Aspies and lack of emotion

[Peacelily76]

I'm NT and the daughter of a dad who had AS and died 8 years ago so I understand both worlds. My dad never outwardly showed empathy. He intellectualised it. He could just about do sympathy although I don't think I ever heard him say the words, "Sorry to hear that."
I think as a result of my dad's inability to express empathy (I don't dismiss that he could have held deep emotions), it drove up my own ability to express empathy and compensate for my dad's lack of it.
I have a fantastic friend with AS who also has difficulty expressing empathy. He says himself that he senses emotions from others but he just doesn't know what words to use to 'make things better'. He has very deep emotion which he has some difficulty regulating. I was half way through telling him about a sad event from my childhood and he asked me to stop because he was too overwhelmed and wanted to cry. The emotion really scared him.
This confirms that he has all the emotion and all the care and love. It just gets scrambled on his brain highways.
As an NT I'm learning to listen to his words not look for hidden, deeper meanings or subtexts. The words tell me everything and they confirm our friendship. It's been a challenge because I'm so expressive and empathy comes easily to me. But next to my AS friend, with his sharp logic, awesome spatial reasoning and relentless dedication to many good, compassionate causes, my empathy looks like fluff haha!
And he often tells me it is! I just remind him I'm allowed to have fluff moments!

 

[Ocarina]

I feel myself to be empathic and am compassionate and sensitive - but have always been astonished when other people describe me as "cool" "detached" - I have to conclude that what is obvious to me on the inside is invisible to the wider world.

I have what seems to be an extraordinary clarity of thought in crisis situations - perhaps because I don't get caught up in emotion. For many years I thought this was a result of a regular lifelong meditation practice, but after my ASD diagnosis I realised it was just part of the package.

I know that I frustrate people by not reacting to things on the surface in the way that they expect but this is very far from my experience.

When my father died I felt a grief so intense that it's never really left me - although I function quite well and am generally content, I carry this feeling with me even 17 years down the line in a way that others seem not to.

Sometimes emotion appears from nowhere - joy, sadness or whatever. I used to think these were repressed feelings but now I"m not so sure, I wonder if I just don't recognise the emotion instantly in the way that many NT people seem to .

 

[Ocarina]

On the empathy front - I can recognise peoples feelings - and I want to help alleviate their suffering - what I don't or can't do is share the feeling they are experiencing

 

[Hidden_1]

It is my opinion that many of us have problems reading subtleties in other's emotional responses and choose to attenuate our own responses to avoid sending a wrong message. I have found that the things I feel most passionate about are often out of phase with the general public. Dampening my emotional responses is a defensive act to avoid conflict

 

[Stitch]

My tendency is to be overwhelmed and confused by extreme emotions from others and end up like a deer in headlights. Which is maybe why I don't react quite right. It's just too much and sometimes I may process it all too slow and then it's too late to respond anyways. People sometimes don't know I have empathy just because I express it poorly or at least not in the expected way, but I certainly have it. A few people who are close to me know that.

Yes. Exactly this.

 

[LillBeanSprout]

I don't think so. My emotions appear to get lost in translation. According to my psicotherapist, I racionalize everything, because I have the urge to make sense out of things. Basically, I appear to have sent my emotional language on a trip to Oblivion, and erased all physical displays. I suppose I do have feelings somewhere inside, though, 'cause they come out in extreme situations and in somewhat unconventional manners.

 

[WereBear]

None of us, NT or AS, are really taught much in the way of emotion identification, processing, or handling.

To my AS mind, NTs tend to be not so much as in tune with their emotions as they are attuned to what is expected. If other people are crying, it is very easy for them to cry, and so forth. Not that this is a bad thing. I'm just saying they are using a tyranny of the majority to make them look "normal." I observe the majority of the population to be less empathetic; rather that they are more socially adept at seeming to be so.

Look at the recent crisis in the US over expanding healthcare to more people, and making it more affordable and sensible. The people who voted for the party who wants to take it away changed their minds when they discovered that THEY would also lose their healthcare.

They voted to let other people lose their healthcare. Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters; these are the voters who don't seem to have a shred of either empathy or sympathy!

And they have to be (since Aspies are so rare) NTs.

So... don't tell me this about Aspies to my face. You'll see how emotional I can get

 

[Adora]

I am emotional yes I am quiet around most people and reserved but I do have empathy and feel emotions sometimes I do struggle to find the right words for what I'm feeling or struggle to answer someone if they ask "what's wrong?"but I'm prone to crying when anxious,frustrated or having a meltdown but I don't cry at most movies or songs but did cry when I saw a documentary about bullying maybe because it brought back memories for from when I got bullied and know what it feels like.

