Autism and Emotions

Since I’m on the subject of autism anyways, let me address one more topic. I was asked a while ago to blog about the difficulties that might arise between autistics and non-autistics in terms of processing emotions. Contrary to what many pseudo-specialists claim, autistics do have a very rich emotional range. However, we might come off as unemotional and distant because we process and express emotions in a different way from the NT (neurotypical) people.

Again, I want to repeat that everybody manifests differently and my experience might not resonate with many autistics.

Whenever I think about the emotional expressions of NT people, the word “manipulative” is the first that comes to mind. As an autistic, I tend to be very logical, reasonable and organized about everything, including my emotions. My husband knows that the best way to drive me to distraction (and into a huge panic attack) is by having unexplained mood swings. I do not believe in mood swings, to tell you the truth. I don’t think that anybody just becomes sad or happy or anything else for no discernible reason. It only seems like that happens because sometimes one is too lazy to analyze what put one in this particular mood. It’s this emotional sloppiness that I dislike about non-autistics. If you feel whatever it is you feel, you better have a good explanation of why you feel it and what you expect me to do in response.

And believe me, after I taught N. how to identify the sources of one’s moods, he became really good at it. This is why I don’t trust anybody who is “just moody” or “just hormonal.” I know that this is a manipulative strategy aimed at provoking a sense of vague guilt in me. And the perennially guilty people are the easiest to dominate.

So my suggestion is: let’s stop treating emotions as a tool of beating each other into submission. Let’s analyze and verbalize as much as possible.

Whenever I bring an emotion of mine to another person, I always accompany it with an explanation of what exactly it is I need from them. “I’m very sad because of this meeting at work. Please sit with me while I tell you once again what happened.” “I’m terrified about my class observation tomorrow. I need you to tell me that I’m a brilliant teacher for the next ten minutes.”

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73 responses to “Autism and Emotions”

Lamestllama

August 11, 2012

I too, have always thought that mood swings where just a manipulative technique.

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Priyanka

August 11, 2012

A major chunk of mood-swingy people you leave out of this analysis are those who, by the very narrow definition of ‘normalcy’ in modern society, have mental illnesses.

A former partner of mine was an unmedicated bipolar, with a long history of abuse. When such a person is an a relationship with someone who has several autistic spectrum traits , the results aren’t always pretty. I take it N is what you call a NT? And have you ever been in a relationship with someone who had mental illness, perhaps of a kind/degree more severe than yours? If you have, what was it like? (If I may ask these questions, of course)

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

You can ask anything you like. 🙂

I think that irrespective of which label one finds useful to describe one’s way of being, it is everybody’s responsibility to manage that in a way that doesn’t harm others. And if those others choose to take themselves out of the situation to avoid being harmed, that’s what they are entitled to do.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 11, 2012
  
  I also wanted to mention that people who are released fro mental health clinics do a lot better if they come back to an empty house than those who come back to their families. Those who come back to their group of co-dependents relapse much more often and much faster.
  
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2. Priyanka
  
  August 11, 2012
  
  I think some people misinterpret diagnosis as allowance. As in, they (seem) to think their diagnoses entitles them to not consider how they might harm other people. Other people should accommodate this behaviour because they are ‘normal’, while these people “have a problem” and need special handling.
  
  So interesting that you bring up mental health and empty houses, though. Solitude vs. constant obligatory company was at the core of my decision to suggest a parting of ways with the ex above. I need some time each day by myself to be happy. I especially like walks and quiet mornings. They’re peacful and soothing. But my ex had a deep discomfort with silence and solitude. He thought they showed we had “a communication problem”, and he took my habit of solitary walks as rejection. When I said we should break up, however, he said we shouldn’t give in to failure and work on our differences instead. That attitude actually sealed my decision to leave.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 11, 2012
    
    “Solitude vs. constant obligatory company was at the core of my decision to suggest a parting of ways with the ex above. I need some time each day by myself to be happy. I especially like walks and quiet mornings. They’re peacful and soothing. ”
    
    – I understand you completely. I had this exact problem with an ex. He thought that my need to be on my own on a regular basis meant I didn’t care about him. In the end, I just felt too stifled. I couldn’t even find a free minute to think about him because he always needed to be there! Even at home, he would become nervous and lonely if I was in another room.
    
