Questions

Chris said:

i have started to identify my emotions to myself which is very tricky as i keep thinking every emotions i have is anxiety

I can really resonate with this. It's only since I had CBT that I realised some emotions may not be anxiety but they give me the same feeling. I think I work stuff out a lot in my head rather than using emotions. This might be one of the reasons why I over think as much as I do.

Your cats are beautiful.

I always thought I knew exactly what I was feeling the same way anybody knows what they are feeling...they think about the situation and decide what the appropriate emotion is and feel that...sort of, or else they feel it and then think about the situation and then decide what it might be reasonable to call it.

Prior to working out I was autistic, I had no clue there was any other way.  

There are some emotions I used to feel quite intensely before the menopause; love, compassion, sadness.  Now they are there and still profound but seem a bit muted somehow.  The only thing I feel with any intensity is fear.  There are some emotions I don't think I've ever had; hatred for a person, jealousy, vengefulness - I don't understand those at all.  They serve no purpose and no situation makes them logical.

Same goes for other people's emotions.  I think through the situation and what I know of them as a person.  I can then see that something must be making them happy, making them sad etc and offer support accordingly.  Again, I had no clue I was any different to anyone else in that regard.  

It's all a bit of a mystery to me, how NTs go about this stuff.

In the end, for all my assessment says I have alexithymia, I think I do know what I feel very well, but I think that there must be a time lag of perhaps moments or minutes behind NTs in getting there, since working it out intellectually must take longer than somehow magically being able to tell from some physical response.  I really don't get many physical clues at all. I can't tell if I am about to cry, for instance, much before I actually cry.

I was never really aware of how I processed emotions until I read about AS. I can be a very emotional person and feel them very strongly. It seems im either at 0 ot 100 and i only really know what it is when its getting near to 100. I can be a bit like a sponge with those close to me and 2 friends have commented on this. I have to be careful not  to get sucked in by other people's negative emotions.

I did read on one autism website how we can be prone to mirroring others' emotions. My partner said this was quite true of me. But on the one hand I can be very emotional, on the other,  things which seem to set an emotional response in others I don't seem to get. I often think others are making a fuss over nothing. I also think my recognising in others and how to handle it has got better over the years as ive learned from others' responses towards me when I've had a problem (eg from the other women at work)

In the past I've recognised that I used to cry as a way to release emotions which I didn't really understand properly.

I don't think I feel happiness a great deal but do feel contented and I think that's more realistic with life anyway.

I do think my default negative emotion is anxiety and probably my MO. ...it might be other things masquerading as anxiety but I think AS people are more prone to getting anxiety from things other people wouldn't get or for different reasons. Even thinking about emotions confuses me because is it a thought or physical response or both? It is confusing. 

I was never really aware of how I processed emotions until I read about AS. I can be a very emotional person and feel them very strongly. It seems im either at 0 ot 100 and i only really know what it is when its getting near to 100. I can be a bit like a sponge with those close to me and 2 friends have commented on this. I have to be careful not  to get sucked in by other people's negative emotions.

I did read on one autism website how we can be prone to mirroring others' emotions. My partner said this was quite true of me. But on the one hand I can be very emotional, on the other,  things which seem to set an emotional response in others I don't seem to get. I often think others are making a fuss over nothing. I also think my recognising in others and how to handle it has got better over the years as ive learned from others' responses towards me when I've had a problem (eg from the other women at work)

In the past I've recognised that I used to cry as a way to release emotions which I didn't really understand properly.

I don't think I feel happiness a great deal but do feel contented and I think that's more realistic with life anyway.

I do think my default negative emotion is anxiety and probably my MO. ...it might be other things masquerading as anxiety but I think AS people are more prone to getting anxiety from things other people wouldn't get or for different reasons. Even thinking about emotions confuses me because is it a thought or physical response or both? It is confusing. 

no i never was aware of my emotions until i suppressed a life time of them, now i just want to learn my emotions in a way so i dont suppress my emotions and be able to gain some tricks at regulating them as they sure dont come naturally to me