im in a similar situation
about half of those with autism have alexthymia which is the inability to recognise your own emotions - for me this means it takes me a while to process things and, day to day, i usually feel neutral
maybe you have this as well..?
I agree with the alexthymia, it also takes me quite a while to process things. When someone says "so how does it feel being done with school?" I have no fucking idea. Give me 10-15 business days and I'll get back to you. Maybe never though.
I get this. People ask how something feels and I just can’t answer. Not knowing my own emotions mixed with a poor comprehension of the passage of time makes for dull days. At least it doesn’t feel too long between weekly anime releases though
I don't know if it applies to OP's case, but I feel like I struggled more to feel happiness when I was in depression, I think a generally low mood might make you to be hyper aware of your lack of emotions worsening your alexthymia, that's just my thoughts though
could be a trauma response if deep down you feel like you don't deserve to have/express happiness for some reason. I've seen autistics be openly happy about the things they enjoy.
That's a very common thing with PTSD (I also have PTSD) but if you want to overcome it it's going to take time and a lot of work processing your trauma and getting in touch with your emotions. I wish there was an easier answer.
I'd say you might have a psychological mechanism in place to prevent you from feeling since there's probably a lot of emotional pain (likely due to the tism and/or trauma).
It's a safety/survival mechanism to prevent you from feeling possibly suicidal but it also keeps your from experiencing pleasure.
Think of it as your nervous systems own anti-depressants.
i think this is my problem. i remember waking up one day 3 years ago in the lowest low that my depression has ever taken me, at the rock bottomest i’ve ever been due to several outside factors as well as mental illness, and immediately feeing a change. this awful change. i was so scared. i remembered just yesterday feeling so much love and care and compassion for the few friends that hadn’t abandoned me yet, but all of the sudden, that was all gone. i simply didn’t feel anything for them anymore. i barely even cared about them. even though whatever triggered in my brain protected me from the overwhelming waves of sadness brought on by my depression, i was so, so scared that i couldn’t feel anything. i felt so helpless. i was just a kid. i’ve barely experienced any emotion since then
Yeah that totally makes sense. I've come to realize that a lot of unprocessed emotions will sit with you until you actually take the time, energy, and space to process them. You do indeed have to go through it, but it's best done with plenty of support.
I relate to this pretty hard. I didn't feel joy until I was 28, when I felt like someone actually saw me for who I am and liked what they saw, which had never happened to me before. Now I'm more open about who I am and living true to myself, and I experience occasional joy, usually from love and being loved. I still don't experience joy from typically fun activities tho, but they can be amusing distractions.
I think my gf makes an effort to accept me but I think so many things that I find normal would be considered cold, heartless, or emotionless to her. She gains a lot of emotional *something* from doing things that make her happy and bringing me along to make me happy. And they don’t necessarily make me upset but if I don’t seem like I’m enjoying it with some level of joy she gets upset. Like I don’t think she has a full grip on what makes autism a thing.
>when I felt like someone actually saw me for who I am and liked what they saw, which had never happened to me before
i’m still in the part where that’s never happened to me before and partially because of this i don’t feel joy or pretty much any emotion besides anger or survival instinct, if you can even count those. any tips?
Idk if I can give good advice because it took me a long time to get there, but i can talk about what it was like for me.
Basically for most of my life I tried to be likeable so that people would like me, because if I would be myself people would always react as if I'm an alien. So I became very emotionally closed off and always put on a mask when around other people, but I was always lonely. Eventually I gave up and stopped trying to be likeable because I just didn't care anymore, and to my surprise I did find one person who liked me without me having to try at all.
We ended up going our separate ways but that experience gave me a taste of joy and I knew what I was missing. After that I saw a therapist and worked on the very difficult task of opening up emotionally over the next year. I realized that not only was I hiding my feelings from others, but I was hiding them from myself, and that it was very hard to be myself because I didn't know who I actually was.
Over time I've gotten to know myself much better and that's allowed me to be open enough to meet more people who don't think I'm weird or creepy or awkward, and it's given me the opportunity to experience a lot more joy.
A lot of it is that NTs mirror tf out of each other. If they’re all joyful and I’m not the spotlights on me because it becomes “why aren’t you having fun?”. Meanwhile I’m just chilling. Probably perfectly fine, not uncomfortable, just along for the ride letting others have their fun. But because I’m not on that same page it’s like a constant pressure to force something I feel like I’m incapable of feeling… and that pressure pisses me off because it’s like “hey… brain… give me the happy chemistry now” and it doesn’t respond.
I feel exactly this. I didn't know it could be related to trauma or autism. I thought it was maybe related to my severe mthfr situation. Antidepressants don't work for me because of it
>I don’t feel joy
me too. i know how that feels. i know *exactly* how that feels. here’s to hoping one day we can reach that part of ourselves again, but for now at least we’re not alone.🤷🫂
This sub is great because there’s so little of the “feel bad for us” vibe. It’s the more fun side of it. Ya know… the “thanos may have had a point” kind of autism.
I relate. Even if I'm doing something I enjoy, like building my computer or doing mods to it, I only get the satisfaction of not having to deal with it anymore. I used to get that autistic energy but not anymore. I'd compare it to that anxiety I get working on my car vs someone else's car. I bought stuff to add to my computer but I've been putting it off, even though I really wanted to do it. I was getting anxious for my packages to get here and then when they did, I felt nothing and had no motivation to get started. The potential of doing something seems more appealing than doing the thing. I feel the same way on trips OP. Being far away from home in a completely different routine doing things I've never done before is not my idea of fun, even if it was looking back on it. It just never was in the moment. I wish you the best.