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August 11, 2012

“Mood swings” cover the signs of unhappiness with a situation where some things cannot be changed or, for propriety’s sake, named. So yes, mood swings are completely manipulative, since somtimes they are a substitute for positive action.

In US it seems to be considered normal to be alienated from emotions, or ruled by emotions one cannot articulate. I do not think this is normal even for NT people, but I do think it is convenient for the powers which are since it is disabling, works against social change, etc.

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marc2020

August 11, 2012

It’s the times we’re living in I think this attitude of “I don’t have to tell you how I’m feeling you should just know other we’re not as close as I thought we were” that I think is to blame the way patriarchal culture forces men and women to repress their emotional states. Women have to be good little girls and not make a fuss, men have to be strong and silent showing emotion is a sign of weakness.

We come to rely on other people to guess our emotional states for us so we don’t have to be open and vulnerable. That sucks because emotions and feelings are wonderful things that we should be able to express freely.

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

I think this is a brilliant explanation.

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1. marc2020
  
  August 11, 2012
  
  I apologise for my terrible grammar by the way
  
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serenebabe

August 11, 2012

I thoroughly enjoyed this post, of course. For years and years I’ve said I “intellectualize my feelings to avoid them.” How interesting to read that you find the rationality behind the feelings enhances them. 🙂

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

I think that intellectualizing has more to do with explaining the feelings away in order to repress them. That is never healthy.

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1. serenebabe
  
  August 11, 2012
  
  Interesting. How do you see explaining the reasons for feelings and “explaining the feelings away” as different?
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 11, 2012
    
    Did you see my story about the 17th wedding anniversary a little earlier in the thread? Of course, I could have dismissed my feelings by saying, “Oh, it’s just a bad mood” or “It’s simply hormonal.” But instead I allowed myself to discover the real cause and mourn the trauma of that date. Now, why didn’t I recognize what was bothering me fro the start? That was because I’d been told so many times that it was a long time ago, I should just get over it, and it hadn’t happened the way I remembered it anyway. But this is my trauma and these are my feelings. I have the right to experience them no matter how uncomfortable it makes some people. The feelings didn’t not disappear after I discovered where they were coming from. To the contrary, I was able to experience them freely and then get over them without dismissing them.
    
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    1. serenebabe
      
      August 12, 2012
      
      Dismissing feelings as “just a bad mood” sounds unproductive to me, unless a person just doesn’t feel like understanding themselves.
      
      Dismissing feelings sounds different to me than “intellectualizing feelings away,” though. Denying or ignoring the fact that feelings come from things (previous experiences, especially), again, sounds like a missed opportunity. They’re also likely, as you say, to be misdirected at people around me.
      
      What you’ve described (I went and read the wedding story) sound to me like: having feelings, identifying their source, moving on.
      
      I’m trying to sort out what you see as the difference between “understanding the source” and “intellectualizing” (assuming now that “intellectualizing” means a method of getting the feelings to go away).
      
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2. Matt
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Serenebabe (nice name btw), I don’t want to like your comment,… because it is horrific when I intellectualized my feelings away, but I would 1000 times over second it. I often intellectualize my feelings or moods and it sucks. Let me take a shot at explaining how I see intellectualizing being different than “understanding the source”.
  
  When I intellectualize, I come up with 4-10 (yes.. my mind is a scary place.. thoughts never stop…) theories or “intelligent ideas” of why I may be feeling bad.
  
