Processing emotions

Hello all 

I am writing a post on processing emotions today - just reaching out find out some techniques some use, good books to look into. I have non existence understanding of processing emotions. The only time I know I am feeling something is when I have tears, or I have an outburst, but then I still don’t know why.

Wishing you all well and hope to hear back from you!

  • Hmm it is confusing. It's like the difference between a white lie and a standard lie (a black lie?!) One has good intentions and the other is mean... well usually anyway.

  • Its me again, sorry! I want to add things as i think sbout them. I was thinking just before aboyt ne and my partner if we fall out. We have been together 15 years and moved in with each other 8 years ago. We are still learning from each other. We have never had other partners so have no other relationship experience.

    I do remember in our younger days if we fell out i would often cry. I think this was seen at the time as me being an emotional female. I now feel on reflection i was crying because i was frustrated. I know i have thought about events after they have happened and thought "i should have said this or that" ...i think its only in the past couple of years i have learned to assert and value my own opinion. Even more so since i have read Sarah Hendrickx.

    Im just wondering if this frustration was down tp a) not fully understanding the situation or my own feelings b) being unable to express my feelings.

    I know as a child i would often snap at my mum. Or slam doors drawers etc. (Again if i were to mention this to friends i can bet they would say "oh i was the same" but im tslking anout as a child not teenager) i am ashamed to say i do remember hitting her ..tound the legs i think...more than once. i feel this was maybe a way to vent frustration if i was misunderstood.  I would never speak to my dad like that though! I was seen as good as gold by everyone else.

    Can anyone relate to any of this?

  •  I do feel emotions, but I often have to write my thoughts down to trigger them, I don't know why. It seems to "open the floodgates." Sometimes they come out a lot stronger than I was expecting. It can be about something recent, but also works on events from my past. (not just negative emotions, positive ones as well.) It feels like it was nearly all on hold until that point.

    Music can set me off as well, so I deliberately use music to improve my mood. I also search for happy or inspiring images online, and use them as my desktop background. (Mostly nature pictures, with occasional pokemon.) Every little helps.

  • I agree about changing counsellor. After all it is what they usually say when you start therapy. If we don't match then you can change counsellor etc.

  • That sounds like the biological processes your body undertakes when preparing for fight or flight which comes through stress and anxiety. Can you take any time off or speak to someone at work aboyt it?

  • Thank you for both your comments. Regarding body language and facial expressions. I dont know if i have a problem with these or not. Altho i can think of examples where i have missed something because i didnt "decipher" the body language there and then. Cue embarrassment upon realisation. Ive always thought i have good eye contact but then i know of sometimes where it makes me uncomfortable or in a group situation  feel like theres something im supposed to know but dont.

    I feel that 5 sessions of CBT wasnt enough. It was too basic and i feel like a lot of what they covered i was already doing (identifying thoughts and triggers etc). The questionnaires were just a tick box exercise to show evidence. With the questions though, it was always about how often you had the anxiety, not the severity of it. Id had a massive panic attack one day but was supposed to score myself low cos itd only happened the once? Silly.

    Its difficult cos i dont know if i have these emotional delays or not but i think i do. But ive onlystarted pondering it since reading about AS. I will take the test on your link, Graham. Thanks

  • My experience of CBT was mixed. The first two times, I just didn't really get it, though to be fair, both of them said they felt there was an underlying condition beneath my depression (it only took another 15 years to find out that it is autism!)

    The third time was good, though I did get rather lucky. Another worker had already suggested autism to me at this point, so I mentioned it and they realised that one of the counsellors had worked with autistic people before. With her, it was loads better - as Graham said, it really does depend on the counsellor. The main difference was that she didn't misinterpret my emotional delays or having trouble talking about them - a lot of counsellors think that it's denial or being uncooperative, when you're really just trying to be honest. Instead of seeing them as a problem, she made helping me with them the main point of the counselling.

    So, don't be too quick to give up on counselling, but at the same time, if you see a counsellor that just doesn't "get it", don't be afraid to say so and tell them why; sometimes it'll make a difference, other times it's best to ask for another counsellor, or just walk away.

    that sounds like a lazy, imprecise way to procure ‘evidence based outcomes.’ 

    From what that counsellor said, and her irreverent attitude to them, I got the impression that they're as much for staff monitoring as they are patient monitoring - gotta justify the funding and all that. We used to have quite a laugh about how pointless some of the questions were, and she barely looked at them after the first couple of sessions. On a scale of zero to five what? Ounces? Miles? If I feel incredibly anxious all the time, how can I feel "more anxious than usual?". I used to wonder whether she was ever threatened with the sack for not managing to "cure" me of my autism because my stats looked dodgy.