 

[nagibator]

I didn't know that I had a problem until I was formally diagnosed with aspbergers a few months ago. All my life I thought everybody else was weird.

Now I'm coming more to grips me n what exactly is going on inside me.

My default thing to do around people is still to disassociate myself and become ethereal in a sense. And then I am surprised when I feel as if I was a ghost as other people don't seem to notice me.

It's as if I'm playing dead and it's working.

Anyway a good tool for me to reconnect to myself is meditation. Especially heart centred Meditation. There are different flavours but I have found the one below quite potent. Especially when done in a group on a weekly basis.
Padmacahaya

And now to the emotional part.

You feel lonely and try to distract myself from it with TV shows and gaming.

As a result I neglect my home and personal hygiene which again gives me a reason for feeling unable to connect to people. As I don't want to get too close to them.

The solution is easy. However distracting myself is even easier.

 

[Maelstrom]

It seems a lot of people are confused about the difference btw empathy and sympathy and so was I. A quick google search helped me. Empathy means that you have the ability to recognize, understand and feel someone else's emotions while sympathy means you just feel sorry for them. You're not emotionally connected with them.



My experience talking to everyday people had given me experience with my emotions and after bottling up my emotions for years I felt so relieved to express myself to my therapist or in writing. However I am like you. I am usually not that coherent in person, even if I memorize what I say. I would say now I am getting better now that I take medication but i still worry about saying things people don't like, like even today my family members were frustrated with me for something I was saying and at that moment I felt like pinching myself.



That's what I'm trying to do now. I would also say I have multiple facets to myself. It takes extreme situations to really peel aside the layers of myself and be like "what's with all the ********?" And I've gotten better and more mature with my emotions over time.




You can be empathetic without necessarily feeling someone's emotions. You still understand and recognize their difficulty. You don't have to have an 100% emotionally connected to someone to be empathetic. You just got to express some form of understanding. Sympathy only implies that you feel sorry for them not that you understand what they're feeling. So I would say you're both. Just maybe stronger in one than the other. I too have been accused of being cold and also unapproachable. My roommate berated me for not saying hi when I came back home a few times last year and the first time I just said to her awkwardly "I'm just tired" after she decided to tell at me when I was there for 30 minutes. The next time I said I was tired again and then she insulted me saying stuff like "people will hate you" while I tried to explain to her, with difficulty, that I didn't have any bad intentions. Then my other roommate openly said to her guy friend on her video chat that I don't like people. As if that was a joke. And yet they call me cold. I've also been called book but not street smart and for a long time I did feel like a cold heartless ***** but I realize NTs can be worse than me.



Lol I'm just a kpop, not JPOP, fan thought I do watch Japanese shows. I live in the US NE


I felt like I'm not really expressing sincer empathy or sympathy either in certain situations like when I saw my roommate crying. I knew how she felt. I just didn't know how to express that I felt sorry for her AND understood how she felt. I think in these situations with the other aspies I talk to it was more of a lack of empathy issue because I don't even think there was an emotional connection tbh, or at least they didn't have the skills to properly convey that they knew how I feel. Their basic responses implied SOME form of sympathy, however it was very little, but I didn't detect any empathy at all.

I don't think your Room mate is a NT she sounds pretty emotionally aggressive to me....?

 

[Knit Hat]

Hmm, I've never been good at putting myself in other people's shoes, but it doesn't mean I don't care, I'm just not very good at demonstrating that I care. The people who are giving one word responses are probably of the same ilk, so try not to take it too personally when that happens. Personally speaking, I kinda freeze up when someone's trying to talk about feelings/emotions, just because I really don't know what to say to improve the situation.

 

[Maelstrom]

I try to use emotional memory, if I ever felt a similar thing than...I can feel their pain.
But I also have learned to step over the wall from logic to emotion...I guess that makes me a rare aspie?
I still struggle with face reading...no cure for that hole in the head?
All bets are off with shutdown tho! fortunately it mostly only comes with strangers, and strange places, and strange things.

 

[WereBear]

But I also have learned to step over the wall from logic to emotion...I guess that makes me a rare aspie?
I still struggle with face reading...no cure for that hole in the head?

I have become so good at face reading, I can do it with cats and people

I use the giant input we aspies handle to pick up even the tiniest expressions; I'm better at it than jigsaw puzzles or other pattern matching, but I'm sure it uses the same mental processes. But I don't stop there; when I was a teen there were all these books coming out about body language, and I taught myself a lot about that.

I find it so interesting what you mention about "I also have learned to step over the wall from logic to emotion." I wonder if that is what I should develop: my therapist and I figured out a lot of my stress is because I am doing intellectually what NTs do literally without thinking. I am "overclocking my processor" because I am figuring all this stuff out.

And maybe I don't have to work so hard.