  When I “understand the source”, I still analyze the situation, and think critically, but I realize that fundametnally the reason I am so hurt that this girl told me she would call or text me friday.. and didn’t til saturday is that I feel my trust has been massively violated. (Because I had a frank discussion of my insecurities around honesty… and not being left in the dark)
  
  I could have intellectualized and said it was because I’m impatient.. or because I’m afraid she’s with another guy, or it shows how much I really like her.. or because she may have kept me from other plans… or maybe she thought I was ugly/boring… wierd.. etc.
  
  All of those things could be my reason for worry or fret.. but ultimately it was simply that I don’t deal well with poor communication/breaking of trust with someone who I “get real” and share things with.. and she broke that.
  
  I realize i may have gotten long-winded.. and I’m not sure if this is what Clarissa had in mind but I think it is a meaningful difference in the two concepts.
  
  When
  
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3. serenebabe
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  is there a way to reply to a reply? In any case, Matt, that makes sense to me. But, I’m still not sure of the distinction between intellectualizing feelings away and using my mind to identify the source of my feelings (which, yes, are in my mind, but don’t *feel* that way). I’ll sort through all sorts of possible sources, I’ll go into the feelings and see what’s familiar about them based on past experiences, and frequently I’ll have an “ah ha!” moment where I realize where all this stuff is coming from. Knowing where it’s coming from doesn’t make the feelings stop, though. So, as I’m writing this, I guess I’m thinking the reason I think of intellectualizing as a way to avoid feelings is because if I get caught up in trying to identify the source *too much,* I stop being “in” the feelings. That’s how it is for me. I step outside of the feelings if I think too much about the source. Hm. It’s a bit of a pretzel.
  
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Titfortat

August 11, 2012

Moods are easily affected by our hormonal system. So for some to have mood swings, does not, in my opinion, seem that unusual or abnormal.

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

Oh, I really love the “hormonal manipulators.” Those people will stoop to anything if you only let them.

As somebody wrote on a women’s forum that discusses mood swings: “I went on the pill and it made me fat and moody. Then I went off the pill and realized that I was just a fat bitch.” 🙂 🙂 (This is not my beautiful statement, it’s some other brilliant and witty person.)

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1. Priyanka
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Clarissa, I can’t remember if you’ve written about this before, but would you write about the apparent “hormonal” mood-swings women seem to suffer in the West? As a put down, a man once said to my (Indian) friend during a debate, “Why are you being aggressive? Are you PMSing?” And my friend, stumped, said, “What is PMSing?”
  
  My hypothesis is that in a culture that emphasises female sweetness, women need these socially-constructed, almost pathologised windows in which to express their non-sweet emotions. In my culture, for instance, where women used to bear the brunt of all the hard domestic labour, periods were considered a time of uncleanness in which they couldn’t participate in cooking, cleaning, agricultural work, fetching water, boiling rice, breaking wheat, any of that. By making them taboo, they were given a few days’ rest. Not the ideal situation, but you take what you can.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    Priyanka: great story that I totally identify with. Only after I emigrated did I discover that I’m supposed to be this wilting flower who can’t handle her own body without being victimized by it.
    
    A part of it is precisely what you say. In my culture, nobody expects me to be nice, so I grew up feeling entitled to be the rabid bitch that I am. 🙂 I’m now getting addicted to these silly Russian TV shows because their female hosts are very outspoken and are not afraid of being angry and direct. I feel like I can finally identify with what I see on the screen.
    
    Another part of it is the medicalization of the female bodies that is bringing in huge profits to pharma companies. If women are broken by nature, it stands to reason that we should be medicated at every stage of our lives.
    
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2. musteryou
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  ” In my culture, nobody expects me to be nice, so I grew up feeling entitled to be the rabid bitch that I am. ”
  
  Actually, your character is almost the same as that of my Rhodesian school teachers. They were very feminine, some of them, but took no nonsense whatsoever.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    Yes, that’s me! I’m a typical school marm. 🙂 Often I get ask the most trivial question and answer with a lecture only to ask, “So what did you want to know?” 🙂 🙂
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      August 12, 2012
      
      I’m more like a Socratic interlocutor. I’d like people to explore the logical consistency of their presuppositions. I don’t like it when people are inconsistent with themselves.
      