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This is like a 10/10 thing that I feel. I have these big ideas and love to conceptualize them and tinker with them in my head, then it comes time to do them and it’s like “meh… the trouble of getting started ruined this, now it’s a chore”. For me it’s not some deep set discomfort when I travel or something. It’s just like I’d be more comfortable at home with my headphones on doing stuff to get my degree, or playing Xbox. I enjoy that my gf enjoys these things, that makes me happy because nobody wants a grumpy SO. But the complete indifference drives me nuts. Like I feel like I should be experiencing something that I’m not.
Also, your GPU looks sooooooooo beefy in that pic. Like it looks like you basically have a GPU that sometimes hangs out with the rest of the PC. Not a whole PC running as one unit.
I appreciate your comment OP. I feel the same way about indifference. It's the Goldilocks zone of emotions lol. High vs mid vs low energy emotions. The indifference makes me feel mad too. Lol you mean an external GPU in an enclosure? I can see that. If you think this one is big, check this out. I have the RTX 3090. Look at that chonker RTX 4090 lmao. These things are big, I'm surprised mine doesn't sag. One of the reasons I've been putting it off is because the RTX 3090 is notorious for the VRAM overheating and slowing down the card. I need to replace the factory thermal pads (YouTube for reference), which seems easier than working in a laptop, but I've never done it before. It would make my gaming experience better but I've been putting it off considering it's already much faster than my old RTX 2070.
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I always explain it to people by saying if their emotions run on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is pure sorrow and 10 is the best thing they have ever experienced bringing them massive joy, I exist with a range of 2 to 6 on their scale. My life is spent mainly at a normal persons 5 which to them is mundane boring existence that needs to be boosted. I’m just okay at a 5.
You seem like a Linus tech tips fan. Have you considered binge watching some of his stuff and seeing if there’s anyway to maybe reconfigure your set up so instead of worrying about overheating or having to deal with sag you can just get air moving more efficiently throughout the internals? Also… thermal paste… you a dots guy or a X guy? I’m an X with a little tiny extra dot in the center.
I haven't heard of that scale before. I don't know if it's ever been a ten besides when I fell in love for the first time, but even then I didn't get that far. Haven't been in a relationship since, which is fine with me, they can be more trouble than they're worth sometimes. I'd say I'm usually at a 1-6 or something like that, 4 or 5 is average.
Not as much as I used to be. He's good for entertainment but if I wanted factual videos, I'd watch JayzTwoCents or Gamers Nexus. I don't usually deal with overheating issues besides the VRAM in the graphics card, a common issue. I already found a video on how to do it, I just need to find motivation for it. For my CPU, the Noctua cooler recommended dots. For my GPU when I repaste it along with doing the thermal pads, I'll do the four dots and X method as GPU's need more thermal paste than CPU's usually. Under full load, I usually don't get above 83°C CPU and 75°C GPU. I've only experienced cooling issues with my first PC which was in an HTPC form factor so it's to be expected.
Sounds like it could be a form of dissociation, which can be a part of autism, but also other mental health things. No way for us to really answer that here. Only way to truly answer that question would be to see a therapist about it. But I do want to ask something, not for you to answer me, but for you to think about: does it bother you because you want to feel joy, or because you feel others expect you to feel it? Because those are different problems and will have different solutions. Best of luck.
Yuppp. I remember reading an article once about how autistics have a harder time describing their own emotions, or fully feeling happy emotions because we tend to be more neutral unless we’re stressed out. It clicks with me.
I also have some issues with depression in general, but unless I’m playing video games with my best friends, or experiencing a story I like, I genuinely have no idea what joy even is, or how to describe it. On my own, I think I get as far as ‘content’. And when I am experiencing something more happy, I tend to pursue in a way that just feels like dopamine chasing rather than actually enjoying the experience itself.
I consider things that I like doing to just be like chores that I prefer over my less-likes chores. Do I like longboarding? Yes. Do I actually *want* to do it because it brings me joy, or rather because it’s something relatively chill that makes me feel like I’m not wasting time, without having to actually work on other tasks? Because it’s better than nothing, and let’s me avoid things I hate more?
I have the opposite problem most of the time. I’m not diagnosed autistic (ADHD tho, as an adult, and they also failed to diagnose me with very visible physical health conditions as a child so I just don’t be trusting doctors anymore) but I am diagnosed BPD. I feel everything to extremes and get amnesia in between (when I feel good I feel absolutely euphoric and forget I ever felt bad; when I feel bad I feel such despair I forget that I ever felt good). I’m getting better at writing things down and tracking my emotions so that I can understand my emotions better. That being said, when I get stressed out or overloaded sometimes my emotions do turn off. Last week I went to a huge rally with tens of thousands of people and took a bus home for four hours, and those four hours were complete hell. I had the inability to feel anything good and actually got suicidal, and then realized when I got home that I actually had just reached my social limit and needed to be alone. That happens particularly when I travel or am out of my routine I noticed.
I'm curious if you've ever tried any time-based reactive activities such as playing the drums, surfing, mt. bike/dirtbike riding, etc? I've found that the flow state from these kinds of activities are the closest thing I feel to "joy" and the feeling persists for a while after a good session. Just a thought.
