Emotional Response to Media?

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You didn't cry when you miscarried? Or when family members died?

I'd hate to think none of that bothered you ...

it's not that it didn't bother me. it did. well, my grandparents i never really knew all that well, so i wasn't very upset. but everything else was bothersome. but not life shattering.

all my emotions are very muted. always have been. i don't get angry. or sad. or mad. i can get happy. i can get enthused. my children often bring my joy. i'm sure if something happened to them it would matter. but only them.

I see.

With muted emotions, does that mean you're distant and uncaring most of the time?

i guess i can be. or at least seem to be. i do care, but i guess it wouldn't be obvious to anyone but me.

When my emotions emerge I do feel that they are very strong.
I have difficulty feeling emotions when they are weak and building up. Once they reach a certain level of intensity they just emerge. So I find any attempt at managing my emotions to be difficult.

An example, I was talking to my psych about my sister who got married and moved away. I had a slight want to see her as I was talking. I was trying to explain my feeling that I really only thought about her when walking up the stairs I saw the computer desk where she would usually sit. I was saying how it took a while before I remembered that she didn't live at our house anymore when I was expecting to see her sitting at the computer, but after a while that went away and I barely ever even think about her and had talked to her like twice in several years. I honestly felt that I did not miss her at all. Of course as I was in the middle of saying this all calmly I suddenly erupted into sobs. I choked up and shed tears for several minutes. It was bizarre and completely unexpected by me. After the crying passed I went back to normal with maybe a bit of lingering happiness knowing that I really did miss my sister.

I don't think I have AS (formal diagnosis at age 3 was autism), so maybe that's why I'm kinda different. My emotions are extremely muted....anger is the only emotion I actually feel and react to....no sadness, no fear and not even love unless I'm hypomanic or manic . It's extremely hard to get me to have any emotional response to anything, except criticism (even the constructive kind). I sometimes wonder if I actually have some form of schizophrenia, or maybe I'm a sociopath or something. Today I sliced open my hand with a razor during a meltdown because my boss had to ask me for a report for a second time, and was pissed, yet I could not share a tear over my own mother's death last year, and still haven't. Come to think of it I really can't remember the last time I cried (aside from the natural tear production triggered by a good punch to the face that breaks your nose, or due to extreme photophobia)...Since I don't cry when family members die, I doubt I cry during a movie......I feel bad when watching a movie with my father and sister and they are sobbing like babies, and I'm pretty much the only one in the theater not holding a tissue or wiping their eyes (not sure what movie that was).

I feel even worse when at work as my coworkers are discussing some sort of tragedy like a fire that killed a bunch of kids early that morning and I inappropriately smile. I hate when I do this really, but I can't help it. No I don't smile because a bunch of kids got burned to death....I'm not a monster....

I smile because that wasn't my house. The road closure didn't effect my commute to work. My future nieces and nephews weren't in the fire. My coworkers kids weren't in the fire....that wasn't any of my coworker's houses....and so on. See, the world really does revolve around me and the people I know personally (not that I like this about me)......I don't know the families who's row houses burned down....I don't know those kids that died. I do understand that it's a horrific tragedy, but the emotion just doesn't register. I know that really sounds horrible......

I don't understand why the media is so interested in celebrities....really why on Earth would I care how so-and-so's kid got a chipped tooth or what manic Britney is up to....

I know I'm pretty f*cked in the head......that's not to say I can't be generous to the people I care about or that I can't be a good person....my emotions are just all screwed up....

I don't get very emotional in response to media, it's very rare I get emotional at all. I enjoy the stories and feel logically, but I don't actually feel anything except I want to know what happens next.

You have described exactly how I feel! I have tried to explain this to a few people, but always end up sounding cold and unfeeling. I guess it has to have a personal impact for me to feel emotional, really!



Same here.