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3. Z
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  I am pretty sure PMS as it is understood today (moodiness) was invented marketed within my lifetime. I was not taught about it as an early teenager, although we were told about cramps and possible fatigue. Then later on, a whole bunch of articles came out, and it became common wisdom.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    There are now also 2 kinds of PMS, premenstrual or postmenstrual. And then there are menstrual issues themselves.
    
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4. Priyanka
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Western people of my acquaintance (especially Americans) agree with Z. Is ‘sugar rush’ also a phenomenon that came with the use of sweetners not derived from sugarnes? I hear a lot about sugar rush, but I’ve never experienced it myself, and Bengali eating culture is heavy on desserts!
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    The question about the sugar rush is really interesting. I have no idea myself since I very rarely eat anything sweet. Does anybody know?
    
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5. Titfortat
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Both women and men are affected by their hormonal systems. To ignore this reality is just plain silly.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    Yet how often do you hear “I’m so hormonal today ” from men?
    
    I haven’t heard it once. Or found any websites where men discuss being practically disabled by their hormones.
    
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6. Titfortat
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Yet how often do you hear “I’m so hormonal today ” from men?(Clarissa)
  
  No you dont, but you do hear regularly from others how that man has “too much” testosterone. I know, I know, being that this is a website for feminists Im supposed to feel for how bad you women have it, Oops, did I just say that. 😉
  My point is, hormones do affect our moods, for some much more than others.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    My point was, actually, that women invent this hormonal stuff. It’s something they use to make their lives easier, not harder.
    
    As for testosterone, in my culture we only say that about women if they have a lot of body hair and really like sex. 🙂
    
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7. musteryou
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  I recall a really pithy observation from the Australian boxer Mischa Mertz.
  http://www.mischamerz.com/
  
  She said women have been denied the right to practice professional boxing in Sydney, Australia, because they are considered to be susceptible to hormones, but compared to the intensity of full contact fighting, hormonal issues are nothing at all.
  
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8. titfortat
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  @Clarissa
  
  You mean your old culture. You are now an American. As far as testosterone and your sex drive, well, there is some truth to that. I think that is why we always looked for the European women with underarm hair. 😉
  For many women and men they dont need to invent this stuff.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2012
    
    “You are now an American.”
    
    – I’m still a citizen of Canada!
    
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serenebabe

August 13, 2012

This is sort of what I’ve been thinking about. I have experienced the influence of hormones on my feelings. It’s simply a fact that when I’m around ovulation time and around menstruation time, I have differing intensities of the feelings I normally would have. The difference is the intensity, though, not the sources of the feelings. Something that might barely bother me when I’m not having surges of hormones making me more irritable (and, influencing my food and sleep choices) might drive me completely insane. It’s still the same source, but a more intense reaction.

One book I *really* wanted to hate (because it’s such a pathetic confirmation of me as a stereotype) was The Red Tent. I don’t think it’s a great book, but—god dammit—it has stayed with me for years. What I liked about it was the idea of honoring the real changes women experience as their bodies prepare for and then do or don’t grow children inside them. (Fwiw, men also have hormonal cycles, but if I’m remembering right, their average is 21 days where women’s tend to be 28-ish days.)

It’s my experience that anything that I flip out about with a ridiculous level of intensity that’s so harsh I go look at a calendar and say, oh, shit, that’s why it’s so bad (period coming) doesn’t become something that’s not a real reason to be upset. It just becomes something that I’m more upset than I normally would be. In fact, I find those times when my emotions are “too much” (under the influence of hormones, or lack of sleep, or stress) to be quite enlightening because they are like my real feelings under a magnifying glass. I can still find truth, if I can stop eating chocolate ice cream and salty greasy food for more than a minute’s time.

