Asperger Emotions - Emma Style

My take on emotions differs from the ”normal”, that’s clear. Some believe they Aspegers do not have feelings, but nothing could be further from the truth. Apsies have strong emotions, and very easy access to them too. We have the range, just not the detail. What I have, documented and diagnosed, is what I have come to see visually as a ”pruned tree of emotions”.

Imagine, if you will, a tree. Preferably one that grows wide and lush, like a full grown oak. The tree represents your emotional life, and as the stem branches of into branches and then further into sticks, twigs and even the minute little web inside the leaves, those are the emotions. The thicker the branch, the more basic and ”large” the emotion.

E.g. The thinner the twig, the more specialized and (compared to the branch it originated from) more diluted the emotion, Example: Branch = Hate, Twig 5 levels out = Mild Distaste

At first the newborn child only has a few, very major, branches. Hunger/anger and love/happieness for example. Developing the branches, sticks and twigs comes with normal NT development. This is one of the foundations of Freudian psychoanalysis – that our ability to differentiate emotions develop as we mature. In his theory, many if not all of the psychotic range of ”illnesses” are caused by a traumatic event in early childhood, effectively shutting down the continued development, leaving the person emotionally stunted. In the worst instance there are no disconcernible emotions at all and a complete inability to empathise with others emotions as a result – this is the true psychotic sociopath (think ”Silence of the lambs”).

What I have is partly developed tree, or one which is pruned for winter with all the ”little bits” cut off. I have the stem, I have branches, but I do not have sticks, twigs or those elusive leaves. I feel anger, pain, happieness, love, hate, and other base emotions in their rawest, largest forms. I do NOT feel, or know how to identify at least, the subsets of these emotions (such as mild discomfort or slight contentment). If I’m uncomfortable, I am VERY uncomfortable. If I am content, the warm fuzzy feeling fills my soul.

That there are lighter versions of the emotions I feel, version that appear to be common in the normal world, is something I have had to learn – but I must admit I’m not really sure what they are – it’s a bit like trying to explain ”red” to someone blind from birth. Still, I accept these ”emotions-light” are there, and have tried to figure what they must feel like, and express like, in my attempts to fit into the NT world.

Picture, if you will, an NT person moving from one branch to another – like from joy to sorrow. I imagine they will move out the branch that they are on onto finer and finer twigs until they come to the place where there twigs of the branch ”joy” intertwine with the twigs of the branch ”sorrow”, at a point where the emotion as such is diluted to ”very slightly happy” on the joy branch and ”very sighly sad” on the sorrow branch. Then, if the stimuli for sorrow is strong, they will move inwards onto thicker and thicker twigs until they are firmly on the branch ”sorrow” and feel very sad.

The lack of anything finer than a branch on my tree of emotions means that the transissions between good and bad emotions are very abrupt. I jump brom branch to branch without moving out on one and in on the other. There is no ”sliding scale” as joy turns to comfort turns to less comfort that turns to slight uncomfortability that turns to uncomfort that turns to anger/pain/sorrow. If the situation changes from one which brings me joy to one which brings me sorrow the emotional transission will be near enough immediate. The only transission phase is the one where the pressure rises as the initial emotion is being replaced with the new one in it’s entirety, but my mind remains resistance to the change.

Too many or too sharp transisions will cause a meltdown.

Is this take on emotions an Emma trait or an apsie trait, I wonder?