Emotions and autism

I try not to judge or over analyse my emotions. As we get older if we have used our mileage well, we have usually learned to ride the waves knowing the least resistance brings calmer waters.

Also, we don’t feel these emotions like we did when we were younger as maturity irons out a lot of things. However, being autistic can still present differently in aging adults because as we know most autistic people have difficulty in processing their emotions, so even if they are not as intense, we can still have difficulty processing them quickly. I don’t dwell or overthink mine but more allow them to be there and let them seek into my subconscious. When I say that I don’t mean I push them down and ignore them, I mean I allow myself time and space for clarity in moving forward.

Taking responsibility for our meltdowns doesn’t dismiss our suffering, it means owning the behaviour whether we can help the behaviour or not. It is caring about how our behaviour might make others feel, as they may feel attacked or frightened so an explanation for the behaviour is also taking responsibility.

Some people that have meltdowns can be abusive, harmful to themselves and even others or at the very least loud. For many of us when we have a meltdown it is like an outer body experience that we can’t control once it’s started. One way I try to take responsibility is warn the people around me that I am building up to a meltdown and that I am trying to get out of the way and remove myself from the triggers, but I can’t guarantee this is going to work.

I tell them that when having a meltdown, I may rant at you and not make much sense in what I am saying as I tend to say things on repeat. I also tell people that when I am having a meltdown, I am not physically violent and will not try to hit you or anything like that, so they don’t need to worry about that. These are just a few of the ways we can take responsibility.

I sometimes wonder if autistic people are labelled over sensitive to noise because they are comparing us to the so-called normal measure of how people hear noise. Could it just be that our hearing is sharp, and we can hear things the average person doesn’t hear. I can hear noise’s my spouse never hears, and they say they couldn’t hear anything because I was speaking, yet I can hear all these noises regardless of what I am doing. I often say I could hear a pin drop . It sometimes drives me insane walking around trying to locate a noise no one else can hear.

Autistic people are often accused of focussing on what people view as the smalls. The question is, are these really the smalls that don’t matter or just another label we get for being autistic. For me it is paying more attention to detail rather than focusing specifically on the bigger picture, because there are a lot of smalls on the way to the bigger picture. I think this is why we often get dismissed for these feelings or worse gaslighted and told to let them go like they don't matter.