Autistic Emotions

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My AS mother dealt with emotions by putting me in quarantine until I calmed down. Like many men, I had to use a check list as an adult to begin identifying my emotions. I first noticed anger because my car went faster when I was thinking of certain things. Then I realized that most people were controlled by emotions, and I'd been wasting my time giving them the benefit of the doubt on having some rational process. Then I had a crisis that unleashed crippling emotions, which I'm slowly gaining perspective and control over. Unfortunately, people have less patience for an adult than a child trying to learn about the interplay of emotion and social interaction.

Xatrix26 brought up a very good point, there isn't very much discussion or none at all about what we display versus what we feel internally. I know that I feel placid emotionally 95% of the time and on rare occasion I'll have an upswing in an emotional state internally but nothing will show externally unless I make a conscious effort to have it shown, such as laughing at a joke or expressing my disgust at a negative event. 1% of the time I have an emotional outburst that I don't have time to control or contemplate and it manifests physically. Sometimes it will be an angry outburst or a meltdown.

I would be curious to see more people talk about the internal vs external emotional states.

Mine are often delayed. Often I am just feeling them when most others have moved on.

I find that I have plenty of strong emotions, particularly when people experience similar negative events to what I've experienced in the past i.e. the passing of a spouse. In those cases, I can feel very distinct and strong emotions and express sincere sympathy to that person. When I experience a negative event that is new and haven't experienced before, if somebody asks me if I'm okay or how I'm feeling the honest would be that I don't know. It takes me time to process my emotions in such instances. For instance, I didn't have contact with my dad for 20 years and found out through the mail that he had passed a year prior. This was six months ago, and I'm still trying to understand my feelings concerning this.

Even if I do experience strong emotions or sympathy concerning something, I know it doesn't show on my face, but I can ACT and show expressions that NTs would understand to be the expression of emotion. However, if I don't act NT, I'll still feel the emotion, but it won't show on my face or in the inflection of my voice.

I think it's pretty common for autistics to feel strong emotions, but sometimes be thrown a loop that they simply can't make heads of tails of until they take time to think about it and process it.

I'm very disconnected from my emotions. I think I have them plenty, but they usually exist over there, and I have to try and work them out. I'm trying to get better at reading cues.

For example, I can distinguish different types of "good feelings" and "bad feelings" because I will tend to flick my fingers for high energy emotions (excitement, worry), but not for low-energy ones (contentment, sadness).

My ex has commented on how non-emotional I am in reactions to things. He has been a little hurt by how not-feeling-based I was as a partner, but some things he just noted were odd, in comparison to how he'd expect most people to react more emotionally than practically.

My emotions come on very strongly and they come out as crying. It doesn't happen as often as it used to.

How often do the people in our lives nudge us to express our feelings?

From a NTs point of view, many on the spectrum prefer to express thoughts, as opposed to feelings; hence a big difference between thoughts and feelings!