Mimicry: Emotions

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Anyone here mimic emotions instead of words? I'm having great difficulty with this one and since the therapists are awaiting the results of the psychological tests (I've done the tests last week), they are hesitating in taking my word for things. With this, I've managed to misinterpret a therapist and unconsciously mimicked him by sounding like a complete psychopath, yet I have difficulty communicating verbally what I had just done or the true emotions that I was feeling - which is despair. This is really exasperating as I'm in group talk-based therapy (cognitive behaviour therapy) and I know I'm having difficulty just managing the therapy, never mind communicating this despair.

So anyone else out there?

I kind of know what you mean. For me mimicing is more verbal. I mimic what I hear on tv or on the radio, quoting movie lines etc. As far as mimicing emotions kind of tough for me cause i generally don't get where people are coming from on that stuff.

I'm not sure. In therapy and other settings, the other party would seem to project onto me a lot, especially in the earlier days. I could not tell what I was feeling, so when people projected, I'd just assume the given role.

I think it was related to alexithymia, because I couldn't translate my own emotions into concepts, let alone words that could be conveyed to another. Therapists would come up with all kinds of theories and I'd just accept them because I had no idea what was going on inside; I did not even learn of AS until I was nearly 30, so didn't have the vocabulary for my AS-specific experiences either.

Fitting in a role is another way it manifests, I suppose. I'd have to think about it more but I do know that I cower into roles as soon as they realise I'm simply not making out what their face is saying.

So it's partly related to not reading their facial expressions?

I know what it's like to have a strong emotion such as despair and not be able to communicate it. In group settings I can't communicate anything at all, let alone strong emotions, because it's too overloading.

One-on-one, I've learnt to pre-script what I want to say. But usually, I write something for them to read beforehand. This is much easier than communicating verbally and they also detect my emotions more accurately. If the emotion is particularly strong, such as despair, it sometimes emerges unexpectedly in the form of a meltdown and gets communicated that way.

im a pretty good mimic