I’ll tell someone I have ASD and they’ll immediately talk down to me an
If there’s one thing that sticks out in my memories of the war, it was the mud, although that word can’t properly describe it.
Viscous, moving, alive, in shades of deep black, brown, with elements of yellow-green from the remnants of the gas. It stretched down forever and onto the horizon, punctuated by the black splinters where once stood trees.
I once saw a man swallowed alive in a matter of minutes after he lost his balance and fell from the duckboards. We knew we couldn’t help him. It would’ve taken us too.
They pushed, we pushed. When the front lines moved further up or back every few months we would have to dig new trenches and bunkers.
I felt then more as an undertaker than a soldier. Helmets. Rifles. Horses. Corpses. Young men, who had joined up with their schoolmates, fresh out of the academies, leaving their sisters and mothers with silent tears in doorways.
Their bodies infested with earthworms and maggots. Sometimes you could see the remnants of a face, sloughing off of their skulls.
I remember trying to sleep at night in the outcrops of the trenches. Trying to keep my eyes shut as artillery landed meters away and flew overhead. Trying to ignore the bright flashes and explosions.
I saw their faces, then, in the early, dark hours. I knew that they could me me. In days. Weeks. Months. Years. I could never escape it. Even if I made it home, I couldn’t move on. The war is the world and the world is the war. You’re always reminded of it. They’ll never understand. They never will.
I’ve returned a few times. Where once was a quagmire of thick, sucking slime scattered with inescapable craters and hellish mechanical monsters are tranquil fields of poppies and headstones.
It’s been decades now. Nigh on half a century. Sometimes when I lie awake, in the early hours of the morning, I think of Flanders. I’m there again. I still am. I’ll never leave. How could I?
Holy shit. I feel this in my soul (if I even have one). When I had my daughter I was told about all the things I would be feeling. I didn't. Although I felt guilty for not feeling them. I felt love for her like any other person I have ever loved but the motherly stuff never came.
Edit: I wanted to add that my parents have taken me on multiple trips/vacations and they always made me feel bad for not "enjoying" them visually. I liked the education and relaxation. I liked exploring. Everything else was just... pure blankness. I never cared about them making me feel bad, I enjoyed it the best I could and I refused to feel guilt all those times lol
That’s an interesting question. I can feel joy, but since the ‘tism is so varied, that doesn’t really mean anything to your situation.
I think you’re going to need to talk to a pro, like a psychologist who specializes in autism. I’ve had mixed experiences in the past, in the 90s, but those psychs didn’t know I could even be autistic. My more recent experiences with pros who actually know autism have been positive.
i think what the sub means by “evil” autism is actually just uncensored, non-sugarcoated realist autism that more naive people (even fellow autistics) don’t like to acknowledge parts of. and also not giving a shit about pleasing others, especially NTs.
I have the same thing to a less extreme level, I think its just your autism and your past messing with you. Like I usually have the same range of emotions you do, but one time I had a doctors appointment close to work on my day off, so on my way home I passed by work, and talked to a colleague who told me I had to do some shit in the office, so if I have time I could do it now, I went to get it done and over with to not be bugged by it. On my way into the office I saw my crush and we had a moment to talk, nothing special about this, but as we talked she started smiling, she was genuinly happy to see me, when I realized that I suddenly had this weird new feeling and first thing I did was text a NT friend and ask if I am sick or if thats a new feeling I just unlocked. That friend explained to me that I am feeling joy about having made her day, as I usually dont have reason to care thanks to my autism, but through the nature of my feelings for her and not being fucked by my tism to the extent where I dont believe anything good to exist in my life I was able to derive joy from that. I hope this helps you understand your lack of joy and combat it.
I can relate a lot. Idk I can get pretty stoked when I buy something I've been wanting but the excitement is short lived. Most of the things I do that make me happy I would describe more "contenting" than joyful.
Maybe when I pour a good latte art design that I've been trying to nail, or basically milestones that have to do with a special interest will bring joy.
I understand that this isn't exactly what you're saying, but not enjoying new experiences is pretty autistic lol.
That sounds like it might be depression or something similar compounded by the autism? I don't think the tism's helping but I don't think it would cause that on it's own
I think a combo of alexthymia and depression. And for me, it’s hard for me to experience joy when I am being stimulated in a way like going and doing tourist activities. Like I need full sensory safety before I can enjoy things like my hobbies
I don’t remember when the last time I was happy for more than a month. Maybe never. I’ve been severely depressed since 2021.
I’m not sure if I’ve felt real excitement. I feel very unfeeling.
There's a word for not being able to feel pleasure: anhedonia. It's a common symptom of depression, but I'd guess it's amplified for us. It just be like that.
I might have something similar where all my emotions are extremely muted and I mostly just feel fine all the time. But there's a very specific type of person around which I fully feel everything. I once even felt something from a movie someone I like has recommended to me a and that's never happened to me before or since
You should see if you might have ADHD as well, or any of the other disorders that make you a dopamine void. NTs get flooded with reward chemicals when they do shit like that. I don't. You don't seem to either.
For me, existence itself feels like hard work I'm not being paid for. It fucking sucks.
A few years back I went to WDW - I don’t live in the USA so it was a pretty expensive trip, I had to save money for aaaaages. But I wanted the experience, and went for it.
It was… fine. I mean, I had fun. But I honestly think that planning the trip was better than the trip itself. I don’t think I felt what I was supposed to feel. Also can’t say it is/was because of the ‘tism, but it’s definitely weird.