  • I’m having problems with emotions too,have a meltdown now for 8 days now,bad headaches always feeling angry can’t concentrate can’t hear properly everything is too much,I feel I want to end it all,don’t want to go back to work anymore,noise is also a problem even in a quiet room is noisy 

  • Hi i hope you dont think i am hijacking your post but seeing as its title is Processing Emotions i wanted to add some of my own comments and am looking for advice.

    Im not diagnosed but think i may have AS. i have had a very difficult year emotionally was diagnosed with general anxiwty disorder and was referred for CBT by my GP. 

    I was sceptical about it but attended all 5 sessions. Its an evidenced based therapy where you fill out a questionnaire at the start of each session rating how you feel and how your condition is impacting on your life. You get about 5 minutes for this. I think the idea is that they can see you are getting better with the therapy as your score decreases.

    I would fill the questionnaire in but because i had waited so long for the appointmenrs that by the time i had started i was in a relatively good place (the more severe elememtsof anxiety had subsided but there was still that non-specifuc underlying feeling) so it was hard for me to identify how anxiety was impacting on my life. I woukd fill the questionnaire in with a low score. 

    It was only after the sessions and in particular the last that i would be able to dentify just how it really had affected my life. It was like there was a delay and i needed longer to reflect. Maybe i found it more difficult because other people were there for more specific problems like phobias whereas mine was more general. I feel this is something which has happened before to me. Its only later down the line that i can know or identify how i felt about something. Im not saying everytime but i do feel there is a delay.

    In the end i felt i came away worse off. Why should i be led to believe my thoughts are wrong anyway? Its almost like you are supposed to invalidate your own thoughts as irrational which i disagree with.

    Is this something others can relate to? What about others experience of CBT?

  • So sorry to hear you are not feeling well today @NAS39067... I do hope it's going a bit better now.

    I know what it's like, although I've been on sick leave for more than a year. For exactly those sensory overload reasons. I'm 44 now and it seems to be getting worse. 

    I suppose you know what works for you when you are experiencing sensory overload? For me it's first calming down, often lying on the bed without any noise. And long walks in nature help too. When I was younger I could cope work life by running, yoga, meditation etc.

    Now sometimes it's medication but it helps temporarily and I take it rarely.

  • I’ve just had to come home from work early today still on a meltdown,I don’t know what to do anymore,wandering around in a daze not knowing where I am,everything is bad today,noise especially and sense of smell too,even being in a quiet room is noisy,I want to give up work but I don’t know how,my Aspergers seems to be getting worse,I’m 47 but feel like a 12year old in my mind.

  • Yes, I have started to get a little better at this, too; in part, simply by knowing now that it is there and what it is, and also thanks to a lot of help from a therapist. She was trained to counsel autistic people, which made a huge difference from previous counsellors I'd seen. Whereas the others assumed that my lack of emotional communication was either conscious suppression or trauma induced, she realised that I was genuinely perplexed by my own state of mind, and that "I don't know" was an honest answer, not evasion.

    This has particularly helped me to deal with anxiety and shut-downs. I now run through a little check-list occasionally; consciously making a point to read my arousal level, speaking volume, heart rate, and other signs, so that I can catch sources of stress much sooner. This has been a huge problem for me in the past - my anxiety levels would have to be very severe before considering doing something about it, because I wouldn't notice the slow build up of the physical and behavioural signs. A former colleague used to baffle me sometimes by walking up and giving me a little pep-talk about staying calm every now and then. I'd wonder what he was on about for a quite a while sometimes before realising that I was quite obviously acting like a very stressed out person; and sure enough, those would be the days when I felt most burned out by being at work.

  • What's puzzling is I'm a non-identical twin - so I had a working model to measure & copy 24/7 and I still failed to learn to properly mimic emotions.

  • I don't seem to have any way to describe my emotions

    This is exactly the reason that it is called "alexithymia". The formal term derives from Greek; "a" = "not", "lexi" = "words", and "thymia" = "emotional themes" (where the word "theatre" comes from, too.) To people looking in from the outside, of course, this is the only really noticeable consequence of alexithymia - the term doesn't really capture our own confusion about our emotions, or the time-lag often experienced between an event and it's effect on us.

    Is this common?

