Ease of Emotional Arousal

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Perhaps this is related to degree of introversion/extraversion (or maybe it has more to do with neuroticism): ease of emotional arousal. I do not take offense particularly easily; in fact, sometimes I've let people pretty much walk all over me without becoming angry, which probably isn't a good thing. I prefer to stay in the positive emotions: happiness, curiosity, amazement, love, empathy, compassion, wonderment, silliness, and those sorts of things. I do my best to avoid falling into the negative emotions of anger, fear, anxiety, hatred, envy, jealousy, inappropriately impersonal seriousness, boredom, depression, sadness, annoyance, etc. I try to take the quotidian hassles in stride: For example, Sunday night my mom, stepfather, and I went to a dairy/ice cream place to get ice cream. They served my mom and stepfather's ice creams first and told me the shake would be out soon. I waited patiently, but eventually my mom figured they forgot it. I went up and asked them if it was coming out, and they did forget it among the orders, but that was fine with me. We weren't in any rush, and my mom and stepfather usually take longer to finish their smaller desserts than I do anyway. When people insult me, I usually ignore them or sometimes make an angry face to show them that was unwelcome and let it go at that. I really dislike getting so worked up over trivial things. On the other hand, a sudden noise does cause my pulse to go up for a brief moment, but I have trained myself to rapidly let my heartbeat go back to its resting rate. That probably was helped along from the bullying I received on my baseball team as a kid when people pretended to throw baseballs at me to watch me "flinch." I learned to inhibit immediate emotional responses from that abuse, for better or worse.

I prefer the emotions of happiness, love, and silliness; but those don't come especially easy, either. I relish them and hold onto them when they do, though. I prefer to focus on rolling with the punches and finding positive aspects in even the worst of situations because it works best for me. I can also easily separate a calm, intellectual discussion from a more emotionally laden conversation and avoid becoming offended or disgusted while discussing a wide range of ideas that may be controversial.

I get aroused in either direction fairly easily due to hormone inbalance (stupid hormones). But normally, without that complicating the picture, I would be more likely to become negatively aroused more quickly. Especially anger with inanimate objects and just little frustrations.

Over the years, I've had to train myself not to cry or have any response at insults or critism thrown at me lest I become a target for more abuse. It resulted in me bottling up so much anger and sadness it contributed to depression and anxiety. I try not to suppress my emotions whenever it's appropriate but it's hard, sometimes, to discern if a situation permits me to be more candid or if it's better to be discreet.

I think that's why Aspies find emotional expression harder because we don't know how to interpret surroundings for the "right" response, thereby playing it safe by showing none at all. Speaking up for myself when treated disrespectfully was difficult as I couldn't find the right words to express my discontent, not because I felt any less offended.

And to come off as a stuttering "fool" was worse than the ill treatment. Now, as I age, I find that I get so ticked-off and impatient with other people's behavior I don't care what they think of me, removing the insecurity that made my brain freeze in mid-sentence.

My emotions are so malleable it isn't funny. I don't normally take offense at something someone says to me, but that is mostly conditioning from High School when kids would make fun of me and I would just ignore them while saying to myself "remember the humility of St. Francis." Other things, however, often affect me quite easily.

I will get tears in my eyes if I hear a piece of music that I consider beautiful, even if it is the 5th or 6th time I've heard it that day. This is really embarassing when it happens to me on the bus. If I accidently bump into someone, I'll feel guilty for the rest of the day. In some ways I'm glad I didn't go into the millitary like I was going to. While I know that the structured millitary life is actually good for Aspies, I can only imagine the guilt complex I would have gotten. (I feel guilty when I massacre a bunch of peasants in the game Warcraft!) Fortunately for me I was going to school for physics, and the millitary didn't want me because at that time the first George Bush was trying to move most of the millitary's research into the private sector.

Always raging...frequently devastated.

i haven't really cried since i had the year from hell in 2003. there've been plenty of times when i wanted/needed to, but i just can't seem to manage it, for more than a couple of seconds (literally) anyway.

can do anger, nooooo problem, though

I don't believe "neurosis" is used any longer. It's an obsolete term. It would have mostly referred to those now diagnosed with Personality Disorders.

But nevertheless, point taken.

I get upset and angry easily, but thanks to horrible group therapy, I was taught to repress all my emotions, so no one knows. I just end up crying myself to sleep virtually every night. Fun, yes?

In personality psychology, Paul Costa and Robert McCrae developed a five-factor model of personality in 1987: extraversion (on a continuum with introversion), neuroticism (on a continuum with emotional stability), agreeableness (on a continuum with hostility), conscientiousness (on a continuum with impulsivity), and openness to experience (on a continuum with simplicity) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_five_personality_traits>. I found an interesting article describing extraversion, introversion, and neuroticsm in relation to sports:

bloody interesting, neanthumain. but i find the last bit (re: athletes) a little simplistic - it's almost as though they gave up on the research at that point, and just suggested the first thing which came into their heads...

what about athletes having a modfied endocrine system, cos that affects mood, general health, etc. and cases of athletes having changes in processes affected by hormones (sex drive, menstruation, etc.) are common (or, at least, well known - might by apocryphal rather than documented - can i remember this morning...? sigh. need caffeine...).

I seem to get upset more easily than happy, but both are pretty easy to trigger in me. Anger, sadness, and happiness. I'm incredably moody.