26 Aug 2010, 3:50 am
26 Aug 2010, 4:27 am
auntblabby
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26 Aug 2010, 5:07 am
spongy
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26 Aug 2010, 5:32 am
26 Aug 2010, 6:06 am
spongy
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26 Aug 2010, 6:26 am
26 Aug 2010, 7:46 am
PlatedDrake
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26 Aug 2010, 9:40 am
There are some things that should and shouldn't be said . . . trust me, its a long, painstaking lesson. Unfortunately, I'm too quiet and don't say much for fear that someone will misinterpret (exact opposite of your problem). There are some things I wish I could say, but the rules I was brought up with kinda makes me a creature of habit with them now. Usually a, "I'm apologize for hurting you, but this is the truth," helps some times. Even if you can't feel, you do feel the need to do something to reconcile, no? Otherwise, you wouldn't be putting yourself down in your statement 
. To me, a good person knows his/her faults, makes no attempt to hide them, but knows to treat others with respect . . . lack of empathy has little to do with one's need to be a better person. When in doubt, back to basic rules: If you can't say something nice, don't say it and respect those who in turn respect you. Now if you said something out of stress (say they were arguing, and it made you anxious like it does many of us), I can understand . . . but you can still apologize since you know you did something wrong. Cheer up .
PS - you do have feelings/a heart, otherwise you wouldn't have felt guilty about your mistake.
26 Aug 2010, 9:52 am
26 Aug 2010, 10:03 am
26 Aug 2010, 12:03 pm
26 Aug 2010, 2:55 pm
Intellectually, I realize that I'm a loser, a monster, an a**hole, cold, wrong, bad, horrible, selfish, ungrateful, unfilial and many other adjective that I don't know of.
Emotionally, I don't feel a thing. No remorse, regret, shame never mind love. My mom even cry infront of me and tells me that she couldn't eat and could hardly sleep and I don't even feel a twinge in my blood pumping organ. Just this tiny uncomfortable feeling, but that's it. I'm going to hell for this sin and I don't even feel bad, nervous or fearful. Nothing
I know the best I could do to remedy the situation is to improve myself and apologize at the very least.
But is it right for me to say sorry, when I don't feels sorry? That will be a lie and I'm a bad actor so my parents will know that it's a lie.
I know that this is not AS thing, since a lot of people here do have empathy/sympathy/compassion. Some even feel too much, it's just that AS are bad at expressing emotions. I'm sure that I'm not anti-social since I do have morals. (Or atleast my brain has it anyway). I care about not hurting/offending people. (One of the reasons why I stay away from people. That and they don't like/care about me)
I'm pretty sure that I used to have feelings, even if nowadays I can't seem to really feel anything other than anger, annoyance and nothing. All other emotions are far too fleeting. (I do care about people intellectually and do experience mild curiosity but that's not really the matter of the heart) I always has a hard time understanding emotions. I'm basically in poverty when it come to my own feelings, never mind understanding other people's emotion.
I don't really feel desire, but my mind do know what it want. I want to be a better person, a decent person. I need a heart for that to be possible. Is the heart something you just have to be born with? What do you do when the heart die and nothing could make you experience the feeling of caring? What could be done when the connection between the brain and the heart disappear?
I don't understand why should we equalize being emotional and being "good". From what you said your mother was using a guilty card on you because of the lack of responsiveness on your part. If you think you did something wrong, you can apologise no matter how it "feels" like, simply because of ethics and morals of the situation.
Your problem could be simply on the level of brain wiring since in the autistic brain the expected size relationships of various parts of the brain to one another seems to be disproportionate or distorted. the cerebellum is larger, amygdala and the hippocampus are different, and the corpus callosum is smaller - which means that those areas might be disconnected functionally since in an autistic these structures have densely packed neurons which are smaller than those in a healthy brain. Any difference in connectivity among the neurons is going to result in a defect in communication within the brain and the processing of both outputs and inputs. This indicates general changes in behaviour such as responding to inputs in a usual manner.
In other words you could be having alexithymia - 85% of ASD individuals have it - it involves the inability to verbally express emotions, also the inability to identify emotional states in self or others. The emotional information from the right hemisphere is not being properly transferred to the language regions in the left hemisphere, which can be caused by a decreased corpus callosum. It also may be due to a disturbance to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is largely responsible for processing emotions.
So no need to blame yourself for the lack of emotional reciprocity - it is not your fault. As long as you can morally distinguish between the "right" and "wrong" you're on the right path.
26 Aug 2010, 8:51 pm
26 Aug 2010, 9:17 pm
26 Aug 2010, 9:40 pm
26 Aug 2010, 9:40 pm
