Aspies and changing emotions

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How fast do aspie emotions change? I called my aspie friend at work today and he was apparently busy with work. His response "can't see you; can't talk to you!" said a bit angrily. Should I take this literally that he could not talk or see me AT THAT TIME, or that he never wants to talk or see me again. His moods change like the wind......when he is at work and gets stressed (he is a workaholic) he is capable of screaming at anyone. Then, he cools off easily and will turn into his shy, passive self again. He has lost many friends due to this behavior.

Most likely, this is an immediate, short term, thing. Possibly going into shutdown, or simply being overwhelmed, based on the limited info. I would not recommend taking offense to it, as it most likely was not intended to harm.

As far as moods, well, mostly they are driven by stress. In general, many aspies have a dificult time with emotion, primarily with recognizing it in themselves or others, and thus may exhibit it in unusual ways. Some of us also may try to hide the emotion we have, because it doesn't make sense.

Other people might understand us more if all of us aspies had pointy ears.

Sounds about right.
I know I can sound like that when I'm working really, really hard at not taking out my mood on the person who called. I'll still sound pretty agitated (which makes people think I don't control myself enough), but really, I'm preventing my mouth from running away from me...

It does that, sometimes. Not too pleasant when I'm frustrated or shutting/melting down.

He is simply a workaholic which you seem right.... Plus he likes to get his work finished and done with which is a good thing in a way, I don't think that he would of realised that he was doing it.

Have you tried talking to him when he is not at work? Maybe that might be a better solution?

What is he like when he is not at work?



superboyian.

He did seem to have been stressed about it and all. This sort of behavior has lost him many friends in the past. Bluntness borders on rudeness.



He has replied positively when not at work. At least by then he is calm.

All in all, he is so unpredictable that you never know what mood he'll be in.

If I'm working at a specific task, or set of tasks, being disrupted is really difficult to handle. It breaks my chain of thoughts, and makes it harder to start up again, more likely to forget something, etc. Believe it or not, this extends to bedtime routines - my SO has learned not to try to talk to me when I'm trying to get ready for bed. Same with morning routines.

When I'm at work, however, I'm not just worried about my tasks. I'm worried about my supervisor and coworkers, and waste a great deal of energy trying to manage social expectations at work, as well as the work itself. If these are things he struggles with, being pulled in another direction when you call is very, very difficult for him to deal with. At one job I had, the day was so stressful that by the time I got home, my SO couldn't even talk to me for hours, because I did not have the mental energy to do it.

Socializing, and doing it in the 'acceptable' way, is more like work for us - something that needs to be heavily monitored. Devoting energy to it and then trying to do something else can be really, really difficult - if not disabling.

What are these morning and bedtime routines I keep reading about? Do you need a lot of time to prepare yourself in the morning?

Nothing special. Getting up, using the bathroom, washing my face, brushing my teeth, brushing my hair. Sometimes doing make up.

Short and simple but I prefer to do them all at once and not be interrupted.

I think it's actually a bit different than changing emotions.. I think of changing emotions more as mood swings, and usually as somewhat more arbitrary.
If I'm overwhelmed or confused or overloaded or unsure of what to do or what is expected of me, I can be really irritable, angry, anxious, upset.. and if I can go somewhere safe and calm and predictable where there's nobody getting in my face and keeping me overwhelmed, I'll feel better after a little while. (How long it takes to calm down can depend, I think, on how long whatever it was that upset me went on... but I'm not completely sure about that.)
That doesn't seem to me like "changing emotions" but more just reactions to environment.. Emotions are more confusing, more difficult to figure out.. but this is predictable, and seems to me to be fairly natural. I spent a long time thinking that it wasn't, but I think that that's just because I'd get in trouble for having been upset in the first place, which would prolong the whole thing, and I would never be able to escape whatever it was that was upsetting me.

Sorry to be asking a personal question, but is sex also routinized? I mean, do aspies have specific times set aside for sex?

LOL!
My SO wishes.

I don't have full-on daily routines. Just a few small ones. It's something I'm working on - I have quite a few executive dysfunction issues, which is probably why interrupting these routines can be really irritating. These are hard-won habits and I'm most comfortable/likely to complete them all if I do them all at once.

EDIT- BTW, I can only speak for myself, not Aspies in general. There are many, many variations/combinations of "Aspieness" so it's possible some Aspies actually do have a routine regarding sex. I really don't know.

I am very emotionally volatile and my emotions tend to be very black-and-white, I tend not to have conflicting emotions.

That's probably 7/8 of the answer right there.

I know that my own emotions can be crazy. ESPECIALLY at work(and having a job working with people doesn't help). On a bad day I can be completely stressed out or depressed and hitting myself at one point, and then an hour later be feeling really fine and happy. A certain event or combination of events might upset me or stress me out... and if things continue to happen that stress me out it might continue... but if things calm down and i have time to think for awhile, then i'll usually pick right up in about an hour or so. There have also been a few times where i was feeling fine for most of the day, and then one thing would make me feel overloaded with frustration or anger and i'd just yell or hit something and then go back to feeling fine almost instantly. I think a lot of us are just really bad at regulating our emotions... So our feelings just kind of, uh, happen. Other people are much more in touch with their feelings and how to express them, so i guess it's easier for them to handle what they are feeling and express it in subtle ways. I know that the more stressed i am, the more likely my moods are to swing rapidly(this is especially apparent with me at work now that it's so close to christmas.. I go from overwhelmed and stuttering to enthusiastically giving video game advice)