Has anyone ever said, "Your facial expression isn't right"?

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Wondering if anyone hear ever had another person say to them, "Your facial expression doesn't seem right?" or something of the sort, point-blank-like?

While in the past, mostly pre-diagnosis at age 27 people told me that I seemed "flat" or "deer-like" in my expression on occasion, I only recall a couple of times when they said my expression was "off" - once was at age 21 when it was from my own father at a Thanksgiving dinner event when I was sort of chuckling or smiling about something that I recalled from TV, but it wasn't appropriate for the current conversation - then he said "I've noticed sometimes your expression doesn't fit the situation you're in, with the topic of conversation at hand; you may want to pay closer to attention to that." This was still in the '90s when Aspergers was a more esoteric thing and there were just a few pages on the condition's manifestations albeit not by name in Daniel Goleman's famous book Emotional Intelligence.

Another time a house-mate pointed it out to me - so, naturally, I thought it's just them because nobody else tells me this... but the whole time, they were really "telling" it to me with that other 90% of communication, if you know what I mean

So, before even hearing of Aspergers (now ASD/HFA) back then, I was perplexed as I'm sure many of you were as to why I was being "found guilty" by peers without a trial, let alone given notice of the offence, and punished by ostracization (or worse)

More recent research that I've seen online has explained that people with ASD/HFA aren't intrinsically lacking in "proper" facial expression - they just have different facial expressions for emotions as compared to NTs, at least, for those who may be more severely afflicted by ASD and/or have not gained deeper insight into their differences and learned to mask.
At least, to their credit, those sources were being more objective and less neuro-centric...which is a breath of fresh air.

My "natural" facial expressions are apparently a bit weird, I've had people point it out before. I'm not good at faking "proper" ones so that also isn't great.

Hi HeroOfHyrule

Yes. I always used to get 'cheer up, might never happen' in my childhood. Now I get laughed at, not often though.


kuze

As intentionally possible, yes.
That's how I would rather have it instead. I
I'd rather have appear a blank like unfeeling face whenever I want it.


Instead of, oh, I dunno... "Your reaction isn't right" it goes beyond facial expressions.
It enters the realm of perception and comprehension translated to thoughts and emotions.


In my case the expression of thought and emotion would likely involuntarily match in facial expression if someone observes it well, alright.
Therefore, no need to rehearse to match any internal to external expressions.

Yet the internal thought and emotion itself is the inappropriate one.
That's mostly my issue than the other way around.

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Not really, I've only had people tell me to cheer up, because holding a 'sad' face is so comfortable when I'm not interacting or getting anyone's attention. But I seem to naturally make the correct facial expressions when approaching/interacting with people.

Yes, many times.  I have a flat affect, or "Poker Face" that is often mistakenly interpreted as expressing anger, boredom, hostility, or snobbishness.

It's funny but from most of the interactions I can recall where someone "called out" one of my expressions, it was almost invariably accurate... they'd say "you seem sad" or "you seem puzzled" or "you seem angry" or even positive i.e. "you seem really eager and enthusiastic about this", and so forth. And you know what - I WAS all of those feelings, internally, at the time. Ergo, I must have been displaying the "proper" facial expression.

However, where it may have been deemed somewhat "improper" would have been based on the context of the current company, e.g. if I was at some party and looked sad, when everyone around me was happy or expressing otherwise positive emotions. Sure, somebody could accurately point out "you seem sad", but unwritten protocol may state that I'm not supposed to be show sadness at such occasions. But my rebuttal to that is, try telling that to the young NT lady who just broke up with her boyfriend who cheated on her... I've been to social events (yes plural) in the past where I've seen one of them just sobbing over this, and nobody really judged her.

Sometimes NTs misinterpret other NT's body language. For example, I was at a party once and a woman I knew from work (definitely NT) was looking sad and another NT asked her why she looked sad and if she was feeling OK. But it turns out she wasn't sad, she was just shy because she didn't know many people.
Also one time at a family gathering my NT cousin had her arms folded and was looking quite angry, and a couple of relatives commented that she looked angry, but she said that she wasn't angry at all, she was just cold and was frowning because of the discomfort from being cold (I do know that feeling).

Only one I can remember was my diagnostician who put something in my report about my expressions not being quite normal - apparently I was looking as if I was about to smile but then didn't smile. Doesn't seem autism-related to me, and I'm not sure I do that normally.

One thing I can tell you is that if somebody has to go to the bathroom really bad (and you don't know it), then all bets are off as to their supposed state of mind

I think ONE area where the call-out of "your facial expression doesn't seem right", albeit more indirectly (not verbatim!) occurs is when peers see your face forming into a puzzled expression when someone tells you a nuanced statement or reply to something, and you're consciously trying to make sense of it - you can't fluidly couple ToM with nonverbal nuance and output the "right" response - to use a browser analogy, you're churning and on the brink of an "error 404" when others "load the page" right away. So then your peers (all NT) would think that you're not showing the right expression, b/c how on earth could you be puzzled
...heck they're probably casting glances to each other as if to say, "Okaayyy...do YOU tell him, or do I??"