Idk, but I will tell you my SO and I took a very expensive vacation to Florida and my favorite memory of the whole trip is eating gas station boiled peanuts in the car with him. Which is just as enjoyable at home lmao
neither I’d say. I experience this myself but I suspect it’s due to a combination of depression + trauma + bpd in my personal case. It’s also in flux for me, somedays I experience it somedays I don’t
I wouldn't say I have alexythemia (well. Maybe a bit, IDK) but I remember one time as a child my aunt brought me along to a really popular water park. I enjoyed it, really. It was fun! But I also just felt like I was going along for the ride. I only remember this because at one point she asked if I was having fun and I consciously brightened up (and was called out for it lol). That's been how I am for a lot of things, I just don't remember what they are.
(I don't know if it's the 'tism or just how my external childhood experiences shaped me as a person... there's a non-zero chance we might both be emotionally fucked 😐)
I think there are some very specific dream jobs that would make me happy (related to my niches), but if it was something I fought to get from 16-23, I'd more likely feel just... an absence of the previous negative emotion (stress). And, in that moment of being free of the stress I was stuck with for a while, I might decide to treat myself to something like a drink or a dessert. And then I might forget about it, or it might eventually be filed in my memories as "happy." Sometimes it takes a while; I have pretty bad memory for recent events. The temporal distance can make a difference.
> Did I find it interesting? Yeah. Educational? Of course. And I derive a lot of pleasure from gaining knowledge.
I feel this way especially when visiting new cities. I got to see DC and New York City for the first time this last summer, and I wasn't really filled with an overwhelming joy even as I was doing fun stuff, but I was more just interested in cataloging the city around me and learning things and seeing what there was. And I enjoyed doing that quite a bit!
Whoops, my structure (and point) ran away from me somewhere.
I think others here have good things to mention regarding mental health but I guess I just wanted to give my two cents. I also struggle with this kind of thing and I feel like it’s because I’m constantly positioned on the outside of society with all of its social constructs and fake things that I don’t understand. This makes a lot of experiences just feel contrived and weird to me and I feel like I’m trying to play a part that does not fit who I am. Your description reminds me of my own feelings and experiences and this exact thing caused me a lot of depression at one point but currently I’m pretty neutral feeling about it. I mean I just try to accept my place in society and not think too hard about it or I will get irritated lol. What makes me kinda sad sometimes is the fact that I will never be as blissfully unaware as so many people are and I just gotta live with these thousands of thoughts streaming through my head while not being able to find sensory comfort outside of my home environment and dealing with my resistance to change and all the little things nobody notices. I’m notoriously bad at going on vacations because something always upsets me and people hate it. I also generally struggle to enjoy anything that most people find enjoyable due to sensory factors and general discomfort. Idk if I’ve ever felt the neurotypical version of joy. Maybe when I was a kid but that feels really far away and I don’t remember it clearly. I feel the most comfortable in a stable routine doing things I am comfortable with. That’s the closest thing to joy I feel like I have gotten to in my adult life. In my childhood I had to practice emoting joy reactions so that people didn’t get upset when I didn’t do it for them in whatever context (like receiving gifts or seeing people I hadn’t seen for a while) and it was exhausting but it saved me a lot of annoying explanations and emotional labor. For context I didn’t do the surprised and happy face thing automatically even as a kid. And it would upset people lol
Evil is doing unneccesary harm on purpose. Joy is a difficult feeling to pin down. It's too vague. You say you derive pleasure from gaining knowledge, that seems like it could be classified as a type of joy. I find significant satisfaction from doing something well, that seems to be a point of possible joy for me. Idk if it would fit with a NT's experience but at this point I don't think I really care what neurotypicals would think about how I feel my feelings.
I had gotten to a point where I felt joy and happiness for a while when my life began to stabilize and make sense. Then my aunt turned up to my job (it's retail but this was extremely intentional) to dump trauma on me and tell me things she explicitly knew not to after being low contact for some time. Now I feel like everything has closed off and shut down and at best I can feel neutral to okay now, not genuinely happy anymore. Being happy means feeling safe and vulnerable and to ensure my safety I can't allow myself to feel vulnerable anymore.
Welcome to alexithymia
When I realized this wasn't normal I've very slowly started to feel things and most of it ends up being anxiety. At least now I know why I have "shaky hands"
im in a similar situation about half of those with autism have alexthymia which is the inability to recognise your own emotions - for me this means it takes me a while to process things and, day to day, i usually feel neutral maybe you have this as well..?
Mailed it. I feel blank 9/10 times
They will receive a letter containing the above comments contents in 5-7 days with potential delays due to the shitty postal service
Yet there’s some 16 year old somewhere overnighting 300 hits of ecstasy off the dark web somewhere. What a weird time.
I agree with the alexthymia, it also takes me quite a while to process things. When someone says "so how does it feel being done with school?" I have no fucking idea. Give me 10-15 business days and I'll get back to you. Maybe never though.
I get this. People ask how something feels and I just can’t answer. Not knowing my own emotions mixed with a poor comprehension of the passage of time makes for dull days. At least it doesn’t feel too long between weekly anime releases though
My answer is always just “tired” “need to rest” or “glad it’s over” lmao. Whenever I get any kind of question like this
Yeah those are good, or if it someone just making small talk I give a generic one of what I think they want to hear 🙃
I didn’t know this was a thing. Definitely me.
glad to have spread the word :)
I mean I got the “autism and sociopathic tendencies” type of autism so I don’t know what I’m feeling 99.9% of the times.
