Why do Aspies have this issue?

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People think I have a problem with respect. Like I want everyone to be super respectful all the time. I can't take people saying mean things or criticizing me. It bothers me the most. People being mean, disrespectful, or critical.

I've always been moody and I tend to get extremely angry and depressed when put under stress. Disappointment hits me particularly hard as well. It is rough because I value treating people kindly and fairly so I may try to hold my feelings in for a while but my grouchiness eventually comes out and sometimes I just snap and later regret it. I remember in middle-school I would come home and break things after being bullied in school. I ended up putting holes in the walls and punishment from my parents just made me worse. On the inside I am definitely more sensitive than most people and ignorance and unfair treatment (whether it's perpetrated against me or against someone else) just violently rips me up inside.

I went from being like this to not giving a damn about what other people think. Nowadays anyone who criticizes me had better actually be trying to help me improve in some way, otherwise the only response they get from me is "Go tell someone who cares what you think, motherf**ker, because I don't.".

A lot of people will look at this and accuse me of being aggressive or disrespectful, but the bottom line is this: If someone's spewing a load of un-constructive criticism at you, there are no good intentions behind it. They are only trying to cut down your self esteem, they are only trying to hurt you. This is the easiest and most direct way of letting them know they aren't going to succeed in doing so.

I used to be exactly like you, then totally flipped to being the opposite. It feels even weirder when it's yourself that's changed that way!

I think a lot of this boils down to stress reactions, depression and how long they've been building up, moods too.

If I've had an overload of critisism then I can get very weepy and feel fragile but at other times after a critical overload if anyone says anything out of line or critical to me then OMG watch out! There are times I could start a fight in an empty room. But other times I just have to get away and be totally on my own and I just cannot bear to talk to anyone. I think the latter is the safer reaction than being physically held back from smacking someone in the mouth. Sorry, but when the line is crossed I think wtf and go blank.

Tiffinity.

Wow! Good way of putting it. As a WP friend has said Conundrum I need to learn to not let my parents criticisms get to me as much. Thanks.

^ This.

Mark_M: I like your attitude.

It's no use being upset about someone else's stupidity.

Or this:

Don't argue with stupid people, they will beat you with their routine.

The problem is stupid people often have a lot of power in this world.

I know. That's why I either aloof or mad with the world.

There's a lot of traits in autistic people that go to both extremes without going to the middle.

Once, they did this study where they took a list of traits and had people rate autistic and nonautistic children on the scale. It was a 1 to 3 scale, where 1 was "not at all like this/mostly not like this", 2 was "in the middle", and 3 was "very much like this/always like this". I mean those aren't the quotes they used but those are the general idea.

I think they were trying to find out which traits autistic people had and didn't have. Where autistic people would mostly be a 1 and nonautistic people would be a 3, or the opposite.

Instead, they found that on average, autistic people got more 1s and 3s (including on the exact same traits), and nonautistic people got more 2s. So it wasn't that a trait was "very much like an autistic person" and "not at all like a nonautistic person," it was more that the trait was for some autistic people absolutely like them, for other autistic people absolutely not like them, and with nonautistic people tending to fall in the middle.

My bet is that if a trait was "being overly emotionally sensitive", autistic people would get both 1s (like you) and 3s (like ZP) on it.

However, it's also possible for an autistic person to have flat emotions or really strong emotions for a different reason than autism. My innate tendency is to feel everything very intensely. But I had flat (or more flat, anyway) emotions for awhile due to PTSD. (Although my affect can be quite flat on the outside even when my emotions are intense, sometimes.) It'd also be easily possible for trauma to make someone very sensitive who once was flat. So that could go either way, and have nothing to do with autism.

And yet at the same time, I know a lot of autistic people who are either very flat, or very very emotionally sensitive, and it seems to have always been like that, so probably either one could be caused by autism.

In my case I was so sensitive to my emotions that they felt like giant waves engulfing me, and I was terrified of them for a long time. That's something that many autistic people I know experience as well. And yet there are others who are quite flat. I think Temple Grandin has even talked about this difference in some of her books, like how her emotions are flattened and very "simple", and she's unable to even feel complex emotions, whereas some other autistic people are highly emotional and emotionally complex. I'm definitely the second kind although I've often wished (and sometimes tried to act) that I was the first kind. I have at times in my life been so prone to tears that it was horribly uncomfortable (and since I was subject to mostly things like "QUITCHER BELLYACHIN" whenever I got into uncontrollable crying mode, I was often made to feel as bad about it as boys are made to, and learned all sorts of ways to try and hide it, although only some were successful, some of the time).

@anbuend: I was VERY much like what you described in grade school. That, combined with being subjected to bullying almost nonstop, meant I would be in tears at least once a day. I hated it. I eventually learned to "lock down" my emotions outwardly. I still felt them, but in a "muted" form.

I'm still like that for the most part. Some people I'm close to find that troubling. When I do let my emotions out, they are quite intense, and it can leave me feeling drained afterwards.

Well, and this is my opinion, but I think it's more of a justice issue. Justice seems to be a very important issue to a lot of people with AS and autism, and intolerance and judgmentalism are very unjust and cruel.

Good point--I definitely feel this way.