Recognizing and Articulating Feelings Appropriately.

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I get upset over very small things. Like if I were to mistake someone to be mad at me -- a daily occurrence, I wouldn't be able to understand why exactly I'm sulking when I leave the situation. After which, it takes me a long time to be able to say why I'm upset. Like my mouth would work for everything except for helping the people around me understand. This might be due to my emotional neglect, as my parents had to handle the rearing of some of my siblings much lower on the spectrum, so I tend to avoid emotional situations.

Sometimes, so much goes wrong within a short period of time that my brain can't physically cope. A few days ago, I left my phone in a Walmart shopping cart and went home. It was on accident, of course. But once I'd realized it was missing, I was entering the stages of complete incoherence because it was gone. I was charged to make a portion of dinner, and to do so I had to multiply 1/2 c by three and my brain was so broken at the time that I couldn't do it. I would pace, cry, throw things, and slam the nearest item to me because I simply couldn't do basic math. Eventually, my mom told me that I could just lay down, and I dissolved into sobbing, screaming and hyperventilating until I could handle the emotions.

Please, for the love of god, tell me that I'm not hallucinating all of this. <3

Hey! Even after three years of military service and lots of time to discipline myself emotionally, I sometimes have issues with controlling my emotions. I've had this issue since I was a kid; I would often become extremely irritated and angry for absolutely no reason. Some of the things that still annoy me beyond a reasonable level are people that do nothing to quiet down their screaming children, and bad drivers (god, I have the worst road rage you could ever imagine). When Azumi, my girlfriend, was driving one day and was waiting patiently and politely for a parking spot to open, she was suddenly cut off and the spot was stolen by some other American military driver. Instead of just encouraging her to find another space, I actually got out of the car and started a shouting match with the guy (who I'm pretty sure was a much higher rank than me). It took a long time for my girlfriend to calm me down after that little confrontation.
In terms of coping with it, my counselor for deployment mental health that regularly speaks to me has been discussing coping strategies with me. In the book "Emotional Intelligence", the author describes how there is an initial emotion that goes through our minds, and there is the immediate impulse to panic or act. I'm sure that for those of us who deal with various Autism Spectrum Disorders, this is amplified times ten, as I've often found my emotional outbursts to be very impulsive and this sometimes interferes with my work and social life. In the book, the author also says that if an individual waits and does not immediately act on their impulse, the levels of rage and panic-controlling hormones will actually subside. This is why we look at our behavior in hindsight and say "why did I act like that?" It seems that impulse control is the greatest solution to emotional instability and outbursts. It definitely takes time, and I obviously haven't completely applied it yet, but it's worth a try.