And I thought I learned to cope

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I have been lying to myself by ignoring my own feelings and anxiety because I wanted to be happy and cope with my AS so I thought I would shut my feelings off so I don't feel them and I am flexible and my anxiety is gone. I learned to shut them off when I am in new situations, don't know what to expect, I even used it at work for when I get interupted to do somwthing else so I turn them off so I don't feel them so I wouldn't have anxiety or have a breakdown at work because I had to stop what I was doing to do something else. I even do this when my routines get interupted, when I can't do my routine, etc.
But when I was talking to my mother, she told me this isn't good and healthy. I can't just ignore them and pretend they don't exist or I will get sick, go mentally and I would turn into her sister meaning getting schizophrenia just like her. Now it has became a habit and I can't stop doing it. I know after a while I can do it for so long, I finally have a meltdown and then I start over with bottling my feelings up again before the next meltdown occurs. Just great, that means I can't escape the condition because turning them off doesn't mean I have made my feelings go away, they are just there but I have trained myself to not feel them. I feel I can't escape my condition because of what my mother said. One of another reasons why I am seeing a shrink.

She's wrong. That, by itself, won't harm you one bit. I am over 40, and have been doing that almost all my life.

I'm not getting why it's negative to shut down emotions yet.

Please clarify.

i am also doing that and i don't believe it's harmful in the way i do it. if something starts bothering me i just stop thinking about it and send the feelings to go away. many times i feel sad or happy and i don't know why, i am confused about my feelings and it seems easy for me to decide not to let them bother me. i also heard people saying it's not healthy, but i don't believe it, i am actually more happy like this and happy is healthy, no?

Emotions are like children. They both need to be trained to behave properly. From how you described what you do, it sounds like you've developed a pattern that permits logic to rule and if your emotions try to take authority, you now have developed the habit of making them sit quietly in the back seat while you drive.

Like children in the back seat, you can enjoy such things as listening to them (emotions) while they're doing something like giggling and playing and/or pay attention if crying is going on so you can investigate what might need correction.

Does that sound like what you're doing?

I'm talking with a counselor about this sort of thing right now. Apparently it's very damaging to shut down emotions.... but I suspect that might be an NT thing! NT's are ruled by their emotions so to shut them off seems like stopping breathing!

I think he may have a point though... I may have shut down my emotions so I don't feel the pain of my wife leaving me - but I look around the house and see over a week worth of unwashed dishes, I'm unshaven and unkempt.... I barely leave the house.... I'm a wreck. No... I may not be feeling the pain, but the damage is still there. I've gotta' do something about it... feeling the emotions will probably help in this regard.

I have dealt with both anxiety and depression off and on over the years. I have also been through some fairly traumatic instances where people were confused about my ability to "cope so well" and while I used to claim to "cope well", I came to the realization that I was not coping at all, what I was actually doing was practicing ALOT of avoidance...

I avoided dealing with the emotions, anger, frustration, hurt, etc because I was not sure how to respond and by shutting it all down and shutting people/things out it was fairly easy to cope with.

I also previously claimed to have an incredible ability to turn my emotions on and off, which I always thought was beneficial when going through a tough time, but was it?

I don't know.

I have the worst memory of any number of negative things I endured over the years, but does that mean I was coping reasonably well or was I masking the madness?

I often joke about how I will one day wake up with multiple personality disorder because I have shut so many things out....but it is possible!! !

It is hard to say how to respond and each of us is so completely different on so many levels, but in the long run...no, I would have to agree, it is not a healthy way of being.

And me, trained in Social Work...*sigh*

These days, my coping comes out in a whole new light, though I can't say it is any better. I am BRUTALLY honest about what I am thinking/feeling and struggle alot with censorship and levels of "friendship"...so, basically, I tell all!

No easy answer...