It is good to hear you say that you don’t experience it that way, and I may be overly focused on many subtle and incredible minor emotional nuances, many of which probably aren’t really relevant in our specific interaction anyway. Good to know that those are overshadowed by the positive valence, so I’ll just focus less on that.
Yes, I agree with you on the differentiation. Especially to me, the tell-tale signs have been minor changes in behavior, more than distinct or detectable emotional sensations.
If I follow the logic I have proposed so far, and since you can feel emotions, are you sure you don’t have an emotional reference frame for other people—or are you only sure that your reference frame is wholly different from non-autistic people? To me at least there is a big difference between feeling Nothing at all, and feeling Something, but it ‘seems’ useless when it comes to predicting and understanding people. If what you feel is in the latter category, I wonder what you sense or feel, as it might be a social emotion. I’m not asking you to tell me, but I just believe it might potentially be relevant in a social context.
Again, I’m not saying you have a hidden superpower or anything, I just wonder if specific kinds of awareness of emotions might give you a different angle with which to react and understand others and yourself—and that this might also be quite interesting for a willing recipient to connect with.
I mean, if it is related to mirroring or something, I guess what you feel might be unrelated to what is happening with/to the other person—but I do not want to go there yet, at least if you aren’t sure about it.
Ah, I have two major experiences with autism. One was as a support person for an autistic person, but they also had some developmental issues, so there was that as well. I remember feeling as some sort of fixation-point, that they kind of couldn’t maneuver in the world without me. They felt more like a chick dependent on their mother, but as this person was older than me and pretty strong, I did feel a bit anxious that they didn’t understand ‘No’ or ‘Stop’. They only understood being physically taught things by repeated example, to a degree.
The other experience is meeting a young youth sitting alone on a bench outside a church. Not anything special by itself, were it not for the fact that it was getting late at night on the weekends and in a big city. I remember sitting down and saying hello, and kind of just trying to figure out what was going on. Simple questions, which were met initially with short responses, and to me red flags about something being wrong. So I asked more directly what was up, not sure how, but then they suddenly gave me this in depth sitrep of what had happened at home, how they got angry, left the home and came here… I noticed how open they were, the way you talk to close friends, not strangers you just met. The kind of personal and private detailed information you share with close ones, not people you just met. Well, to be on the safe side I decided to accompany them home to where they lived—relieved parents, even drove me home. Later I got a call from that person, asking me if I wanted to step in as their “support person”, as he was sick or something. I said yes, and my experience those hours was that they couldn’t really stop talking about what they were interested in, but I mean that isn’t really unnatural and I found the level of detail quite interesting. All youths have quirks of some kind, and so they weren’t really a person that was hard to be with. However, it wasn’t like they took turns with regard to conversation, and so I noticed that they would answer questions, but not really interact with me in the same way. Again, it isn’t like it is totally uncommon to have youth ignore you and rant on and on about their interests, but they did not read social cues the way I am used to. So I could understand how the people around them, in school especially, didn’t really have the patience or lacked the skill to work with the differences, and so they felt really alone without friends in School.
I mean, my understanding is that understanding emotions also is a social process—but even though nobody would really think I wasn’t emotive, as I am decently sensitive and read cues well, I am learning a lot of emotions I am/were unaware of. I mean, it is probably pretty advanced compared to the norm, but some of it is basic, it was just mislabeled. So I wonder if the same might be the case for you, or if it might be a very different situation.
You are the expert when it comes to you, so even though I hope to write something that fits, it might not be quite right for you—but I do hope it might be useful nevertheless, as it is to me.
Hi again,
It is good to hear you say that you don’t experience it that way, and I may be overly focused on many subtle and incredible minor emotional nuances, many of which probably aren’t really relevant in our specific interaction anyway. Good to know that those are overshadowed by the positive valence, so I’ll just focus less on that.
Yes, I agree with you on the differentiation. Especially to me, the tell-tale signs have been minor changes in behavior, more than distinct or detectable emotional sensations.
If I follow the logic I have proposed so far, and since you can feel emotions, are you sure you don’t have an emotional reference frame for other people—or are you only sure that your reference frame is wholly different from non-autistic people?
To me at least there is a big difference between feeling Nothing at all, and feeling Something, but it ‘seems’ useless when it comes to predicting and understanding people. If what you feel is in the latter category, I wonder what you sense or feel, as it might be a social emotion. I’m not asking you to tell me, but I just believe it might potentially be relevant in a social context.
Again, I’m not saying you have a hidden superpower or anything, I just wonder if specific kinds of awareness of emotions might give you a different angle with which to react and understand others and yourself—and that this might also be quite interesting for a willing recipient to connect with.
I mean, if it is related to mirroring or something, I guess what you feel might be unrelated to what is happening with/to the other person—but I do not want to go there yet, at least if you aren’t sure about it.
Ah, I have two major experiences with autism. One was as a support person for an autistic person, but they also had some developmental issues, so there was that as well. I remember feeling as some sort of fixation-point, that they kind of couldn’t maneuver in the world without me. They felt more like a chick dependent on their mother, but as this person was older than me and pretty strong, I did feel a bit anxious that they didn’t understand ‘No’ or ‘Stop’. They only understood being physically taught things by repeated example, to a degree.
The other experience is meeting a young youth sitting alone on a bench outside a church. Not anything special by itself, were it not for the fact that it was getting late at night on the weekends and in a big city.
I remember sitting down and saying hello, and kind of just trying to figure out what was going on. Simple questions, which were met initially with short responses, and to me red flags about something being wrong. So I asked more directly what was up, not sure how, but then they suddenly gave me this in depth sitrep of what had happened at home, how they got angry, left the home and came here… I noticed how open they were, the way you talk to close friends, not strangers you just met. The kind of personal and private detailed information you share with close ones, not people you just met. Well, to be on the safe side I decided to accompany them home to where they lived—relieved parents, even drove me home. Later I got a call from that person, asking me if I wanted to step in as their “support person”, as he was sick or something.
I said yes, and my experience those hours was that they couldn’t really stop talking about what they were interested in, but I mean that isn’t really unnatural and I found the level of detail quite interesting. All youths have quirks of some kind, and so they weren’t really a person that was hard to be with. However, it wasn’t like they took turns with regard to conversation, and so I noticed that they would answer questions, but not really interact with me in the same way. Again, it isn’t like it is totally uncommon to have youth ignore you and rant on and on about their interests, but they did not read social cues the way I am used to. So I could understand how the people around them, in school especially, didn’t really have the patience or lacked the skill to work with the differences, and so they felt really alone without friends in School.
I mean, my understanding is that understanding emotions also is a social process—but even though nobody would really think I wasn’t emotive, as I am decently sensitive and read cues well, I am learning a lot of emotions I am/were unaware of. I mean, it is probably pretty advanced compared to the norm, but some of it is basic, it was just mislabeled. So I wonder if the same might be the case for you, or if it might be a very different situation.
You are the expert when it comes to you, so even though I hope to write something that fits, it might not be quite right for you—but I do hope it might be useful nevertheless, as it is to me.
Kindly