Emotional on/off switch

Sorry for the delay in reply.

As much as you may feel this is something you want from an outside perspective, it's a very heavy price to pay losing part of yourself to avoid dealing with life's hurdles. 

This a subject is widely open for debate on whether its even a real thing among Medical professionals whom cannot comprehend it.

Just as you wish you could turn you're emotions off a will, I know at times I wish didn't know I could pay an Emotional toll to turn it all off. You're not alone

If any of you could offer advice on how to be able to switch my emotions on and the off would be the biggest help in the world I have been struggling my whole life with Asperger’s and never figured out how to do this at will any advice would go farther than anything else I have been give to be able to do this 

I absolutely do this too, and it’s literally part of why I’m on this website right now  I’m aware I do it, but for me it doesn’t generally come back. If I switch it off and focus on what needs to be done it’s like I lose access to it in a way. Even when my Dad had a heart attack and I was the only one there and called an ambulance. The only time I came close to a full emotional response was when I was back at home to get things for him to take back to the hospital and on the phone to my best friend, and she could hear I was about to start crying and tried to help by encouraging me to focus on the things I needed to get for him. I remember a sort of sense of wistfulness that I was going to lose the opportunity to actually feel what had happened, but it went away and never really came back.

Yes, totally. I may be anxious for weeks about quite small things but when something serious happens it is 100% about the practical side with zero emotions. My dad died in 2020 from Covid, very unexpected. It caused me to reach burnout but that was 100% over the mountain of practical things I had to do as the only child and my mum was not capable. As soon as I see a crisis all I look for is a practical way out of it, emotions can wait until later. 

I really wish I had the ability to switch off my emotions at will, particularly if I'm upset about something fairly major. In my case, I will feel completely consumed by my emotions, to the extent that I struggle to function, even if I attempt to do something to distract myself and/or pass the time. The only time I seem to get any respite from my emotions is when I'm sleeping.

Thank you for your reply. I found this really insightful

Over recent years anxiety has become more difficult to isolate, I have to full shutdown take a break from it. 

Yeah I do this. And yeah it can be very helpful but the aftereffects are not great. It sometimes also gets 'stuck' which is unfortunate because absolutely no emotions over a long period of time is not good for my interpersonal relationships or emotional or mental state when it switches off. I'm less good at individually switching emotions on an off, it tends to be more of an all or nothing deal. The only exception is anxiety which likes to slip through the gaps but I can usually shove it down again.

I can relate to this - As a child and teenager I often appeared unnaturally calm in the face of crisis or I appeared to recover relatively quickly from loss- I remember that I was able to not feel during those times. But it did eventually catch up with me - I cried and grieved a lot about the death of my grandpa (actually adopted grandpa- but the best one ever) only years later- For me those feelings that were shut off at the time had to resurface eventually- I don't think the shutting off of feelings was a conscious act. Now, I am actually unable to do this shutting off anymore- not sure if that is a good thing or not. 

We need that ability to detach into innate analytical reasoning. It’s crucial because we are arrested by our emotions and if we cannot escape they will sweep us up under a flood and we will drown. Most of us deal with alexithymeia  anyway, and battling the inability to understand how we “feel” is exhausting  switching into Reasoning Through a Problem with the analytical part of the brain is how we normally operate  finding solutions is how our reward centre is triggered. Sometimes best to cry away the tears and then get up and fix the problem  

We don’t actually switch off emotions at whim, it appears like that. There are particularities which we can isolate from and others we cannot. Part of this has to do with being invested in the function and exchange of an other  rather than what it “means”. A loss will leave us stranded as if we’ve been dropped into the middle of a forest without backup. We switch into survival mode. And one needs a clear head to survive. 

Rejection is more severing than loss. It’s intentional. It is far easier to cope with losing a pet as death is beyond our control and immanent than intentional betrayal or withholding compassion or calculated cruelty. Humans are not designed for isolation but connexion. 

This is really interesting. I don't know if it's an autistic thing or not but my daughter does the same. It's amazing to watch at times. She can be really emotional or in the middle of a meltdown but if something else is going on, for example, someone in the family has injured themselves, she just stops immediately, and shows no emotion and its pike she's detached herself from the world but is still there helping the injured person. 

Same with the loss of someone or pet. My other children will be extremely upset, cry and will grieve. On the other hand, my daughter with autism, is upset but doesn't show it but continues with life like nothing happened. She doesn't make a deal out of it. 

It's like she can switch off her emotions aswell. I don't know if what I have just said makes any sense so sorry if it doesn't.