Do You Get Told To "Smile" All The Time?

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I looked at the title, and saw my friend pointing her fingers to the corners of her mouth while grinning from one ear to the other and staring at me.

"Smile!"


Yeah, I know this, and with the time it got really annoying. But after school I did't get to know that many people, and if I did I never got close to them.
Last time was a few months ago during an internship at an elementary school (I want to become a teacher). I was giving one of my very first lessons and afterwards got a feedback from the teacher, the lecturer, and the other students in my group. One of their main critics was "You need to smile more."

On the next lesson I was allowed to give I took care to smile at the children, and at the end of the lesson had the feeling that I was constantly grinning like mad... so what did they tell me in the feedback? "You did smile more than last time, but you still need to smile more."

I can smile nice and naturally for fotos, but to do that constantly over a longer period of time is something I simply don't understand.

My grandma thinks I'm mad all the time, and she says:

"Smile! You're on candid camera!"

I hate that phrase so much.

Yes! I always thought I had conditioned myself that way because I used to have crooked teeth before I got braces and tried not to smile. I never thought it could be AS related. I now have people telling me, "You have a beautiful smile! You should smile more!" But nobody ever says that to my dad; he's not AS and he hardly ever smiles, only when it's called for. People respect him because he's not a silly buffoon smiling at the slightest little thing. When he smiles or laughs, people notice and it changes the energy in the whole frickin room! I think that's a good thing. (And he's got a wonderful smile).

I was told I had a poker face today.

I've been told I'm hard to read. I wasn'tsure what they meant until recently.

I'll smile when they say something funny. Until then, this is the natural, comfortable state of my face.

I said this is how my face always looks.

I used to get it all the time as a little kid. I was also told that it takes more mucles to frown than to smile. If that's true then why does smiling make my cheeks so sore? Anyway, I had a nutural expression most of the time. People who constantaly smile seriously creep me out. I used to think I hated the Duggars becuase they were fundemendlist Christians and brainwashing their hundred plus kids but now I realise it's because Michelle Duggar smiles all the time and NEVER frowns. She's a very creepy lady if she frowned once in a while I would find her more normal. Is she on drugs or something?

When I was a little kid. It irritated me. What also irritated me is when they kept saying 'your smile lights up a room.'
I have some sort of luminance activation when I smile? This could come in handy. I need to harness this and produce some sort of intense beam of laser light to be used on my enemies.

I don't, but I get told to "smile BIGGER" all the time. I've been told that my smile makes me look nervous, and I've practised smiling a lot in the mirror... haha. When I smile for a camera, what felt like the smile I practised in the mirror does end up looking nervous and turned down in the corners. I just try to ignore people who tell me to smile bigger or happier, because I do smile and I feel happy when I smile, even if it's a different looking expression than other people call normal smiling. Whatever, dudes!

But for people that don't smile at all even when they feel happy, I get annoyed hearing people do that to others. People stupidly worry more if someone's mouth is curved a certain way than they worry about the person's actual feelings. Someone can feel terrible inside and if they smile everyone will assume they're fine. Telling someone to smile is selfish. If they think you're unhappy, a kinder thing to do would be to ask that person what they can do to make them feel better! Then, if the person is happy, they can tell them they're fine. It might be annoying but it's much less selfish than just saying SMILE!!

All too often.

I don't smile naturally. When I don't smile I get comments and when I do smile I get comments. It's an effort to smile.

Just wondering though -why people with AS don't smile?

When I've had to hold a smile for a photo or something, my face actually starts twitching. At other times I've felt like my face muscles are out of my control, like too tight. Thinking maybe the problem is low muscle tone.

what do others think? Does low muscle tone have something to do with not smiling or is it more just that there is no need to smile or both or other?

I got it a lot in high school and I remember getting it at work when I lived in Montana except my boss kept asking me if I was alright and it started to irritate me because I don't like it when people ask me the same thing over and over so I get irritated. Mom told me that is just going to tell her I am not alright and maybe she keeps asking me that because I am not smiling.


But I don't get this stuff anymore.

It aches my face if I have to keep maintaining a smiley sort of expression of my face all the time. If my brain is focused on trying to keep a positive face all the time, it won't be able to focus on anything else. That's the problem with me - my brain can only focus on one thing at a time. So that's why I try to focus on more important things, like where I'm walking.
I can hear other things whilst doing a task, because the ''hearing department'' in my brain can do things seperately. But my brain can't focus on too many physical things.

I have actually learnt myself to smile when I'm greeting people, out in the street or at work. But when I'm at home and I'm in one of my moods, and people enter the room, I don't always feel like looking up and smiling. Too much effort sometimes!

Ugh, so tired of this too. My wife is asked sometimes during and after events if I was ok. I don't laugh a lot, but I do get involved from time to time and I think I look better, it just doesn't last long.

I used to get this constantly, especially at work. I've now trained myself to immediately start smiling as soon as someone approaches me. If they notice a drastic change in my expression, I just explain that I was concentrating on the task at hand. Works like a charm!

My mother tells me to smile all the time because I look blank. It's funny because she also looks blank.