A question about expression of emotions

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I read about aspie people not being able to name emotions very well or have trouble with expressing them in appropriate ways. My emotions are the opposite. I have very intense emotions, I feel some sort of emotion all the time and can name it just fine. But I do have meltdowns and stuff where anger/sadness overtakes me and I loose control, and I've had shutdowns too where it's like my brain just quits under stress.

I am diagnosed as Bipolar because of this, and as a kid as Emotionally Impaired because of daily meltdowns I guess you could call them (extreme tantrum/anger outbursts over almost nothing).

Anyway, I was just asking about expression of emotions in aspies I guess.

I've been told that I have a very expressive face, and that it's easy for people to tell what I'm feeling. I also feel very intense emotions.

My emotions are very intense and more often than not don't even have a name so there's not much I can do with them. So my usual reaction is to cry or throw a big tantrum type thing (oh but of course, couldn't have been something else could it? nooo ) And it's usually over something stupid.
For that reason I do not like my emotions, we do not get on. I do try to run away from them, for example if I see something that affects me I have to make a joke/sarcastic comment or smirk because I just don't want the burden of having a big, annoying emotion getting in the way. I end up looking harsh and uncaring, but I care too much.
Even positive emotion can be a source of annoyance when there's loads going on at once and I can't even pinpoint what they are.

I think i get very intense emotions too but do sometimes have trouble describing them. I wasn't aware until recently that I had problems with them til an ex girlfriend said I showed no emotion when we were going out, i thought i was the opposite.

I am not sure if I know how to respond to this, so if I mess it all up and miss the point, I apologize in advance. It has been a weird day and my thoughts are currently scattered all over...

I do have some trouble naming my emotions or the emotions of others. This has been on my mind a lot over the past few months, because for a long time I really thought people did not feel things like annoyed and angry as different things. I thought they just picked a word that was appropriate to the situation. I think I only have three things that I feel; yay, boo, or nothing (not the same as numb... numb is what I am when I am put on mood stabilizers or anti psychotics... numb is the scary calm before the violent storm). I might feel less yay over one thing than I do another, but it still feels the same, just more or less of the same. I might use the word like to express moderate enjoyment of a thing, but unless I am really into it in the first place, it will likely blow right past me and never get to the point of being something I say I like. I do not do many things in moderation. I am working on this...

I had a therapist ask me to keep this chart... I called it the angry squares. She wanted me to pick apart my anger and rate it on a scale of 1-10 when something happened and made me upset. I found this very difficult because my anger is not 1-10. My anger is 5 or 10. It is either something I can or cannot control. There is no 1 for me where boo is concerned, I go from zero to needing to keep it in check in a matter of seconds. But even when I can control it, it still messes me all up. I got angry today and maintained, but I had to go hide and take a three hour nap to reset myself and I still have a headache, my stomach is still upset and I still do not even know exactly what part of the ordeal made me angry in the first place. I just know I got all messed up and needed to go away before I started screaming. I call that maintaining because nothing got broken. I wonder now if I shutdown. I do not know.

I do have a hard time expressing my emotions, mostly because if I am feeling something to an unstoppable extreme, I cannot make myself stop at that moment and think about what I am feeling and how I am supposed to react and behave appropriately. I cannot stop myself. I need to go away until I can stop and think again. My husband right now might say that I am feeling calm because I am sitting here quietly, calmly, typing, but I would say I am feeling nothing now because there is no yay and I am no longer boo. I know the correct thing for me to tell him if he asks how I am doing is 'fine' or 'ok', but that is only because people get really bothered if you tell them you are feeling nothing. I find it all confusing. It seems the same to me. I do not know how to understand it is different, but people say it is...

If I do take some time, I can dissect a situation and look at it as a whole and fill in the right words to express what I was feeling at a given time. Like if I was feeling acceptably yay over a new book finally coming in the mail... I can later tell someone that I was feeling anticipation, satisfaction, excitement, happiness over it all. I might use all of those words (except anticipation) interchangeably or to different people when relating the event, to not be redundant, but in the end, to me it is all 5 on the yay version of the angry square... unless I ran out of my front door in my underwear, screaming in full yay mode, pounced the fed ex guy and snatched the box from him while he was coming up to the walkway... that would get a 10.

Heh, I'm on enough of those I should be numb... the doctors are considering uping my dose to see if it would help.

Anyway, thanks for your answers.

I am med paranoid now, so that made me shudder a bit. That whole meds roller coaster ride can be a challenge. If they do opt to tinker with your stuff, I hope it goes well for you.

I have difficulties expressing and labeling my emotions. I tell someone the situation and they keep suggesting how I might feel until they come up with the suggestion that matches my feelings.

I usually have funky emotional reactions. I find some things that are not funny to be ironicly funny. I dont feel grief when someone dies or a pet dies. I dont feel anything when I go to a funeral...just kinda perky like I usaully am. If I do feel grief for a loss of a loved one...it happens 2-3 years later...suddenly like bolt of lightning and then I cry my eyes out, and then I am all better...perky again.
When someone is mean to me...I dont feel anger. I feel sad for me and for them. When someone is mean to someone I love...then I am very angry and protective. Sometimes I laugh for no reason but because I like the way it feels.