    For autistic people, relatively, yes. Alexithymia is present in any population, but autistics are significantly more likely to be alexithymic, and if they are, significantly more likely to experience it more severely. It is associated with other conditions too, for example, anxiety, depression, dissociative conditions, PTSD etc.; which may go some way to explain its prevalence for autistic people given our predisposition to high stress levels.

    There are a couple of other reasons that it might be more likely for autistic people too.

    Firstly; when a child is developing their ability to read their own emotions, much of this is done by comparison with other people; making correlations between their own behaviour and that of others to learn the shared language necessary to communicate those experiences, how to categorise them, and how to estimate their strength. So difficulty in perceiving the state of mind of other people could be leading to difficulties reading our own, and problems finding common language that we can use to talk about them. You might say that alexithymics have trouble empathising with themselves.

    Secondly; not all emotions get from our subconscious to our conscious awareness directly in the brain. To some extent, we read our emotions by recognising the physical symptoms of them (temperature, heart rate, arousal level, etc.) I have read a few science papers finding a correlation between impairments in reading the body's sensory signals (interoception) and alexithymia. Autistic people are likely to have sensory sensitivities (or insensitivities), so again, this suggests a mechanism for increased alexithymia in autistic people. Certainly, my own experience is that my sense of physical embodiment is poor, and people around me can often detect  that I'm stressed out or sad long before I can myself - they can see the physical expressions of the emotion before I'm conscious that my behaviour has even changed, sometimes.

    When I say that I have never experienced a certain emotion, it would probably be more accurate to say that I just don't know whether I have or not.  I may have done, but simply not noticed the associated behaviour, or not recognised my behaviour as falling into that category - just as I find the signs difficult to see in other people, so can't read their emotional state.

  • I used to have that issue - sometimes even days later I wouldn't understand the emotions I'd been feeling at the time.

    Since being diagnosed I'm a little closer to Evan's ability to realise I'm experiencing an emotion, analyse it, and now to an extent I can often choose how to let it effect me.

    This is particularly the case with slower build emotions - frustration, distress at excessive noise, a general unease at extended social engagement. Because I can now spot those emotions growing I can both constrain their ability to cause a loss of control and also address the cause before they get too much.

    I still can't tell what the hell is going on at times though, and sometimes I do just emotionally overload and misbehave. Embarrassing after the event but not under my control at the time.

  • By mimicking, I'm faking it 24/7. How is one charade different to another?

    The 'real' me is invisible - if I didn't present a user interface they would not know I exist - and I need an interface to deal with the NTs on their level.

  • For me it takes max 3 years before I am convinced they have 'found me out' in a job. I then get so stressed out with the conviction of pretending to work that I can no longer perform.

    Or 4 years max for relationships. In general because this one sticks :-D or puts up with me. Also possible.

    I haven't named my modes but should as it helps organise them in my head. Useful for future purposes.

    There is a mode that is just plain BS to me but works well for presentations. You use lots of expressions on your face and use lots of gestures and your words only have to make a bit of sense.

    But with all these modes I feel like a manipulator.

    You use the right mode and manipulate others. It is fake whereas the others seem real or so. Yet, I can only function that way.

    Don't you feel like a manipulator?

  • 'Mode 3 user interface' = perky - works well for interviews-  I appear super-bright and interactive so I always get offered every job - it puts the ball in my court so I can panic later about if I'm capable of doing the job.

    It's pure performance art.

    I've found it takes about 5 years in a job before I am 'found out' and they start to really abuse me.

    Engage anger mode - user interface 000. Switch off & disengage before ejecting..

  • I like your way of describing emotions :-) 

    It is largely similar for me. I, for example, have never had the emotion 'jealousy', and also only seem to know anger and it is bad. Straight through the roof. 

    Other than that I have different modes. One for job interviews (find out quickly what they are looking for), one for groups (laugh a lot, and pray it ends soon), one for one-on-one contact (ask questions and get them to talk), etc.

    Worked well for me until most of them went disfunctional...

  • I'm quite liking this thread - it's got me thinking. I''ve often tried to self-analyse about emotions. I refer to myself as like Data - sort of nearly human but missing some vital part.

    The more I think about it, I don't seem to have any way to describe my emotions - I feel anger when I'm overloaded and when people create problems for me for no reason - but I cannot really say I feel any other emotion - I live in a sort of 'meh' state of 'not angry' ( anger/ ) mimmicing NTs and some might say I appear 'happy' but I'm really just fitting in with how I measure the situation and then selecting 'mode 6 user interface = smile' to match my surroundings - like an octopus changing its colour scheme. There's no emotion linked to it.

    Is this common?