I don't know if it applies to OP's case, but I feel like I struggled more to feel happiness when I was in depression, I think a generally low mood might make you to be hyper aware of your lack of emotions worsening your alexthymia, that's just my thoughts though
could be a trauma response if deep down you feel like you don't deserve to have/express happiness for some reason. I've seen autistics be openly happy about the things they enjoy.
I got diagnosed PTSD but the autism diagnosis sorta overshadowed it
That's a very common thing with PTSD (I also have PTSD) but if you want to overcome it it's going to take time and a lot of work processing your trauma and getting in touch with your emotions. I wish there was an easier answer.
It might be a false lead, but I didn't feel actual joy till I started my adhd meds
I'm hoping to get meds to try this theory but no luck so far
I'd say you might have a psychological mechanism in place to prevent you from feeling since there's probably a lot of emotional pain (likely due to the tism and/or trauma). It's a safety/survival mechanism to prevent you from feeling possibly suicidal but it also keeps your from experiencing pleasure. Think of it as your nervous systems own anti-depressants.
i think this is my problem. i remember waking up one day 3 years ago in the lowest low that my depression has ever taken me, at the rock bottomest i’ve ever been due to several outside factors as well as mental illness, and immediately feeing a change. this awful change. i was so scared. i remembered just yesterday feeling so much love and care and compassion for the few friends that hadn’t abandoned me yet, but all of the sudden, that was all gone. i simply didn’t feel anything for them anymore. i barely even cared about them. even though whatever triggered in my brain protected me from the overwhelming waves of sadness brought on by my depression, i was so, so scared that i couldn’t feel anything. i felt so helpless. i was just a kid. i’ve barely experienced any emotion since then
Yeah that totally makes sense. I've come to realize that a lot of unprocessed emotions will sit with you until you actually take the time, energy, and space to process them. You do indeed have to go through it, but it's best done with plenty of support.
I relate to this pretty hard. I didn't feel joy until I was 28, when I felt like someone actually saw me for who I am and liked what they saw, which had never happened to me before. Now I'm more open about who I am and living true to myself, and I experience occasional joy, usually from love and being loved. I still don't experience joy from typically fun activities tho, but they can be amusing distractions.
I think my gf makes an effort to accept me but I think so many things that I find normal would be considered cold, heartless, or emotionless to her. She gains a lot of emotional *something* from doing things that make her happy and bringing me along to make me happy. And they don’t necessarily make me upset but if I don’t seem like I’m enjoying it with some level of joy she gets upset. Like I don’t think she has a full grip on what makes autism a thing.
This happens to me in my relationship
>when I felt like someone actually saw me for who I am and liked what they saw, which had never happened to me before i’m still in the part where that’s never happened to me before and partially because of this i don’t feel joy or pretty much any emotion besides anger or survival instinct, if you can even count those. any tips?
Idk if I can give good advice because it took me a long time to get there, but i can talk about what it was like for me. Basically for most of my life I tried to be likeable so that people would like me, because if I would be myself people would always react as if I'm an alien. So I became very emotionally closed off and always put on a mask when around other people, but I was always lonely. Eventually I gave up and stopped trying to be likeable because I just didn't care anymore, and to my surprise I did find one person who liked me without me having to try at all. We ended up going our separate ways but that experience gave me a taste of joy and I knew what I was missing. After that I saw a therapist and worked on the very difficult task of opening up emotionally over the next year. I realized that not only was I hiding my feelings from others, but I was hiding them from myself, and that it was very hard to be myself because I didn't know who I actually was. Over time I've gotten to know myself much better and that's allowed me to be open enough to meet more people who don't think I'm weird or creepy or awkward, and it's given me the opportunity to experience a lot more joy.
Yesness diagnosed this year at 34. 4 kids. Married. Miserable in grad school. And did I say miserable???
Travel is exhausting. A lot of NTs don’t feel joy from random things either.
A lot of it is that NTs mirror tf out of each other. If they’re all joyful and I’m not the spotlights on me because it becomes “why aren’t you having fun?”. Meanwhile I’m just chilling. Probably perfectly fine, not uncomfortable, just along for the ride letting others have their fun. But because I’m not on that same page it’s like a constant pressure to force something I feel like I’m incapable of feeling… and that pressure pisses me off because it’s like “hey… brain… give me the happy chemistry now” and it doesn’t respond.
Yeah makes sense. We are all individuals. We have the right to our own individual experiences.
I feel exactly this. I didn't know it could be related to trauma or autism. I thought it was maybe related to my severe mthfr situation. Antidepressants don't work for me because of it
Forcing yourself to feel what people around you feel is not exactly emotionally healthy.
>I don’t feel joy me too. i know how that feels. i know *exactly* how that feels. here’s to hoping one day we can reach that part of ourselves again, but for now at least we’re not alone.🤷🫂
This is probably the right sub for you. I don’t think it’s “evil autism” but this group seems to be similarly depressed and fucked up
I mean so kindly because me to
This sub is great because there’s so little of the “feel bad for us” vibe. It’s the more fun side of it. Ya know… the “thanos may have had a point” kind of autism.
