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I have never felt regret, guilt or embarrassment in my life

Elaine Yu

I'm 26 and it's weird because some people around me would say they felt these emotions during such and such situations but I could never feel this. Is this something up with Asperger's Syndrome?

Parents

  • Regret is when I knew I could've made a better decision but didn't. This is different from not knowing what the consequences would be or wishing I had been instructed better. Regretting not studying more for an exam I knew was coming up and aware I just made poor decisions, when in fact, the test was important to me. Regret carries a kind of remorse. However, if I wasn't aware there was more to study (I honestly thought it was just the one book), then it's not regret. It's a kind of sadness though, for what I didn't know. 

    I've felt humiliated by others. I've been given bad advice and followed which put me in an embarrassing situation. I've stumbled through an attempt to explain a thing and completely misinterpreted what I thought I'd read which lead to feeling a push to fix it. 

    Guilt is complex. It can be baked into the human psyche from codes received by society. It can be wildly NeuroTypical, used as a way of creating hierarchy, as it can create a sense of indebtedness, even if an illusion. I can genuinely say I've felt like I've made mistakes or felt under pressure to do things in a way which without another I would've done differently. Laws were created to keep some from doing things they would feel at liberty to do otherwise. I do wonder if a lack of guilt is due to being able to see consequence, see the connexion and therefore causality and not do things one might feel guilty for. It can be confused for many things. Misrepresentation of emotions or misrepresentation of a thing is a very NeuroTypical practice.

    Another possibility might be in a lack of ability to identify emotions. Alexithymia. I didn't discover I had this problem until I was around 28.

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    I do feel like I have Alexithymia to some extent.

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  • in reply to Elaine Yu

    More often than not, this is the case. Even if I were to send you a link to a Colours Wheel, there will still be a disconnect between a feeling and the ability to identify it.

    ProTip!! Here's what I've discovered works even better: Identify a function, an exchange, a system of movement. Use analogy or poetry instead of trying to find the 'feeling'. For instance, "feeling" betrayed, is not actually a feeling, it's the formula or form of what happened. In my not-so-humble opinion, there are a complexity of feelings all tangled up when one has been betrayed. It's never as simple as 'feeling' sad.

    Feeling Lost. Lost is a thing happening, a thing in motion, am I misguided or did I misinterpret something or was I not given a map? 

    I think the dilemma might be the intensity of impact, which fogs up anyones ability to think with clarity and precision, coupled with the fact that language and identifications are already difficult for us, so accessing the part of our brain where we perhaps our connexions aren't as strong as non-autistics is already a bit murky.

    https://neuroclastic.com/autism-autistic-solidarity-theory-of-mind-relating/