Blood Pressure, stress, and feeling emotions.

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As part of my OCD treatment I'm supposed to be cultivating more self-awareness, knowing how I feel at any point, including my emotional state. Like many with AS, my answer on emotional state most of the time is something along the lines of "blank." I don't feel anything. However, I'm starting to wonder if just because I don't consciously feel many emotions, I don't still have them.
I was diagnosed with hypertension (high blood pressure) a few weeks ago. Since then, for my own interest, I've been trying to figure out when my blood pressure spikes, drops, stays slightly higher than normal, etc. I can feel my own blood pressure (I don't know if this is an AS thing like hypersensitivity to fabric and the like, or just me) and can tell by the way my veins stand up high on my hands and arms that what I'm perceiving is giving me at least a vague idea of when my BP is high or not. Here's the thing: in situations that you might consider stressful, situations that would normally provoke an emotional state in an NT, I still feel blank. But my blood pressure doesn't remain normal. It reacts as if I were stressed, excited, whatever. When there's an extreme, of course, I feel the emotional state like most with AS would. But with minor stuff my body reacts as if I were going through an emotion, even though I feel nothing. I wonder if maybe it's not that those with AS don't feel emotions across the same range as NTs, but rather we're just terrible at recognising emotions not just in others, but in ourselves too.

As an aside, this is also making me realise that I'm, for want of a better term, "unconsciously stressed," through an enormous stretch of the day, enough that it makes me wonder whether my hypertension diagnosis is correct or if the 24 hour monitor I wore and the doctors analysing the telemetry just don't realise the levels of stress I'm able to maintain for very long periods. Really, things which I thought didn't affect me clearly do (mostly minor social situations, but also any kind of work that I get involved in or focus strongly on), and my body reacts accordingly by pushing my BP up.

(Edited for clarity.)

From everything I read, it is normal to suppress the feelings related to high blood pressure, and to become more aware of them with monitoring - it is a form of biofeedback, really.

When people are continually stressed because of social situations or work or the noise from the airport nearby, they can adapt to the increased stress and psychologically tune it out, but it will still elevate their blood pressure or heart rate. I think with AS, the problem is that it doesn't just elevate 10% like with NTs; the initial stressor has much more effect, and there is less ability to tune out the effects.

I like how you referred to it as feeling "blank", that's a great word for it. I'm sure I have emotions I don't feel.

Once I was telling a therapist about a recently recovered memory from my childhood. Someone who was there had reminded me of the incident and the emotions came flooding back, as well as additional details, so I do believe the recovered memory is true.

Anyway, I was relating this memory to my therapist about a week later and I was not having any feelings, I was just telling a story, but I found myself rocking, and I saw that I kept putting my hands in front of my face. I assume I wanted to "hide" from the memory or something but since I didn't feel it I don't know for sure. I finally became so annoyed about my hands continually flying up in front of my face that I raised up from the chair and shoved my hands under my butt to keep them out of the way until I finished my story.