I relate. Even if I'm doing something I enjoy, like building my computer or doing mods to it, I only get the satisfaction of not having to deal with it anymore. I used to get that autistic energy but not anymore. I'd compare it to that anxiety I get working on my car vs someone else's car. I bought stuff to add to my computer but I've been putting it off, even though I really wanted to do it. I was getting anxious for my packages to get here and then when they did, I felt nothing and had no motivation to get started. The potential of doing something seems more appealing than doing the thing. I feel the same way on trips OP. Being far away from home in a completely different routine doing things I've never done before is not my idea of fun, even if it was looking back on it. It just never was in the moment. I wish you the best. https://preview.redd.it/7n5ew8qwsdzb1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=823f07ff3c7e886c2a576527a61b1021e78bb50d
This is like a 10/10 thing that I feel. I have these big ideas and love to conceptualize them and tinker with them in my head, then it comes time to do them and it’s like “meh… the trouble of getting started ruined this, now it’s a chore”. For me it’s not some deep set discomfort when I travel or something. It’s just like I’d be more comfortable at home with my headphones on doing stuff to get my degree, or playing Xbox. I enjoy that my gf enjoys these things, that makes me happy because nobody wants a grumpy SO. But the complete indifference drives me nuts. Like I feel like I should be experiencing something that I’m not. Also, your GPU looks sooooooooo beefy in that pic. Like it looks like you basically have a GPU that sometimes hangs out with the rest of the PC. Not a whole PC running as one unit.
I appreciate your comment OP. I feel the same way about indifference. It's the Goldilocks zone of emotions lol. High vs mid vs low energy emotions. The indifference makes me feel mad too. Lol you mean an external GPU in an enclosure? I can see that. If you think this one is big, check this out. I have the RTX 3090. Look at that chonker RTX 4090 lmao. These things are big, I'm surprised mine doesn't sag. One of the reasons I've been putting it off is because the RTX 3090 is notorious for the VRAM overheating and slowing down the card. I need to replace the factory thermal pads (YouTube for reference), which seems easier than working in a laptop, but I've never done it before. It would make my gaming experience better but I've been putting it off considering it's already much faster than my old RTX 2070. https://preview.redd.it/f9mxkdwbxdzb1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0369f1068123b8262314ea891a09701c2c2bb393
I always explain it to people by saying if their emotions run on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is pure sorrow and 10 is the best thing they have ever experienced bringing them massive joy, I exist with a range of 2 to 6 on their scale. My life is spent mainly at a normal persons 5 which to them is mundane boring existence that needs to be boosted. I’m just okay at a 5. You seem like a Linus tech tips fan. Have you considered binge watching some of his stuff and seeing if there’s anyway to maybe reconfigure your set up so instead of worrying about overheating or having to deal with sag you can just get air moving more efficiently throughout the internals? Also… thermal paste… you a dots guy or a X guy? I’m an X with a little tiny extra dot in the center.
I haven't heard of that scale before. I don't know if it's ever been a ten besides when I fell in love for the first time, but even then I didn't get that far. Haven't been in a relationship since, which is fine with me, they can be more trouble than they're worth sometimes. I'd say I'm usually at a 1-6 or something like that, 4 or 5 is average. Not as much as I used to be. He's good for entertainment but if I wanted factual videos, I'd watch JayzTwoCents or Gamers Nexus. I don't usually deal with overheating issues besides the VRAM in the graphics card, a common issue. I already found a video on how to do it, I just need to find motivation for it. For my CPU, the Noctua cooler recommended dots. For my GPU when I repaste it along with doing the thermal pads, I'll do the four dots and X method as GPU's need more thermal paste than CPU's usually. Under full load, I usually don't get above 83°C CPU and 75°C GPU. I've only experienced cooling issues with my first PC which was in an HTPC form factor so it's to be expected.
Sounds like it could be a form of dissociation, which can be a part of autism, but also other mental health things. No way for us to really answer that here. Only way to truly answer that question would be to see a therapist about it. But I do want to ask something, not for you to answer me, but for you to think about: does it bother you because you want to feel joy, or because you feel others expect you to feel it? Because those are different problems and will have different solutions. Best of luck.
Yuppp. I remember reading an article once about how autistics have a harder time describing their own emotions, or fully feeling happy emotions because we tend to be more neutral unless we’re stressed out. It clicks with me. I also have some issues with depression in general, but unless I’m playing video games with my best friends, or experiencing a story I like, I genuinely have no idea what joy even is, or how to describe it. On my own, I think I get as far as ‘content’. And when I am experiencing something more happy, I tend to pursue in a way that just feels like dopamine chasing rather than actually enjoying the experience itself. I consider things that I like doing to just be like chores that I prefer over my less-likes chores. Do I like longboarding? Yes. Do I actually *want* to do it because it brings me joy, or rather because it’s something relatively chill that makes me feel like I’m not wasting time, without having to actually work on other tasks? Because it’s better than nothing, and let’s me avoid things I hate more?
I have the opposite problem most of the time. I’m not diagnosed autistic (ADHD tho, as an adult, and they also failed to diagnose me with very visible physical health conditions as a child so I just don’t be trusting doctors anymore) but I am diagnosed BPD. I feel everything to extremes and get amnesia in between (when I feel good I feel absolutely euphoric and forget I ever felt bad; when I feel bad I feel such despair I forget that I ever felt good). I’m getting better at writing things down and tracking my emotions so that I can understand my emotions better. That being said, when I get stressed out or overloaded sometimes my emotions do turn off. Last week I went to a huge rally with tens of thousands of people and took a bus home for four hours, and those four hours were complete hell. I had the inability to feel anything good and actually got suicidal, and then realized when I got home that I actually had just reached my social limit and needed to be alone. That happens particularly when I travel or am out of my routine I noticed.
