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oak
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30 May 2008, 4:25 pm

Sometimes I've got the feeling that emotions can merely be experienced while reading a book, watching a film or listening to music.

Of course this attitude could be the result of an exaggerated sense of romance. Films and books try to construct a world of exaggerated emotions. But they trigger feelings that I didn't know before I began to watch/read them.

I've got the impression that I mostly lack basic feelings like sadness or even happiness (maybe also the symptom of a depression?). They can only be activated when I watch films and read books. When others are sad, I often just calculate the consequences of the specific situation and evaluate it.

[added] I've inserted this topic into the "Love" forum, because "love" or compassion is the most conspicuous one of these feelings.



(Please excuse my language mistakes, English is not my mother tongue.)


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t0
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30 May 2008, 5:43 pm

oak wrote:
Sometimes I've got the feeling that emotions can merely be experienced while reading a book, watching a film or listening to music.


I find that my emotions are more frequently triggered by these things. In fact, I try to use music to change my emotions through repetitive play of a song that usually triggers my desired emotion.

Other things that have recently triggered my emotions:
- Getting into arguments with my wife or when she gets emotional about something else.
- The Virginia Tech shootings (I am an alumnus)



pakled
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30 May 2008, 8:53 pm

I think they're there, there's probably just not as much being expressed (unless you have pointed ears...;)
of course, the flip side is being hypersensitive to other's emotions, second-guessing the impact of everything you say...;)



Aspie1
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31 May 2008, 1:15 am

I know I have emotions, but I just don't recognize them anymore. Over the many years of being mistreated, I got so good at blocking them out, I don't even know what they're supposed to feel like. So even when I am experiencing an emotion one way or another, I have no idea what it is.



MissConstrue
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31 May 2008, 9:17 am

I have trouble experiencing emotions when they're appropriate. With me I never know if what I'm feeling is the right feeling or the wrong feeling making it harder to emulate what the other person is expressing out of a thought. So on one hand I think when I listen to music or read a book, I know that the book or the music isn't going to judge me when it starts to hit a nerve or an emotion. On the other, this is what makes social life or relationships harder. Expressioning emotions to another are what help a relationship of some sort get started. Not that I don't express some emotion to a person but to a point where I feel immobile or trapped to recognize what another is feeling and to mimic that of which they're feeling. I think this is what most NTs take for granted that people with AS have trouble in.


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ToadOfSteel
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31 May 2008, 1:09 pm

pakled wrote:
(unless you have pointed ears...)


That's probably what it is...