masking makes talking about emotions hard - anyone else?

[feralrat77]

in the past few years, i’ve become almost completely unable to understand and talk about how i feel. when it comes to others i’m so empathetic and emotionally intelligent and it feels like i can talk through someone else’s emotions with them for hours. my friends comment on how i know how they feel before they do. so it’s so strange to me that i feel like i have no idea how i feel most of the time

if the emotion relates to a particular situation i’m able to communicate how i feel and why, but when it’s just how i feel i have no clue what to say. i feel like i’ve masked every aspect of myself for so long that now it just feels like my emotions are so separate from myself.

my friends think i’m the strong one, the one who everyone can rely on to be there for them (which, honestly, makes me so happy that i get to be there for them) but on the other hand, nobody can ever be there for me because i don’t know what to say. i can say i feel bad and i’m good, but if anyone wants any more than that there’s an issue. it feels impossible to let this guard down and learn to speak to people about how i’m feeling. all i want is to be able to talk to my friends about how bad things are… and i just can’t

does anyone else feel this way?

[Bee-bop]

Hi feralrat77,

it can be hard to speak about emotions for many people so you are not alone in that. It may be worth noting that young children do not understand emotions and instead can speak of sensations like tingling, heat, cold, a need to run away. These can be linked to how they are feeling emotionally. I am not saying you are a young child, it is your body explaining rather than your mind if that makes sense? My daughter often cannot explain her feelings but, I can see she's a certain emotion because of how she acts such as faster pacing up and down and speaking faster when she is angry, she will also swear. When she is low, she will be a little quieter or will say "I'm fine" rather abruptly so I know she isn't. She is a little like you in that she is there for her friends but, often finds saying how she feels very hard. She sometimes asks for help in this and we work things out together.

Do you have high anxiety would you say? My daughter is very hyper alert and so this can also stop her saying how she feels for fear of upsetting others so, it stops her saying how she feels and she can become low in mood or angry. When anxious we go into fight/flight/freeze or fawn which means we aren't in a position to "feel" our emotions because we are experiencing a fear response. It is only when we calm down that we can think about what the emotion is.

I hope this makes sense and is helpful.

[sarahpxx]

Hi feralrat77,Yes, I can totally relate to this. I used to spend hours listening to others, nodding and feeling empathetic etc. I'd let others just unload on me conning myself and everyone into thinking that I was being a good listener. Good listener I was, but totally denying my own needs.

I thought I had understood and managed my own emotions well but I now find myself increasingly angry and that anger is finding its way out. Over the last 30 years I have controlled this with anti depressants, and numbed my way through the ups and downs of life.

Last November I came off the citalopram but the anger remains. I'm struggling to understand the causes and not managing the anger at all well, damaging relationships with neighbours, friends and family. I feel that so much unexpressed emotion is locked up inside me that I'm struggling to operate properly.

Waiting for talking therapy for years.

Hope this makes you feel less alone..

Sarah

[Tronsformer]

This happens exactly to me too! And I’ve only been aware of this since discovering my autism (well into my 30’s) but was otherwise oblivious.

I just interpreted it as ‘maybe I’m fine or must not as bad a ‘them’’ if I wasn’t pouring out while I feel down or a certain way.

But in reality I just couldn’t find the words or even the concept to explain. I have been told I was great at giving advice but never heeded my own - and I assumed they were trying to cheer me up but in truth I simply didn’t understand the concept. Which it turns out is a very autistic trait. If I haven’t had first experience of an event or experience I’m unable to identify it as that. Thus will never declare it, even if it is the same thing as something someone has spoken to me about.

So I’m slowly realising that I have great difficulty in realising that the things I go through are and can be relative to others, even if I ‘feel’ they are different. It’s like I’m missing that chapter of the communication manual in my brain.

So I think it might be just that we have had no one that we can relate to where we someone can go ‘oh I’m like that’ and then we feel more comfortable or ‘allowed’ even to discuss further. For example on here there a many that will feel and relate to this. But amongst our nearest and dearest they will not understand.

I’ve always come to understand ‘imposter syndrome’ as a concept meant for the professional world but I’ve realised its a huge part of how my brain and autism works and now that I know I can put things in context. And basically its to do with what I mentioned before about not feeling ‘qualified’ as someone else because I haven’t had that ‘exact’ experience or same reaction (overreaction at times) that others may have. As a result it leads to brushing things under the rug and so on.

To your point about masking, this is where it is for me, partly to being undiagnosed for 99% of my life of probably. But ultimately the structures of society and the rules of the world ensure that we have to work harder to operate ie mask to the point that I feel when we are faced with a situation that really need us to open up or be vulnerable - our masking behaviours won’t allow us to do it. And this is the tough one I’m trying to work on.

Honestly, I find it great too that people can open up and rely on me, especially as I know myself that I do so honestly and purely. But I’m also aware that amongst non autistic people (from my experience) when they do this or are faced with someone talking about an issue, more often then not, its to a lower standard then I do and hearing how some people speak about that person afterwards highlights how not very serious people can be taken, or when their vulnerability is used against them. So this definitely influences me on why I don’t or struggle to share my lows and difficulties and end up trying to cope all by myself.

So I think it’s all down to just ‘us’ not having an environment and social structure that wants us to be vulnerable. Thus the masking takes over because our minds things its a protective measure. And so far I don’t think I can ever shake it because the feeling of being vulnerable whilst sharing difficulties to others is just as bad as masking and hiding it I feel. Instead I need to find a way to resolve whatever issue I have so I don’t need to get to that stage but that in itself adds to the problem.

However since realising I am autistic - just knowing that my mind operates in a different has helped me come to terms with that which I find difficult better.