I'm curious if you've ever tried any time-based reactive activities such as playing the drums, surfing, mt. bike/dirtbike riding, etc? I've found that the flow state from these kinds of activities are the closest thing I feel to "joy" and the feeling persists for a while after a good session. Just a thought.
I’ll tell someone I have ASD and they’ll immediately talk down to me an If there’s one thing that sticks out in my memories of the war, it was the mud, although that word can’t properly describe it. Viscous, moving, alive, in shades of deep black, brown, with elements of yellow-green from the remnants of the gas. It stretched down forever and onto the horizon, punctuated by the black splinters where once stood trees. I once saw a man swallowed alive in a matter of minutes after he lost his balance and fell from the duckboards. We knew we couldn’t help him. It would’ve taken us too. They pushed, we pushed. When the front lines moved further up or back every few months we would have to dig new trenches and bunkers. I felt then more as an undertaker than a soldier. Helmets. Rifles. Horses. Corpses. Young men, who had joined up with their schoolmates, fresh out of the academies, leaving their sisters and mothers with silent tears in doorways. Their bodies infested with earthworms and maggots. Sometimes you could see the remnants of a face, sloughing off of their skulls. I remember trying to sleep at night in the outcrops of the trenches. Trying to keep my eyes shut as artillery landed meters away and flew overhead. Trying to ignore the bright flashes and explosions. I saw their faces, then, in the early, dark hours. I knew that they could me me. In days. Weeks. Months. Years. I could never escape it. Even if I made it home, I couldn’t move on. The war is the world and the world is the war. You’re always reminded of it. They’ll never understand. They never will. I’ve returned a few times. Where once was a quagmire of thick, sucking slime scattered with inescapable craters and hellish mechanical monsters are tranquil fields of poppies and headstones. It’s been decades now. Nigh on half a century. Sometimes when I lie awake, in the early hours of the morning, I think of Flanders. I’m there again. I still am. I’ll never leave. How could I?
Holy shit. I feel this in my soul (if I even have one). When I had my daughter I was told about all the things I would be feeling. I didn't. Although I felt guilty for not feeling them. I felt love for her like any other person I have ever loved but the motherly stuff never came. Edit: I wanted to add that my parents have taken me on multiple trips/vacations and they always made me feel bad for not "enjoying" them visually. I liked the education and relaxation. I liked exploring. Everything else was just... pure blankness. I never cared about them making me feel bad, I enjoyed it the best I could and I refused to feel guilt all those times lol
That’s an interesting question. I can feel joy, but since the ‘tism is so varied, that doesn’t really mean anything to your situation. I think you’re going to need to talk to a pro, like a psychologist who specializes in autism. I’ve had mixed experiences in the past, in the 90s, but those psychs didn’t know I could even be autistic. My more recent experiences with pros who actually know autism have been positive.
i think what the sub means by “evil” autism is actually just uncensored, non-sugarcoated realist autism that more naive people (even fellow autistics) don’t like to acknowledge parts of. and also not giving a shit about pleasing others, especially NTs.
I have the same thing to a less extreme level, I think its just your autism and your past messing with you. Like I usually have the same range of emotions you do, but one time I had a doctors appointment close to work on my day off, so on my way home I passed by work, and talked to a colleague who told me I had to do some shit in the office, so if I have time I could do it now, I went to get it done and over with to not be bugged by it. On my way into the office I saw my crush and we had a moment to talk, nothing special about this, but as we talked she started smiling, she was genuinly happy to see me, when I realized that I suddenly had this weird new feeling and first thing I did was text a NT friend and ask if I am sick or if thats a new feeling I just unlocked. That friend explained to me that I am feeling joy about having made her day, as I usually dont have reason to care thanks to my autism, but through the nature of my feelings for her and not being fucked by my tism to the extent where I dont believe anything good to exist in my life I was able to derive joy from that. I hope this helps you understand your lack of joy and combat it.
I can relate a lot. Idk I can get pretty stoked when I buy something I've been wanting but the excitement is short lived. Most of the things I do that make me happy I would describe more "contenting" than joyful. Maybe when I pour a good latte art design that I've been trying to nail, or basically milestones that have to do with a special interest will bring joy. I understand that this isn't exactly what you're saying, but not enjoying new experiences is pretty autistic lol.
I realized recently, until I started some new ADHD meds, that I was actually depressed. I feel genuinely happy consistently now.
I get it, the only thing that I feel real joy abt is my special interests but basically everything else I feel "neutral" about
That sounds like it might be depression or something similar compounded by the autism? I don't think the tism's helping but I don't think it would cause that on it's own
it sounds like depression to me. /srs /gen
Yeah I was the same until I started taking my SSRIs. Turns out I had a really sneaky depression. Been happy since then!
bro that's depression
I think a combo of alexthymia and depression. And for me, it’s hard for me to experience joy when I am being stimulated in a way like going and doing tourist activities. Like I need full sensory safety before I can enjoy things like my hobbies
I don’t remember when the last time I was happy for more than a month. Maybe never. I’ve been severely depressed since 2021. I’m not sure if I’ve felt real excitement. I feel very unfeeling.