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1. Titfortat
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  @Serenebabe
  
  You might get a kick out of this. My wife thought it was hilarious and ohhhh so true. 😉
  
  http://titfortat6.blogspot.ca/2009/02/egad-im-polygamist.html
  
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  1. serenebabe
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    Ummm. I can understand the intent, but I didn’t enjoy that at all. I’m not sure why (ON TOPIC! 😉 but it gave me the fidgety cranky ick-ick-icks for some reason. 🙂
    
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  2. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    “You might get a kick out of this. My wife thought it was hilarious and ohhhh so true. ”
    
    – I find the behavior you describe to be highly manipulative. To each his own, of course, but I wouldn’t stand for two days of this, let alone years.
    
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2. Titfortat
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  Well, I guess its a good thing youre not married to me. 😉
  Lol.
  
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3. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  “This is sort of what I’ve been thinking about. I have experienced the influence of hormones on my feelings. It’s simply a fact that when I’m around ovulation time and around menstruation time, I have differing intensities of the feelings I normally would have. The difference is the intensity, though, not the sources of the feelings. Something that might barely bother me when I’m not having surges of hormones making me more irritable (and, influencing my food and sleep choices) might drive me completely insane. It’s still the same source, but a more intense reaction.”
  
  – This comment would probably be easier for me to understand if it were written in Chinese. This is precisely the reason why I avoid all female groups (both online and in RL). Eventually, the conversation always starts running along the lines of “my body is run by forces of nature over which I have no control whatsoever.” This smothers me, makes me feel like my gender is being stolen from me because I have absolutely no idea what any of this is about and never experience anything even remotely similar.
  
  Please, understand that I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Heather, or criticize you in any way. This is how you feel and you are entitled to share it. But all of this makes me feel like there is no place for my way of being female which is so profoundly different from what you describe.
  
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  1. serenebabe
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    zomg there’s no way I’d feel bad, even if you were trying to make me feel so (and I got zero sense that you were).
    
    What I don’t understand is why does my very-different way of experiencing feelings and the influence of my body chemistry on those feelings make you feel so apart?
    
    I mean, if someone is deathly allergic to seafood then their body reacts differently than yours does but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of the group of people who eats food, does it? (And, oh, god, if I make a comparison like that with someone (ahem) who is linear and logical, it’ll probably fall apart, but, oh well.)
    
    What I mean is, just because you aren’t that way, why does it feel like there is no place for your way of being female?
    
    For example, I am an extreme introvert. I’m not talking about being shy, at all. I’m quite outgoing. But being around people wipes me the fuck out. This can be problematic when I discuss it with anyone because very few people have even the tiniest clue what I mean about it. They just can’t possibly get it, I am sure, unless they have similar traits. But, it’s how I am. There may be pressure to be different and, when I was younger I definitely thought I needed to “fix” my need to be alone most of the time. These days, though, I know I’m just not typical of the majority of people in that I both know I need to be alone and am okay with it.
    
    Anyway, I’m interested to find out why my being different makes you think of having no place for your way of being female.
    
    Also, for what it’s worth, if you re-read my comment I think you’ll see that I’m not saying I have no control over it. I said I was influenced by it. I catch it when it happens, mostly, and work with it.
    
    Compare it with being ill with a fever. You can’t just say, “I refuse to let my body dictate how I feel” when you are sick like that. Your body is taking over and you have no control over it. You can notice it (oh, yes, you have to) and you can work with it (lower the fever with medication, drink liquids, go to bed), but, your body is going to have its way with you. That’s a decent comparison, I think.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      August 13, 2012
      
      “What I don’t understand is why does my very-different way of experiencing feelings and the influence of my body chemistry on those feelings make you feel so apart?”
      
      – It isn’t just your different way. I get this in absolutely every single group of women that I ever tried talking to about anything.
      
      “What I mean is, just because you aren’t that way, why does it feel like there is no place for your way of being female?”
      
      – Because I’m not finding a group that would not end up in this very same conversation every single time.
      
      “Anyway, I’m interested to find out why my being different makes you think of having no place for your way of being female.”
      
      – Believe me, this is so not about you personally. 🙂 It’s just that your comment was eerily familiar.
      
