Not coldly rational 100% of the time

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I meet all the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's syndrome, as perceived by the team of experts that evaluated me when I was fifteen. However, I am not coldly rational 100% of the time, and I'm starting to feel left out of the WrongPlanet community because of this.

No, this is not a political statement. What I mean is that I can and do feel joy, love, excitement, fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, and even empathy - I taught myself to feel for other people by reading a lot of Holocaust literature, as a matter of fact. I express my emotions differently than most neurotypicals, mind you, but I experience them fully, and they sometimes - le gasp! - cloud my thinking. Yet I still have Asperger's as defined by the DMS-IV.

It hurts my aforementioned feelings when I read the countless stream of WP posts about how one has to have the emotional life of a brick if one wants to call oneself an aspie. I have suffered a lot because of my AS, and I have tons of aspie pride. I don't like it when people - many of whom are not diagnosed like I am - divide the community into "real" aspies (who don't have feelings) and "fake" aspies (who do). It's certainly not a position that helps the autism awareness movement - if we keep telling people that we don't have feelings, they'll consider it okay to keep bullying us. It's true that some autistic people are coldly rational 100% of the time, but I'm not one of them and let's not make that generalization anymore.

Thanks.

I think it's a myth that you have to be logical and rational all the time in order to have AS. I know quite a few that sometimes let their emotions cloud their judgement, and yes they ARE officially diagnosed. I've never met one that was devoid of emotions or that couldn't relate to others on some level.

I am diagnosed with Asperger's and meet all of the criteria. I think I am more emotional than the average person. I definitely have trouble regulating my emotions....I show them at inappropriate times. I am very expressive when I am with people that I know very well. I definitely let emotions cloud my judgement sometimes

I've been suspecting for a long time now that Aspie women tend to be more emotional and even hyper-empathic. It is only one of the criteria, and doesn't mean that without it you aren't Aspie. If you have enough other qualifying aspects, your still Aspie. My wife is very much like you, and now feels she fits the description too.

I find it not surprising at all that all three posters so far, aside from me, are women. I'm sure there are some men here that identify with you as well, though I'm not one of them. Have you spent any time in the women's forum? Do you feel alienated there too? I don't know. I've felt wrong about even looking around there.

Much of my rationality has to be forced, though I have many asish traits...for what it is worth.

Maybe missing social cues, blundering, and getting hurt makes some people MORE empathetic and worried about how they might come off and hurt others?

The perception that those with AS are devoid of emotion, robot like, always rational, cold, etc is an NT misconception.

True, there are some individuals with AS out there who do not realize others have feelings, but I do not believe they make up the bulk of those with AS.

The problem is, NT's mis-interpret us at least as much as we mis-interpret them. They tend to be under the impression that if we do not express visible emotions that we are not feeling any, when a lot of us really just have facial hypotonia or interpret the situation differently, or have a reduced facial response to emotion.

They also fail to realize that a person with AS who does not express empathy in a situation that one would be expected to do so, may not express it due to not understanding the nature of the situation, and realizing that it calls for empathy. Or may have difficulty expressing it.

They judge us purely by what they perceive of us superficially on too many occasions.

This bothered me a lot when I was younger. I was actually one of the more caring, selfless, and considerate individuals in the world, and generally one of the more positive people in the world as well, and it was constantly assumed that I was depressed or not happy, I was frequently pegged as rude, and treated as if I was not considerate of others and their emotions when I considered their emotions to the best of my ability based on the information I could perceive and I believe I did this more frequently than most NT people.

Only my father realized this.

And for the record, Vulcans were not devoid of emotion. The Vulcans and Romulans were the same species of people. And much like the Romulans, the Vulcans too were highly emotional. The difference between the two is that to prevent their emotions from destroying them, the Vulcans adopted the teachings of the philosopher Surak, who preached emotional supression.

There's quite a few Star Trek episodes where a Vulcan flips out, and if anyone recalls Spock's brother, who was a full Vulcan, the man was quite emotional.

NT observes ACs and gets an impression that they have no empathy, no emotions, no imagination.
NT writes it down in a book.
Someone else reads the book and notices that they fit the impression.
Then they meet another AC, and say, "I'm the real thing because I lack empathy, emotions, imagination!"
Ugh.
I'm not even saying one is autistic and the other isn't. They both likely are. But not for the reasons they might think.

Someone (Anbuend, I think) wrote about this someplace...

I also don't relate to that difference being chalked up to gender.

I have feelings as well, express emotions, can read body language and facial expressions, and I might be better at it than some other autistics, but I also even think that there are autistics that can do even better than I.

I can show empathy, have fun with NT peers, I am considered as very friendly, wanting to help, solve other's problems and all that stuff. Sometimes I am even more social than some NTs are.

But... I still have autistic traits, and my official diagnosis is not Asperger's Syndrome, but PDD/NOS. That fact stays and won't ever outdate. BTW, I have symptoms of Asperger and MCDD, though.

I'm one of the least rational/logical people around, and yet I still got a diagnosis. Whoever said you have to be totally cold and rational to have AS is either misinformed or trolling.

It's a myth. I think it says something about the irrationality of people in general (including autistic people), that many autistic people attempt to conform to myths. (I'm not saying that there aren't very logical/rational people out there who are autistic, I mean more the ones who claim that not only are they, but all "real" autistic people are.)

I have a lot of trouble with the sort of thinking that gets called logical/rational, and I'm autistic. In fact, I have trouble with that kind of thinking because of my autistic traits.

I can get emotional when I am watching Tv or anime.But have trouble expressing them.
My teacher said once she never sees any emotion in my eyes...
I can have emotion but on special occasions.

And my friends and family tell me that they ONLY see my emotions in my eyes. My face tends to lack expression,but my eyes always show what I'm feeling.

On topic, I think I am emotional, compassionate, and I may even be empathetic at times (not sure). I just know that I am definitely not coldly logical. My feeling always get involved in my decision-making. What probably makes me typically Asperger is that I have no idea how to respond to others' emotions. If someone is angry or crying, he/she needs to tell me what is needed or else I will just stand by, completely lost.

a lot of people confuse logical thinking with being unemotional. they are not mutually exclusive. you can be a logical thinker while still feeling and expressing emotion.

there is nothing strictly in the diagnostic criteria about logical thinking or being unemotional. logical thinking may be a trait that many aspies share, but like many other things, such as literal thinking or tuning people out or being extremely moralistic, its just a trait and its lack or presence is not a determining factor for diagnosis.

what IS in the criteria is an impairment in non-verbal social interactions such as facial expression, eye contact, body language, and gestures. when those things are lacking, it can sometimes come across as being unemotional. in actuality its lack of expression of emotion, not lack of emotion itself. this goes way back to the beginning with the common autistic trait in babies of not smiling.

i am endlessly surprised to hear anyone, nt or aspie, talk about lack of emotion in autistics when "meltdowns" and sensory overloads are so commonly a part of the disorder. a meltdown is nothing BUT emotion.

Does the issue with emotional expression usually work both ways in a person (one's own outward emoting AND perception of others), or is it ever something that may affect one direction more than the other?

I wouldn't "chalk it up" that way either, as if it's a truth. It's just an intuitive feeling of mine that seems often backed up by observation so far.