Difficulty Expressing Emotions Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Feel

There is often quite a stark difference in the styles used to express and communicate emotions between those with AS and neurotypicals (NT's) which is not cause to assume that aspies don't feel empathy, sadness, compassion, happy for others and so forth. Speaking for myself, from my own experience, I often feel way too much though this is usually not very evident a lot of the time. Granted also that a lot of the way too much that I do feel is usually kept as being a part of my own world inner-experience and is not often shared with others. I do need to be asked often. I rarely just seek to share outwardly. People that get to know me come to understand this is not something that need be taken personally and that all they have to do is ask and I will answer.

Being differently abled in this aspect of expression is often an implied negation of aspie ability to feel. More aspies than not feel a tremendous amount of empathy, compassion, sadness, happiness, and so forth. What is at issue is their reticent expression. It is not natural for us to communicate and to express our emotions in a social/relational context the way that it is second nature to NT's. It feels foreign. It is work and requires effort and energy.

In my own experience, it has required a lot of mapping and practice and takes conscious intellectual cues on my part, inside, and even then with all this extra work I put forth I have no guarantee that I will get the timing to be NT-appropriate.

I am still often misunderstood and then both myself and whomever I'm relating to have to slow down, or stop, start over, re-clarify and so forth until there is agreed upon understanding of what I am feeling and trying to express. I don't mind doing this when I am met with patience and not intolerance.

As I've experienced this "lack of social or emotional reciprocity", "empathy", "being in their own world" it isn't about lacking or about being (always or totally) in my own world, it too is about reticent expression. When it comes to the expression of my emotions in social interpersonal relating ways I often do feel like a deer caught in the headlights and not overly certain what I'm supposed to do. (according to what NT's consider normal) I really no more know what NT normal is than your average NT can imagine what it is like to experience aspie-normal.