      “Compare it with being ill with a fever. You can’t just say, “I refuse to let my body dictate how I feel” when you are sick like that. Your body is taking over and you have no control over it. ”
      
      – I believe in the psychosomatic nature of all illnesses.
      
      It’s interesting how you keep comparing the normal functioning of the female body with illness or allergy.
      
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      1. serenebabe
        
        August 13, 2012
        
        I was thinking a moment ago about how you don’t want to compare the normal functioning of the female body with the impact our chemistry has on us every single day. Hunger, thirst, stress, injuries, illnesses, exhaustion, trauma, brain chemistry changes…
        
        Um… you have Asperger’s, yes? Are you not ruled by your body’s chemistry?
        
        My comparing the influence of cyclical hormones (influence of, not domination by) to illness or allergy was simply a way to see if I could explain how it’s not as different as you seem to think it is.
        
        I have no idea where you go the sense that I thought this was about “me.” There’s nothing personal about this, as far as I can tell…? I mean, I’m interested in learning about your perspective and I love sharing mine, but, jayzus, you could hate the heck out of me personally or adore me and we could still exchange ideas about these topics. Again, I’m not sure why you would think I might think this was about me. Probably something “imprecise” about my language, I suspect. 🙂
        
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        bloggerclarissa
        
        August 13, 2012
        
        “Um… you have Asperger’s, yes? Are you not ruled by your body’s chemistry?”
        
        – Yes, I do and no, I’m not. 🙂 🙂 I don’t believe in this “brain chemistry” that happens for no reason at all and forces us to buy endless drugs. 🙂 I’m not American and my worldview is very different. Come to think of it, I don’t remember a single discussion of hormonal changes, pre- or post-ovulation or menstruation mood swings among women in my own culture when I was growing up. This is probably a cultural issue, then. OK, I just figured this out! Discussing things really helps. It seems like it’s the cultural construction of American femininity that alienates me.
        
        “I have no idea where you go the sense that I thought this was about “me.””
        
        – I was just trying to respond to your “Anyway, I’m interested to find out why my being different makes you think of having no place for your way of being female.” I can’t say anything right today, it seems. I have my therapy session in 2 hours and hopefully my analyst will repair me. 🙂 🙂
        
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        serenebabe
        
        August 13, 2012
        
        It’s definitely a cultural thing.
        
        And, for what it’s worth, I think you’ve been very interesting and it seems to me the point of conversation is to sort out what the other person actually means because we can only see it/hear it through our own lens. But, that’s a whole ‘nother topic and I must go buy some chocolate. 😉
        
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      2. serenebabe
        
        August 13, 2012
        
        PS “I believe in the psychosomatic nature of all illnesses.” Please blog about this!
        
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      3. serenebabe
        
        August 13, 2012
        
        One last thing… Why is it a problem that it always ends up in this very same conversation? I mean, what I was trying to ask up there was, who cares? I mean, why don’t you just say to those of us who feel influenced by hormones, “Ah, you are different than me in that way, what do you think of this book you just read?” What does it matter if the women you’ve interacted with are different than you in that way?
        
        Okay. Off to let my body rule my decisions. 🙂
        
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4. Titfortat
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  – I find the behavior you describe to be highly manipulative(Clarissa)
  
  If you viewed it as intentional then I can understand why you would think it as manipulative. We are all wired differently. You know the old saying, “Different strokes for different folks”
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    “If you viewed it as intentional then I can understand why you would think it as manipulative.”
    
    – People who wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “Now let me go and manipulate XYZ” are extremely rare. Normally, we don’t articulate our manipulative goals to ourselves.
    
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Pika

August 11, 2012

I always accompany it with an explanation of what exactly it is I need from them
I’m curious, do people listen to you and give you what you need? I’ve tried this on numerous occasions, but the reaction is usually something like “ah, don’t be stupid, of course you are not feeling sad/afraid/whatever I said/ because of something insignificant like that!”.

