You're Out of Control!

[chaoticidealism]

I have the emotional control of a six-year-old. Fortunately, I also have the emotional maturity of an adult.

Yes, they're different things.

Comments

[ext_395668]

Normally I concede to your personal experience just as I would expect someone to accept my intimate knowledge of boxing to provide me with a high level of expertise about the sport and necessary skill set needed to be competitive. But in light of my conversation with a friend today, I am questioning whether or not you can control being in a situation where a meltdown may occur.

You can only anticipate so much. There is only so far you can go to remove yourself from a combustible circumstance. In boxing parlance, there will come a time where you are trapped in a corner and you have to plant your feet and trade punches as best you can. As reasonable as your remedies seem, if you cannot recognize another person emotions from nuance, how do you expect to be able to enact any of these coping devices that you mention?

As far as internalizing these powerful emotions, I wonder how do you diffuse the energy (I see emotions as an energy like heat) from burning up inside of you? Relationships with NT’s (and admittedly I was an NT for most of my life prior to my injury diagnosis) are very complicated as interests, priorities and a host of outside forces can impact on any encounter between people. Strangers to me can be regarded differently than family and those who are friendly acquaintances as the latter two groups can reasonably be expected to know about you and your traits and should have more understanding.

But to the contrary I have found that random encounters have been more understanding than any person from the friends and family group. That is where I see shortcoming in your remedies. Perhaps I am not objective enough here and am guilt of projecting my situation unto yours and your coping mechanisms. Maybe if I practiced your suggestions with more diligence, I would have better results.

L&R
Mark

[ext_395668]

A problem I have with emotions is that I don't know what I am supposed to feel eg if someone laughs at me, am I supposed to laugh along too or should I feel insulted? Same if someone makes a rude remark, or is it rude? I don't know, so I tend to do nothing at the time but go away and try to figure it out, often asking numerous other people for the correct interpretation. Also if I know the person, I try to take their past behaviour into account to form a likely judgement, but when I try to explain to them why I have made the judgement I did, I get accused of bearing grudges or bringing up things that are not relevant. When I am extremely sleep deprived I lose my inhibitions ( like now) I say whatever pops into my mind, but this can backfire. I almost never cry because I'm not sure what the point of that is. I do worry a lot though.

[chaoticidealism]

Yeah, it's difficult. If you ever figure out when teasing is supposed to be friendly and when it's not, please tell me, because I haven't got a clue either...

[ext_395668]

Generally I assume it's friendly if it's coming from someone who is a friend, who does not otherwise appear angry or upset with me. Otherwise, I tend to assume it's someone being mean. But I try not to show that, really, because I used to get in big trouble for crying because someone picked on me, when it was "obvious they were only joking". Once I even got detention, because they thought I was actually trying to get some poor kid in my class in trouble, when everyone around knew it was just a joke (besides me).

[ehrenyu]

The biggest mistake you can do when dealing with judgment calls is to tell the NT in question how and why you made your judgment. Typically they will take personal offense to it because they believe they are a different person now than when they did that "stupid thing" or they were in a "different mood" or some other illogical excuse. If you want to talk it over with someone, ask another NT who is completely uninvolved what they think if you don't have someone immediately in mind to talk to. But this is a tricky situation since there's absolutely no one-size-fits-all response.

My best is advice is to try to find an NT who you can trust, who is very understanding, and is able and willing to try to explain things.

[chaoticidealism]

You are right: You can only anticipate so much. The things I do to deal with emotional overexpression are not perfect solutions--it's why I mention the necessity of learning to apologize and make it right when you do end up embarrassing yourself or hurting someone else. Sometimes it's very difficult to evade. Most of the time, it isn't.

Regarding the idea of "burning up" with emotions because you internalize them--well, internalizing them isn't actually that great an idea (if by "internalize" you mean "suppress/deny")... Expressing them in private is much better. For example, I started writing journals when I was six years old and have used that method all my life.

I should stress that even for those of us who express every emotion in a very strong fashion, feelings are not unhealthy and, just like for people with typical emotional expression, can be used as motivation and communication--it's just that you have to be sure that you communicate what you meant to instead of something else entirely.

It's entirely possible that we are simply different enough that what works for me won't work for you--the human race is extremely diverse.