How do you handle emotions?

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This has been puzzling me for some time...how do other people handle negative and positive emotions?

With both types of emotions, but especially the former, there are times when find myself becoming completely overwhelmed by the emotion. If I'm not careful, then I tend to overreact [at least, in other people's eyes]. Apparently I can become quite scary to observers. When I'm showing happiness, people have asked me if I was drunk [!] and when I'm upset, people...well, tend to scatter very quickly. When upset, I mostly tend to shout, scream and let people know in no uncertain terms how much I hate them/the situation/both. Sometimes, depending on how upset I am, I'll bash at walls and send items flying in all directions.

I can't quite explain the feeling, but the closest description I can think of is having my entire being infused with a sudden surge of feeling and energy, and suddenly having to expel this energy before I implode. It is like revving a car to the max, until the motor is screaming and straining and threatening to die unless you release the brake. Or turning up a guitar amplifer to the highest possible setting, until it sounds as though it is about to explode...then turning it up further until eventually, all that energy has to be expelled outwards and the amplifier does explode.

If I'm not being completely overwhelmed, then I'm usually trying to shut down my emotions completely. When that happens, I feel like I have turned my body into a black hole and have had to absorb the emotions back inside. When that happens, I tend to come across as cold, arrogant and uncaring, and someone who is unemotional.

I find both modes of dealing with my emotions exhausting, especially when I'm trying to shut my emotions down completely. I usually end up feeling exhausted and drained.

I think it would be interesting to hear if others operated the same way, or found a happier method of dealing with emotions.

I think I handle my emotions quite well, though I think I overreact a bit to happiness - I go quite hyper and don't know what to do with myself. Or I'll cry because I'm so happy. But usually if I'm experiencing negative emotions I'll keep them to myself until I can write them down. I mostly vent on my LiveJournal then apologise afterwards - but I can't put it in a private post because it then doesn't feel like a vent; I have to put it into a friends-only post so it feels like I've actually told someone. But action-wise, I don't do much. Also if I'm feeling bad I'll go and play a suitable piece, or scales and arpeggi on whatever instrument's closest to hand. It's a great feeling taking out anger when playing - it's such a release

Thinking about it, I have more options for negative emotions than for positive emotions. Positive emotions just make me grin and go hyper, lol. Though, sometimes if I'm going for a while not feeling any positive emotions, I'll make myself go hyper - it's an alternative release to crying, and I think it's better for other people if I go hyper than if I cry. And I just prefer to go hyper anyway. It releases lots of pent-up emotions as energy, which works for me.

I experience emotions in a similar way, when I am happy I don't act too bizarrely, though I expect I have a tendancy to talk too much and be a little excitable.

However, when I get annoyed, or moreso frustrated I blow up. If I am filling in a form for example and I make a mistake I will just scream and swear and tear the thing up. When I get angry in a social situation it can cause problems, I'm not physically violent towards other people but I will say very spiteful and malicious things, as well as pretty much destroy anything inanimate around me. When this happens I feel that if I don't let the anger take form I'll faint or have an aneurysm.

The only solution I've found is to try and avoid stressful situations. If I feel myself getting angry I try and walk it off or do something else until I can approach the situation again with a fresh perspective.

How do I handle my emotions? Well first I'm taking Paxil and Trazadone for Depression so that take gcare of some of them. Though when I get ticked off its really hard to calm down. After I calm I start crying so my emotions goes up and down.

I can relate as well. It took me at least 25 years to actually get my emotions under control (I'm 33 now). They would spike so severely that, like yourself, people would think I was drunk. Plus, I was so miserable in school that, sometimes, I would feel "doped-up" and excessively goofy in reaction to just deal with the situation. (I never did drugs, btw., but once my father actually slammed me up against the wall and asked if I did because: a. I was acting goofy, and b. since I was born, I have an usually dialated pupil in one of my eyes).

We lived in a state that does not provide assistance for autism. My parents were given the offer to send me to a special "self-directed" school that would have taught me earlier how to behave, but I had to learn it all the hard way because they couldn't afford the special school. I no longer have those strong emotions because I'm no longer in the living hell that was grade school (and college, actually) and have had enough practice now to get by. In fact, being a computer consultant and having to interact to survive, I have had boot-camp training in communicating with others. By putting me in a situation where I had to interact just to survive, I learned. It took losing a few jobs and some real heartbreaks, but I learned! Although, so much of my personality now is manufactured and conditioned that I feel like I'm always lying, and some NT's can tell, which has limited my success to a point. But, I think it is a point that I can break through now with will and hard work.

I've actually run into another challenge. Now that I have been conversing with some aspies, there have been situations where I feel the aforementioned training has worked against me. There is a social expectation of aspies, I think, that I can no longer emulate, both in writing and spoken word. I now have more trouble speaking with some aspies than I do some NT's. I see behaviorial patterns emerging identifying an aspie within an aspie community. I won't enumerate them, but I see them. Paying attention to behaviorial patterns, analyzing them to death, has been necessary for me to adapt. I've also learned the hard way: don't talk to an NT about analyzing behavior unless they are a psychologist. They just can't figure out why you have to.

...the same way i handle clouds, passing in the sky.

Well, that could be anything! I mean, when clouds pass by, do you throw your head up and shout, "Go away, you clouds! Git, git, you evil clouds!" and then fall to your knees? (I rarely do that, but there are days...)

i mean that my feelings are temporary things, temporarily blocking my clear view of things. i won't always feel this way.