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

I’m a little self-involved 🙂 so I see my company as a huge benefit I confer on people. 🙂 So they better listen or I will betake these benefits somewhere else.

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Z

August 11, 2012

I have had the same experience as Pika. I have also been told something like what serenebabe thought, i.e. that being able to articulate feelings and say what one needed was a sign of coldness. *And* I have been told that to be expressive about them is too “emotional.” So, one just cannot win. 😉

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 11, 2012
  
  Yes, I have been called “cold” and the pinnacle of coldness, in some people’s minds, “a man.” Tells you a lot about their reality, eh? 🙂
  
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Autism and Emotions « Clarissa's Blog | My Autism Site | All About Autism

August 11, 2012

[…] Originally posted here: Autism and Emotions « Clarissa's Blog […]

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zinemin

August 11, 2012

I am absolutely in favour of analyzing and verbalizing emotions. In my family, this is interpreted as being ‘complicated’ and ‘egocentric’. They find it better to show emotions by body posture and by avoiding eye contact, and then one should guess what is going on and do the right thing. This is somehow considered the ‘nicer’ (and more feminine) behaviour. I totally hate that, and I think one of the advantages of living with someone with mild Asperger’s, which I do, is that I also needed to learn to put my emotions into words, and say what I need. [Which in my original family is considered outrageously rude.]

While I usually can roughly guess why I am feeling something, for some people this seems to be immensely difficult though. You say you taught N. to do that, but do you think anyone can learn it? I know some people very close to me who are just quite blind towards their own emotions and hate it intensely to try to put them into words. Of course they also resist the idea of therapy very violently. And I don’t think they are especially manipulative people. They are just kind of colour-blind towards emotions, and I see them suffering from this. I then pick up their emotions and sometimes try to put them into words for them ‘you seem angry/sad, was this perhaps because of…’ which is usually received very badly.
Do you have any advice one can help others to understand and verbalize their emotions? Guessing them, which I try to do, does not seem to do the trick…

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2012

“They find it better to show emotions by body posture and by avoiding eye contact, and then one should guess what is going on and do the right thing. This is somehow considered the ‘nicer’ (and more feminine) behaviour. I totally hate that, and I think one of the advantages of living with someone with mild Asperger’s, which I do, is that I also needed to learn to put my emotions into words, and say what I need. [Which in my original family is considered outrageously rude.]”

– I agree with you completely. My ex-husband subjected me to this silent treatment where I begged him to tell me what was wrong and he just sighed and looked mortally wounded. After 3 weeks of that, I was a nervous wreck. I believe this was emotional abuse at its purest form. Especially after I discovered he was faking it for manipulative purposes and nothing was actually wrong.

“Do you have any advice one can help others to understand and verbalize their emotions”

– This is not the kind of work you can do for somebody else if they are not willing, unfortunately. N. at first resisted it but I convinced him that if he tried, it would improve his quality of life. He trusted me eventually and started doing the emotion-analyzing technique. I think he is now very relieved that he can understand himself better instead of suffering in silence. The technique is quite simple: you just concentrate and trace back until you find the moment where you got into a bad mood. was it something you heard or saw? Was it a bad memory? A sensory experience, like a smell or a tactile experience that carries negative associations?

To give an example: last week I woke up in a vile mood. As the day progressed, I felt more and more miserable for no apparent reason. I just felt on the brink of tears all the time, everything seemed very annoying and grating. Of course, I could start snapping at N or venting off at students, picked up a fight with a neighbor or my sister, etc. Instead, I poured myself some tea, sat down, and started analyzing what it could be that made me feel this way. And then I realized: it was the 17th anniversary of my 1st wedding. When I knew what was bothering me, I could take measures to make myself feel better, asked people to be understanding about my difficult emotional state on that day, etc. As a result, nobody was damaged by my state and no household objects were broken. 🙂 And I got over it much sooner.