I also get every emotional...2-4 emotions going on at once, then I get confused as to what I am feeling. Mom gave me a mood chart with yellow faces citing each mood and I had a magnetic square that would go around whatever I felt. That failed, half the time...the emotion I was feeling was not on there...and secondly I needed 2 or three squares at any given moment.

But for the most part when I am happy...I am very happy, when I am sad...I am very sad...when I am pissed I am very pissed and the best part is that I can go from happy to sad to pissed in 5 seconds flat. I had a boyfriend who was kinda mischevious and thought my mood swings were funny...so he would say something to make me mad to watch me go from 0 to B**** in less than a millisecond and then he would laugh and tell me that I was cute when I was mad.

I also never felt true guilt for anything I ever done until I was 17 years old. I remember that I felt bad for what I done (broke a promise) but I felt weirdly good that I felt guilty because I never felt that emotion before. Now days I feel guilty for things that I have no control over and dont even have a good reason to feel guilty.

Sometimes an emotion will come over me like a tsunami

In crowds, I feel nothing but my brain shutting down...focus on what is right in front of me and hope I get to where I need to go before I fall apart.

when I am alone...I feel peace...no matter what is going on.

I have 2 worlds, my inner world (which is endlessly facinating to me) and the world around me (which I have to cope with) Trying to be social when I really want to be left alone to my own devices creates all kinds of conflicting emotions many of which I feel at once

Same. I tend to express some of the more negative emotions more... negatively, for lack of a better term, when they overwhelm me for a moment.
But the positive emotions, they have the same reactions, just not as negative
But then even senses, like pain, both physical pain and emotional...

But I try to hide my negative emotions, like sadness or melancholy. And people think I am heartless when I don't sympathize with them when they tell me something sad, or when I tell them something sad that happened to me and I pretend to laugh it off like it's nothing, and they ask me how I can just not care about it...

Honestly, I do care, but I don't like to show it. Or sometimes I just don't know how to show it. I don't like to appear sensitive or weak even though I am at heart. And then they end up thinking I am hard-hearted.

The only time I show those emotions is when I am too overwhelmed by them to keep them in, like when I went to Halloween Horror Nights for the first time, I cried because it was loud and the chainsawers were all up in my face and it was scary/annoying.
And when I saw certain movies, like ET or Up or Wall•E.
And also when my best friends' feel that way. Or when I see someone being made fun of or yelled at or put down because of unpleasant memories that I become overwhelmed with when I see that.

I only experience emotions in an extreme and rudimentary sense. I have no mid-range emotions.
This has caused great problems in my life.

Describes me to a tee. After growing up practically mute (on the last day of class my 11th grade math teacher said he'd been counting and that I'd spoken 9 words the entire year) I went through a reckless phase ( lasted ...? a few years at least) where I would express every emotion and speak any thought. Though it was sometimes fun, there were far too many times when I said and did things that were stupid and embarrassing. So now in my 40s I'm sort of back to where I started. I fear my lack of control over emotions and keep them numbed out.

No mid-range emotions- that's a good description. Until I can learn how to manage emotions, they'll be all or nothing. Some people have the knack of being able to express emotions easily, in a healthy way. It seems to give them a constant flow of energy.

I'm not really sure about my emotions, or how to label them. A lot of people on WP talk about having issues with anger, and having meltdowns. I don't have that.

I have a feeling that I suppose is tenderness when I see my kids sleeping, or otherwise looking sweet and peaceful. I have a picture of my favorite actor on my computer wallpaper, and when I close the windows on my computer, I see the picture, and it sometimes surprises me, and I get a feeling like a brightness and clarity in all of my cells. I smile, and feel like I've just taken a breath of really fresh air. That's a nice, positive emotion, or a positive something. I'm not sure what.

Sometimes if I have to do something that I wasn't expecting, like make a phone call to deal with insurance, or some other unpleasant thing, I feel kind of sick inside.

I've never been to a funeral, so I don't know how I would feel in that situation. Surreal, I imagine.

My mom has been to enough therapists in her life to have learned to ask, "How does that make you feel?" Luckily, I think she's finally realized what a futile question that is. Heh heh. I used to try to answer, because it didn't occur to me that maybe I really didn't know. I can describe physical feelings, to some extent. And I know when I feel annoyed or inconvenienced.

Right now I'm feeling a bit of a craving for ice cream, and like I need to pee. And a little tense because my kids just started yelling at each other. I don't really know what the words are for any of that, though.

Yeah, this morning wasn't a fun day.... something small goes wrong, and I'm beating the chair with a shirt.... then I made a bitter mistake that I get cursed out from and I'm hitting inanimate objects... then I saw my past due bill and started uncontrollably crying and randomly telling people I hated them....