Hi
we have something we have had on our minds for a while and we are looking for advise from other autistic people to see if anyone else feels the same way.
we feel like we can read some of someone’s emotions fine and some emotions we find harder to see in someone.
for example we can see if someone is happy and we know when someone is cross but the thing we find hard is when the other emotions mix into it.
is this a normal thing when your autistic or does this mean we aren’t autistic and we were miss diagnosed?
we do find it hard to know what someone is thinking and feeling when we are out shopping for example.
we also find it hard to look people in the eyes.
we are 20 years old and we are on the between mild and moderate on the autism spectrum.
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Late to the party but consider therapy.
Hi Hereturbies.
One of the “triad” elements is difficulties with social communication. This includes difficulties in picking up social cues and what is referred to as body language, or interpreting facial expressions and posture. Often, people on the spectrum can pick out the reasonably obvious ones, but struggle with the more subtle signs. My son, when he was small, could understand cartoon emotions but not ours. This was because the cartoons were caricatures, and displayed extremes of emotion. When we started to behave like the cartoons, he got the messages we were trying to give him, so we toned them back a fraction.
He does still struggle, but he knows - for example - when I’m sad, which he wasn’t able to understand before.
Eye contact is very difficult for people on the spectrum. Again, my son hates it. We taught him to look at our shoulders. It’s close enough to appear like eye contact but not as challenging. Some people look at the person’s ear, for the same reason.
Funnily enough, if I have a migraine I can find eye contact painful. So I look at the ears. It doesn’t hurt so much, so I definitely recommend it.
There is a book called TalkAbout Activities that can help