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1. zinemin
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  I think this is *exactly* how one should do it as a mature individual.
  But you’re right that it is probably impossible to teach anyone if they do not want to. Some people are just very scared about exploring their emotions. It is sad, because emotions are just so important to make good decisions. It seems such an important life skill to analyze emotions and yet this is something almost nobody is taught by their parents. I just learned how to effectively sweep them under the carpet. 🙂 Very unhealthy.
  
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Z

August 11, 2012

I think some people do not want to do this for fear of discovering a cause whose solution they do not wish to undertake.

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1. zinemin
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  Yes, sure. Sometimes staying in a situation that makes you miserable seems less costly than changing it, and then it is better to be in denial about why one feels so down or angry. I can’t claim this has never happened to me….
  
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musteryou

August 12, 2012

“This is why I don’t trust anybody who is “just moody” or “just hormonal.” ”

Hormones are intra-personal, never inter-personal. One doesn’t automatically afflict those around one if one suffers from hormones.

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bloggerclarissa

August 12, 2012

But if I heard about their hormones in this context – and I’m nobody’s doctor, either – then it means they choose to offer this to me as an explanation, right?

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1. musteryou
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  I think that may be the implicit message. In the case of different cultures, there is always something in the subtext. For example, supposing I was feeling under the weather. I might say to someone,”Sorry I’m not pulling my weight, but I have a headache.” Actually, I have learned it would be far better for me to keep quiet than to say this, because people think it’s an excuse. They’re not interested in interpersonal information in that way. Other cultures are different. They work more on a basis of give and take. In a different cultural context, the implicit meaning of the statement would not be, “I have an excuse, so let me get away with whatever I want,” but rather, “Cut me some slack this time, then when you are in a similar situation I will be sure to do the same for you.”
  
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Lyndsay

August 12, 2012

It’s interesting to read about how Asperger’s affects someone else. My husband has Asperger’s and he affects him in some different and some similar ways compared to you.

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Sarah

August 13, 2012

” I do not believe in mood swings, to tell you the truth. I don’t think that anybody just becomes sad or happy or anything else for no discernible reason.”

As a bipolar person, this made me laugh out loud.

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bloggerclarissa

August 13, 2012

So you are saying that your mood swings are not caused by your being bipolar? Interesting.

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1. Sarah
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  No, I’m saying they are caused by being bipolar. I apologize if I misread you, but I did laugh when I read that.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    “No, I’m saying they are caused by being bipolar.”
    
    – So they do have a reason? Then what are we arguing about? 🙂
    
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2. Sarah
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  From what you said, I though you were implying mood disorders don’t exist, because they are not caused by something necessarily discernable from YOUR perspective.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    “From what you said, I though you were implying mood disorders don’t exist, because they are not caused by something necessarily discernable from YOUR perspective.”
    
    – I’m autistic, so I don’t imply. I say exactly what I want to say, neither more nor less. One of the manifestations of my type of autism is extreme directness.
    
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3. Sarah
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  Ah, gotcha. As highly emotional English major-type, I have the exact opposite communication style. We probably shouldn’t talk further over the internet – there will be too much miscommunication. But I do enjoy your blog.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    Thank you, Sarah. 🙂
    
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August 13, 2012

@PMS. I get it sometimes. It manifests, believe it or not, as a sore throat or some other symptom that makes me think I am catching cold. Yes, I know this is weird. It only lasts a day.

@Sugar rush. I should study up on this more but it doesn’t come from eating a dessert, since dessert follows a meal. It is from eating sugar alone. The more refined the sugar, the more extreme the rush. Also, if it is not mixed with anything like a real food (fresh coconut? milk? eggs?), it is much more extreme. Bengali sweets may involve real fruit, or nuts, or milk, or something like that, which are mitigating factors. Note food fed to factory workers in 19th century, all that sweet tea and increasingly industrialized bread with industrialized jam. Fast fuel to put you in a work tizzy, goes right to your bloodstream, doesn’t slow you down to digest, and so on. I get it from wine — people say it “takes the edge off” and it is true, but it also speeds me up/masks fatigue and that is the sugar in action.

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