Expressing Feelings

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How can some autistic people can express themselves well and some can’t?

Because autism is a spectrum disorder, and many people on the spectrum are high-masking. Sometimes I can't really tell if I'm doing something naturally or it's because of masking, like having a pleasant two-way conversation without saying anything unintentionally rude or inappropriate.

I find it easy to express my feelings and I find it a little too easy to show my feelings. It is what it is. I don't expect myself to have a stiff upper-lip like the rest of my family. I would be expecting too much of myself, bordering on self abuse.

In my case, it's an alexithymia thing. Not every autistic person has this going on with them, but a decent number of people who have alexithymia are autistic. For me, I'm terrible at recognizing my emotions beyond angry, amused, or sad (though I rarely feel sad). Mostly I feel nothing and that is where I am most comfortable. I can't really express what I'm feeling if I have no idea what I am feeling or if I am even feeling anything at all. It gets damn near impossible for me to know what is going on with me if I experience multiple emotions at once. My brain either gets so overloaded that I start to shut down or I completely detach from the feelings and go back to feeling nothing...like a switch gets flipped in my head. Yeah. Emotions are not my strong suit. Add onto that, that I'm a private person in a lot of ways and I'm not crazy about sharing my feelings with people and yeah (i totally chicken out a lot of the time and do not share), it adds up to me not being a great communicator where emotions are concerned.

Emotions are a mystery to me. I understand the basic ones but they can easily overwhelm me. I much prefer to remain on intellectual ground and not have to express emotion. This is why I avoid all the threads on WP involving emotion, too much of a mine field. So I just take part in factual threads or game threads. I'm quite a bit like Star Trek's Spock regarding emotions.

I get too emotional when I'm overwhelmed by stress or anxiety or when my senses are overloaded.

Some of us had bad experiences growing up like being bullied & our family & adults in authority like teachers not understanding us & thinking we were being rude & mean when we were not trying to be. That contributes to some of us being closed off. Also some of us are a lot better at expressing ourselves online(like posting on WP) than in person because we have time to think & plan out what we want to say & also embarrassing ourselves & making ourselves vulnerable to others online is safer & less embarrassing than doing it offline in person.

As far as those damn emotions are concerned, I'm a lot like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. I've spent the past three years trying to learn logic and mindfulness and it hasn't sunk in for me. Some people are born with a phone in their hand. I was born with a gingerbread heart in my chest. I've made peace with my emotions about a week ago. The mindfulness training didn't work, so I had no other choice.