Processing emotions

I only know what my feelings were/are about a specific situations DAYS later. And then get stuck with that particular emotion for days, sometimes even years...

Don't know whether you finished writing your post, if so, let me know!

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?

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?

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.

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.

Plastic said:

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.

Plastic said:

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.

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...