Yes, it does sound horrible. It makes you sound like a person who is self-centred in the absolute. And possibly a threat to others. If you are able to feel ashamed about this, Sublyme, that's a good thing.

slowmutant, we are not monsters. we understand the horribleness of others misfortune, and our own, but just because we don't get emotional about it doesn't make us threats to others. in fact i think it's an adaptation that lets us survive in this horrible world. if every tragedy has us falling apart, how could we live our lives and ever be happy?

it doesn't help when you say how horrible we are, since we can do a pretty good job of feeling that way ourselves. but the fact that we do wonder about it and sometimes feel bad about it leads me to believe that we aren't horrible. if we were, we wouldn't care.

i don't go around hurting people or laughing at misfortunes and tragedy and i help when i can, i'm just not a blubbering mess when i do it. i guess i save that for stupid movies.

i can assure you that i have an acute sense of justice and fairness and a desire that this world be a better place for all. but i also realize that bad stuff happens and if it isn't within my direct control it does me no good to dwell on it.

Hence why when I was a child I was told I was destined to be a sociopath or a serial killer or something. Actually I am not a threat to others. I'm female and very petite for one, and I just don't think I could hurt someone else unless they were threatening my life. Actually I am a very generous and caring person to those I associate with. I'm the one my family goes to for help....I help to get my sister better when she's sick (she's bipolar), help my father with fiances, help arrange a nurse to come to the house to take care of my dying mother, help make the arrangements for her long term care in a nursing home, then help with the funeral arrangements when she passed away....then I donated $1500 to the MS society (the disease that killed her). If I was really a monster I couldn't be the person I am.....It's my lack of emotion that makes me that person......

I know I am self-centered. If something doesn't involve me or people I know or care about an emotional response simply doesn't register......and if it does it's often the wrong one. Did I choose to be like this?.....No. I am ashamed when the wrong facial expression appears on my face at the wrong time....simply because what's going on in my head is sometimes more important than what's going on around me. Call me egocentric, call me selfish, call me self-centered, call me a sociopath if you will......but never call me autistic.....that couldn't possibly be why I am the way I am......

Most of the time I'm pretty good about forcing myself to not make any facial expression at all when I'm informed of tragedies that don't involve me or people I care about in some way.....usually I can control it, but sometimes I'm caught off guard and it happens...I feel like I'm forcing my self to act appropriately all the time.....there's hardly ever a time when I don't have to force myself to be someone I'm not.....my life feels like a facade.....I'm a fake, a fraud, but I have to be to live a semi-normal life......

Actually guilt is one emotion I can feel. Hence why I would have made a horrible serial killer.

I mentioned elsewhere on this site that I think movies/TV shows affect me more because of the heightened state they create with music, lighting, etc. They're easily understood and make it easier to determine how you're supposed to react. However, in my own life and interacting with others, I tend to be very unemotional and seem uncaring.

When something bad is described to me that happened to someone else, I don't feel anything. I understand the situation would be sad for whoever it is happening to, but that doesn't make ME sad. It's not happening to me. I suppose that's the "world revolves around me" and the self-centeredness that a lot of people say comes with AS.

I feel nothing from media, whether fiction or non-.

It's the lack of empathy which does such. I can witness the most horrendous of acts in front of me [in person]; if I have no emotional connection to said individuals [which are created by actually learning to know them, which takes far, far longer than just looking at them], and I feel nothing.

I don't feel good or bad, just a void.

Sonny,

I can remember being in school on 9/11. All of the students were taken into the living room (it was a residential school) to watch what was happening on the news. Shortly after the staff turned on the tv the second plane hit. The other students were extremely emotional about it. I thought they were doing it to get out of class and I just wanted to return to my work. I didn't have an emotional reaction to what I saw. I understood that it was bad but there was nothing I could do about it at that moment. I don't see how the reactions of my peers was any better suited to the situation. They were all feeding into each other. Their emotions didn't help the people in NYC and their reaction was distracting them from their schoolwork.


Can any of you think of a situation where that type of NT reaction is beneficial?

i can say the same thing about Challenger blowing up when i was in 7th grade. i was just happy that my 6th grade teacher, who had made it pretty far, was not chosen to go up.

When I'm watching TV/Movie, if its something I can related to or something with very strong emotion to it. Usually loniness.