For me emotions are trouble. I of course can not say that I feel them to any greater or lesser degree than anyone else but they seem to cause me to react in ways that others around me do not. I do not know how to put my emotions in proper context, if I try to express them I either go overboard or don't react enough.This comes from not being able to react naturally to them.
I guess you could say I either react poorly or in an contrived manner over all that means I handle emotions poorly.

With great caution, both my own and those that impinge upon me from outside.

My basic view is that the first person to shout in an argument has lost it, but gradually I have come to understand that other perspectives on this (Italian, Greek... for example) do exist and are not necessarily wrong, just alien.

I've never quite worked out what emotions are for, compared to cooler conviction and thought, so I'm basically suspicious of them. Look at the mob, and the fanatic, well powered by emotions.

The basic technique is "distancing". Not denying that the emotions exist, in myself or others, but denying that their strength is a reliable indicator of their validity. That's to be decided on other grounds. It does require an effort, not to be swamped. But the alternative appears worse.

Obscure quote from "The Prisoner":
"Do you, ah, approve of the proceedings?"
"I note them. With interest."

Somewhere back in my reading (on ancient Rome and Greece) I came across the idea that the emotions should be trained in youth (and in youths!) to be ordinate, so that the right feelings would be present in the right settings. A developed, educated, set of feelings in accord with the social virtues of the time. Would I be right in thinking that society is more fragmented now?
What people should get emotional about is left to local example, and television.

I wrote an article on this very thing before.

The best thing, for me, and probably many others, is to just to destroy emotion when it gets too strong. Why? If you have no emotion to feel, then you can't be let down. It is alright to feel emotions sometimes, yes. But excessiveness can lead to depression and other problems. That is my theory.

I can't handle my own emotions at all, and that's mainly because most of the time I don't understand them. I have a severe tendency to overanalyse myself and be far too introspective, to the point where I only make myself worse. Any slight feeling that I can't immediately explain gets me into a panic. Half the time I couldn't even say what emotion I'm feeling. I'll have to ask myself if I actually am feeling happiness. Or if this is sorrow. Or whether I'm feeling love or indifference. I can't diffrenciate, and I end up feeling like a terrible person because of it. I'll tell my girlfriend that I don't think I love her, then spend nights crying because I don't know if that's how I feel or not. Thankfully my girlfriend is extremely patient and has weathered this out with me time and again. I also have issues with 'depression', which is more hypocondria on my part. Feelings are incredibly complex things and I don't understand them at all. I also can't handle my temper... when I lose it, I REALLY lose it. Things get broken, smashed, torn, and I'll say the most vile things to the people I care about. I can also beomce incredibly cold and aloof, even with my girlfriend, to a point where I become a stony and excessively logical wall of non-emotion. In that state, I don't react at all to others being upset, and everything I say is cold and calculated and horribly logical with no feeling in it at all. It's my way of shutting down, I guess. Can't deal with all the emotion, so I purge it completely. I really have no control over my emotions, yet I do try to keep them tethered. I wish feelings were easier to understand and to control... Heh, I sound like such an awful person. I'm not, I hope. Just not good with emotions.

I was nearly emotionless for a very long period of time, but I have had a reawakening to such things in recent months.

Around 95% of the time that emotions occur, I can't identify what emotion that they are even though I'm fairly familiar with the commonly identified ones. It pisses me off (anger!) that my counselor always gets after me (belligerence) to classify them under a specific name.

Most of what I feel is far more complicated than any of those labels.

Also, when I do feel things like anger or sadness (two easily identifiable ones), they are remarkably different than the anger or sadness that I experienced as a teenager.

Thanks for the responses, it was interesting to read that others could relate to my experiences. It was actually the first time I had written candidly about how I dealt with emotions, and it was a relief to find that others could understand.

I guess I'm reaching a period in my life where I can see certain behaviours and reactions are not conductive to my progress in life. What was forgiveable behaviour as a teenager is no longer the case in a workplace, for instance, yet at times I feel I am stuck at that stage of development.

There have been several instances in my life when I had wondered if I should attempt to deny the existence of all emotion, as they have caused more problems for me. I think I have now realised that regardless of my view of emotions and my lapses of control, it seems I will always have emotions. Besides, not all emotions seem bad. I don't mind being happy.

It's comforting to hear that some people have managed a greater control over their emotions, though.

With my emotions I often feel as if they are seperate from me. Like I can't control them at all.
Often I will feel something And then I'll ask my mom and she will explane the emotion to me. I just get embarressed that I have such trobles.

I used to think I did OK.
After having some painful conversations like this with my wife over the last few years and re-examining my own internals, I realize, with her help, that I don't handle strong emotons well at all. I hide from them or run from them, but the bastards always follow me. Sometimes I'll bottle up small hits where they can accumulate for later and I eventually explode.

The ones I have difficulty with DO NOT pass by like clouds - I wish they would - I'm pretty sure that's why I run from them, expecting them to go away on their own and some do, but others seem to only reach a half life where they wait for me to become overloaded.

I realize this is a dysfunction also, but I rarely recognize that I'm doing this until the impending explosion becomes inevitable. I'd say that radically exagerrated peaks and valleys make normal response impossible. Even after 3 different drugs to address various issues there is no difference in my behavior regarding strong emotions, after the placebo effect wears off.