I do understand that they feel like crap and might not necessarily be able to help making the noise, but I also can't help how I react to their noise. Just because I can't handle certain things does not mean I don't have empathy for another person.

This reminded me of a pattern from my childhood:

Person: "Stop being so sensitive!"
Me: *acts cruel or shows no emotion*
Person: "Why are you being so mean/cold?!?!"
Me: "You said stop being sensitive."
Person: "Don't be so literal!"

I can laugh about it now...

I read something awhile back that profoundly declared that it's almost all neurotypicals helping the neurodiverse and that should change. It really should. Who best to help but someone who's 'been there'. That's how it's done in Alcoholics Anonymous...someone does the work to the point of recovery and has tons of knowledge and know-how to help. Otherwise it's just hearsay (unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not part of one's direct knowledge).

I'm super sensitive and I think it might be a bit more socially acceptable for females, correct me if I'm wrong. I take things very literally Not always easy to laugh about it, nice to have people to talk with about it though

Fire the therapist.

This belief that autistics have no emotions is a hangover from the "refrigerator mother" era of the 1950's and 1960's when it was the near universal belief that because the mother was "cold" or preoccupied with her own concerns or never wanted the child in the first place her parenting was lacking in love and the kid as a defense mechanism blocked all emotions and became autistic, more of a robot than a human.

Time to post this video again on this subject. Gets to me every time.

It depends. I can get emotional at times. But often I'm very stoic. I think that's really the best way to describe it. Not that people with autism lack emotion, but they can often be stoic / analytical. I think some of us relate well to Star Trek characters like Spock, Tuvok, Seven of Nine and Data.