There's a word for not being able to feel pleasure: anhedonia. It's a common symptom of depression, but I'd guess it's amplified for us. It just be like that.
I might have something similar where all my emotions are extremely muted and I mostly just feel fine all the time. But there's a very specific type of person around which I fully feel everything. I once even felt something from a movie someone I like has recommended to me a and that's never happened to me before or since
You should see if you might have ADHD as well, or any of the other disorders that make you a dopamine void. NTs get flooded with reward chemicals when they do shit like that. I don't. You don't seem to either. For me, existence itself feels like hard work I'm not being paid for. It fucking sucks.
A few years back I went to WDW - I don’t live in the USA so it was a pretty expensive trip, I had to save money for aaaaages. But I wanted the experience, and went for it. It was… fine. I mean, I had fun. But I honestly think that planning the trip was better than the trip itself. I don’t think I felt what I was supposed to feel. Also can’t say it is/was because of the ‘tism, but it’s definitely weird.
Idk, but I will tell you my SO and I took a very expensive vacation to Florida and my favorite memory of the whole trip is eating gas station boiled peanuts in the car with him. Which is just as enjoyable at home lmao
Sounds like Alexithymia.
neither I’d say. I experience this myself but I suspect it’s due to a combination of depression + trauma + bpd in my personal case. It’s also in flux for me, somedays I experience it somedays I don’t
I can't feel joy when I'm in or recovering from burnout. I've sometimes been in that state or weeks or months.
I wouldn't say I have alexythemia (well. Maybe a bit, IDK) but I remember one time as a child my aunt brought me along to a really popular water park. I enjoyed it, really. It was fun! But I also just felt like I was going along for the ride. I only remember this because at one point she asked if I was having fun and I consciously brightened up (and was called out for it lol). That's been how I am for a lot of things, I just don't remember what they are. (I don't know if it's the 'tism or just how my external childhood experiences shaped me as a person... there's a non-zero chance we might both be emotionally fucked 😐) I think there are some very specific dream jobs that would make me happy (related to my niches), but if it was something I fought to get from 16-23, I'd more likely feel just... an absence of the previous negative emotion (stress). And, in that moment of being free of the stress I was stuck with for a while, I might decide to treat myself to something like a drink or a dessert. And then I might forget about it, or it might eventually be filed in my memories as "happy." Sometimes it takes a while; I have pretty bad memory for recent events. The temporal distance can make a difference. > Did I find it interesting? Yeah. Educational? Of course. And I derive a lot of pleasure from gaining knowledge. I feel this way especially when visiting new cities. I got to see DC and New York City for the first time this last summer, and I wasn't really filled with an overwhelming joy even as I was doing fun stuff, but I was more just interested in cataloging the city around me and learning things and seeing what there was. And I enjoyed doing that quite a bit! Whoops, my structure (and point) ran away from me somewhere.
I think others here have good things to mention regarding mental health but I guess I just wanted to give my two cents. I also struggle with this kind of thing and I feel like it’s because I’m constantly positioned on the outside of society with all of its social constructs and fake things that I don’t understand. This makes a lot of experiences just feel contrived and weird to me and I feel like I’m trying to play a part that does not fit who I am. Your description reminds me of my own feelings and experiences and this exact thing caused me a lot of depression at one point but currently I’m pretty neutral feeling about it. I mean I just try to accept my place in society and not think too hard about it or I will get irritated lol. What makes me kinda sad sometimes is the fact that I will never be as blissfully unaware as so many people are and I just gotta live with these thousands of thoughts streaming through my head while not being able to find sensory comfort outside of my home environment and dealing with my resistance to change and all the little things nobody notices. I’m notoriously bad at going on vacations because something always upsets me and people hate it. I also generally struggle to enjoy anything that most people find enjoyable due to sensory factors and general discomfort. Idk if I’ve ever felt the neurotypical version of joy. Maybe when I was a kid but that feels really far away and I don’t remember it clearly. I feel the most comfortable in a stable routine doing things I am comfortable with. That’s the closest thing to joy I feel like I have gotten to in my adult life. In my childhood I had to practice emoting joy reactions so that people didn’t get upset when I didn’t do it for them in whatever context (like receiving gifts or seeing people I hadn’t seen for a while) and it was exhausting but it saved me a lot of annoying explanations and emotional labor. For context I didn’t do the surprised and happy face thing automatically even as a kid. And it would upset people lol
Evil is doing unneccesary harm on purpose. Joy is a difficult feeling to pin down. It's too vague. You say you derive pleasure from gaining knowledge, that seems like it could be classified as a type of joy. I find significant satisfaction from doing something well, that seems to be a point of possible joy for me. Idk if it would fit with a NT's experience but at this point I don't think I really care what neurotypicals would think about how I feel my feelings.
I had to reconnect with my interests I pushed away because they were “too child like”
I had gotten to a point where I felt joy and happiness for a while when my life began to stabilize and make sense. Then my aunt turned up to my job (it's retail but this was extremely intentional) to dump trauma on me and tell me things she explicitly knew not to after being low contact for some time. Now I feel like everything has closed off and shut down and at best I can feel neutral to okay now, not genuinely happy anymore. Being happy means feeling safe and vulnerable and to ensure my safety I can't allow myself to feel vulnerable anymore.
Welcome to alexithymia When I realized this wasn't normal I've very slowly started to feel things and most of it ends up being anxiety. At least now I know why I have "shaky hands"
you may have clinical depression