The most inappropriate affect possible

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Thought you guys would find my experience mildly amusing.

When I'm scared, I have a flat affect.
When I'm calmly taking life as it comes, enjoying the little things, I have a flat affect.
When I'm experiencing sensory overload or exhaustion, I have-- oh, just guess.

When something terrible happens, I can barely keep from laughing and smiling.
And when I'm thoughtful, I seem to look upset, with my brow furrowed deeply.

Also, smiling is a stim for me sometimes. I generally suppress it when it's inappropriate, which leads me to feel quite odd, trying to look awful and solemn and struggling to keep a straight face to convince someone to believe I'm sad when I really am sad.

Anybody else show emotion in this particular way? Note that even if my face is flat, my tone of voice won't be. Note also that I perceive emotion in others passably well.

i use to get into trouble when i laugh after getting into conflict at school

My face gets twisty & I laugh at all the WRONG times

Same here. Whenever I'm deep in thought I constantly get asked if I'm upset about something. When I say I'm just thinking, they don't believe me and keep asking.

I have so many inappropriate reactions to life. When I'm hurt, I laugh. When someone else is hurt, I laugh (or rather, I stifle laughter because social conventions tell me that laughing at another's pain is inappropriate). When things can't get any worse, I laugh. When I'm angry, I cry. When I'm confused I look generally upset. When I'm thinking I look very, very blank.
I really could go on for days, but those seem to be people's favourite.

Reminds me of cats. Some people say they have no body language (unless really teed off), still I see everything in my cat, I see when he's happy, I see when he's sad (and I wonder why, still have no clue), I see all of this yet others see nothing.

I wouldn't call it flat affect, I would say others are blind to the emotions displayed. Just like "we" can be blind to their emotions they can be with ours.

Laughing at inopportune moments is very common for individuals with Asperger's. I often find things funny that others would find horrible.

I have always subscribed to the belief that we laugh in order to cope with things that would be impossible to handle otherwise. Since NATs (neuro-atypicals) have difficulty understanding and dealing with their emotions, we tend to cope by either shutting down, or displaying positive emotions.

How many times have you guys start bursting in laughter or can't stop smiling in the middle of a heated argument? I've been doing that for a long, long time and sometimes it either stops the fight altogether or makes it much, much worse than it needs to be.

Question.... was the terrible thing hilarious?

Like when someone falls down the stairs. They may be hurt, but it's funny. Everyone knows it. But Aspies are the ones who laugh. In that way, we are the most honest.


Actaully, is there are a connection between the rise of YouTube and the rise of Asperger's?

Totally, and the other person is like "YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY!?"

Was it hilarious? Well, it's an overarching pattern, not one incident.

I accidentally hit a guy on the head with a water-bottle thrown from a second-floor balcony (he was on the ground). Laughed at that. Let everyone say it was hysterical laughter so as not to seem callous and unrepentant.

Went to summer camp. There was no hot water, so I couldn't shower. I was told to stand and wait, naked and soapy, while the plumbing was fixed. Eventually I used the men's room. I got everyone giggling.

I came to an awful, slightly ludicrous realization that essentially meant... well, I don't want to get into it. Take my word for it that it's one of the worst things you can believe. Tried to tell my shrink. Couldn't keep a straight face.

There were other incidents throughout my life, but those are the ones that come to mind.

i too sometimes smile or laugh upon hearing or giving bad news, or when i'm trying to express anger toward someone. awful!! !! and once i get smiling or laughing, sometimes with an antecedent, sometimes not, it's impossible for me to regulate. maybe it's a weird expression of some kind of meltdown state??

I have had that many times, usually when I am trying to work out how to respond to somebody who is over-emotional (angry, upset, drunk etc) and my delay in responding just gives them the chance to make things worse. Sometimes I have walked past charity collectors, election campaigners or similar and they have shouted "f**k you!" at me, and I still don't know what I did wrong.

The worst is when meeting medics, and they got pissed off that I wasn't taking things seriously or wasn't engaged in "the process". I was treated for depression / anxiety / psychosis for several years before I got diagnosed with AS, and I don't have this problem now with people who know that diagnosis, which has been a big help.

My parents took me to a picnic once, and there were a couple of other families there. So I took a walk in the woods with this girl, slightly younger than me (I was about 19) when she saw a snake and got so scared that she started crying, which obviously made me laugh really hard.

I always end up laughing hysterically whenever I get badly injured. To be fair I often get injured in hilarious and ridiculous ways, but its more having had focused enough to find help but being at a loss for what else to do.

Either way, there is no better way of frightening strangers than uncontrollably laughing while badly bleeding, just having fell a story and a half or my personal favourite, while standing behind a hospital door labelled "quarantine". I don't mean to scare people, but when I do, it definitely does not help me stop laughing.

next time go behind the door labeled "psych ward"