 

[Maelstrom]

I have become so good at face reading, I can do it with cats and people

I use the giant input we aspies handle to pick up even the tiniest expressions; I'm better at it than jigsaw puzzles or other pattern matching, but I'm sure it uses the same mental processes. But I don't stop there; when I was a teen there were all these books coming out about body language, and I taught myself a lot about that.

I find it so interesting what you mention about "I also have learned to step over the wall from logic to emotion." I wonder if that is what I should develop: my therapist and I figured out a lot of my stress is because I am doing intellectually what NTs do literally without thinking. I am "overclocking my processor" because I am figuring all this stuff out.

And maybe I don't have to work so hard.

I don't know if other people can do it or not my brain seems to have extra sideways wiring.
I triggered it but trying to be more warm socially warm hello's, warm handshakes, pat on the arm with alittle joke a small hug.....but I tried to be warm in the moment...feel the warm hello as I said it...it is hard to explain it is a thing you feel.

 

[jamesaldrin]

I think the reason I don't express my emotions and speak monotone and have no facial expressions has to do less with mental disorders and more with emotional problems.

I suspect that my emotional problems, however, come from having an autistic childhood of rejection and loneliness.

 

[Datura]

He could just about do sympathy although I don't think I ever heard him say the words, "Sorry to hear that."

Yikes! Sympathetic phrasing is hard.
I know the scripts (and employ them) but every time it comes up I feel a schism in my brain. I am always concerned with weather or not this is the correct response, or if I should say something else. It also fells wrong to offer a pat response merely because it is expected. If feel like I should have something more insightful to say - an original thought and not just some hollow "sorry to hear that."

 

[SteveH]

I am venting about this because I've noticed that out of all the Aspies I've seen or met, most of them have a lot of trouble expressing their feelings and come off as lacking sympathy or empathy (even though I know that's not necessarily the case). I realize alexithymia is common on the spectrum but it's frustrating because whenever I have a conversation with a few Aspies I know, these people tend to give one word responses like "Okay" or "I'm sorry" whenever I pour out my feelings to them and it's so annoying to me because I'm going through so much stuff and I want to have a good conversation. The reason why I came here is because I want to meet people like me, especially around my age, that can relate to the turbulent storms that I am going through in my life, with Aspergers, depression, low self esteem, a mind thats thinking about so many things that make you want to explode. Even now I have to balance my education with my spare time and coming here and I've realized this is more of a priority for me but it seems I'm not getting much out of it. I have met one Aspie that has sent me emails upon emails about their situation and this person always asks me questions and reciprocates my feelings well and I don't mind writing paragraph upon paragraph to them because I know we both express our emotions the same way and they won't be bothered by it.

Anyways, someone told me that it seems I'm just more in touch with my emotions. Ironically, my whole life I had been bottling up my feelings and it was difficult for me to say how I felt as a result, because I didn't trust anyone. Now because of my situation, I've been forced to become more introspective and reflect on my thoughts and my mind and my feelings as a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. I want to understand myself and be honest with myself. I ask myself what's wrong with me. So since I've rarely met people that can reciprocate in our exchanges, it's made me feel worse. When they barely respond, if they do at all, I feel like I'm doing something wrong or that I'm crazy. I think this is why I was subtly treated as a pariah by NTs for years. I never fully saw the other side of coin until now really, since I'm not a great small talker or not the best with conversations irl. I was wondering if anyone had a similiar experience? Are you more aware of your emotions than other Aspies?

I can relate to you. I recently discovered my own Aspie/SPD issues. I researched the internet and found an excellent article by Leo Espinosa from the New Yorker which describes how the idea of autism initiated and evolved over the years. At one point in this article, he describes children with more with more severe manifestations of Autism, "...It is a searing experience to have a child who doesn't talk, who doesn't want to be touched, who self, harms, who demands regularity, and an order that parent's can't supply, whose eyes are not windows into their souls but black mirrors." That last line was like a sucker punch to me and has made me cry multiple times. Now, I'm trying to accept the fact that I feel and exhibit my emotions differently--almost like a different language at times. It sucks. BUT IIWII-it is what it is(I made that up). Knowing makes it so much easier. Of course I'm under no illusion that it will EVER be "easy". That's OK. Now I can go easier on myself--as I hope you can as well. For me, I know there are a lot of negative mental scripts that have to be re-written in more positive ways and that will take consistent effort and a long-time. So there is at least one good thing for our road being long and hard!! Thanks for sharing that post.

 

[Keigan]

Here is something to consider researching, the condition can be pervasive based upon DNA or environmental.

Alexithymia affects 10% of the general population.


Wiki for Alexithymia:

Alexithymia - Wikipedia


An online test and forums for Alexithymia:

Online Alexithymia Questionnaire