Improving facial expressions

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This is really interesting to me! I first realised about 18 months ago that I quite possibly have ASD, and since then as a result of my reading about the topic, I have become more and more aware of the "flat affect" that I have had all my life. Decades ago, as a child, I would be teased by my parents because in every photograph they ever took of me, I would be scowling or looking "grumpy." If they ever did manage to get me to "smile" in a photo, the best I could manage was a totally weird kind of "leer," that looked quite alarming.

I recently tracked down a few school group photographs, and in every one of them I appear with a scowl and a rather vacant expression with my arms held awkwardly and stiffly, while all the other kids look "normal" and with natural-looking smiles.

Over the years there have been many, many occasions where people have seemingly out of the blue asked me questions like "Are you OK?", or "What's wrong?", or said "Cheer up!", when I had absolutely no idea why they would say this. I have been realising recently that they must have been seeing my usual "flat" facial expression, and been assuming that I was unhappy, sad, or otherwise distressed, when in fact I was perfectly happy in my own thoughts.

As far as improving one's facial expression is concerned, I suspect that is very difficult. Like you, my mouth is always closed when I put on a "smile." At best, it looks rather condescending and disdainful, and at worst it looks positively evil. I tried googling for smiling face pictures just now, and I was amazed to realise how many of them involve people smiling with open mouths. If I try that in front of a mirror I either look completely ridiculous or else alarmingly sinister. I cannot possibly imagine learning how to put on a natural-looking smile with teeth showing.

All this thinking about "flat affect" makes me think that it really must be a huge give-away, to a trained person at least, that someone has ASD. Now that I think back over many incidents in my life, I suspect that a trained observer could easily have suspected ASD, based on seeing my facial expression, or lack thereof, and my "distant" expression.

you can read about ASMR on Wikipedia, it's just a nice feeling around the head.

Smiling in the photos is very difficult too, I remember once when I took a picture with 2-3 persons but I didn't manage to smile, we took the same picture a couple of times because they wanted me to smile but I couldn't and we had to give up.

I have difficulty regulating my smile. Sometimes people think I seem too happy and gives me a weird look, sometimes people don't think I look happy enough and they stop talking.

I don't get people who can smile all the time. Like people you see on TV. Don't their faces hurt?

Right? Sometimes when I try to force a smile, my jaw begins to shake.