The post is titled;
Posted: May 31st 2009.
I think that one of the most important things in this post is the fact that Rachel displays a wide and varying range of emotion in her grief and that much of that emotion isn't necessarily visible on the outside.
One of the stereotypes that aspies find themselves fighting is the "emotionless robot". The research seems to have confused the showing of emotion with the "having" of emotion. In truth they're entirely different. Both can exist without the other.
If you know anyone who thinks that aspies are emotionless or if you've been told this by doctors, I urge you to read Rachel's post and learn the truth.
4 comments:
I was given an erroneous diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder for my "lack" of empathy.
Did you see the recent article about AS and feelings? I posted about it here.
Last week my father went in for a 5 way bypass. At some time he died for 20 minutes. I asked him of this later and he was shocked I knew. I was then enlightened as to what went on. As for feelings, I had none. There were no emotions either just the blank void even talking to him about his death. I couldn't even do sympathy. It was just data.
I suppose I was in the hold the family together mode and would address the feelings later. I'm still learning to express my feelings but here is how I differntiated it (away from the situation). My central nervous system was going ballistic (it looked like I was in severe coffee withdrawl the shakes were that bad). The stomach had an uneasy calmness and the brain had this pulsating ball of raw energy just waiting to explode. And to make things worse, I was pushing all this aside to be strong for the family.
Well the family is now back together I have begun to decompress. I am not looking forward to diffusing that ball of energy.
So I do feel. I have compassion. Empathy... meh. I am also frustrated that by me recognising the appropriate social cues I am classed as having empathy and therefore not aspie. They are wayyy off and many of the books I read are either incorrect or misunderstanding their subjects. We feel!
Sometimes I'll say that my husband doesn't feel emotion, but I know that he does. I know the way he feels or interprets it is different than I or others do and I definitely know he shows it differently (or not at all), but I need to be more careful with my wording and not say that he doesn't feel.
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