This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.
I had a weird occurrence this last week. Usually my mood weather is mostly cloudy (lightly depressed), with occasional forays into cloudy (depressed) with thunderstorms (angry and depressed). Sometimes I have a better day and have partly cloudy weather (neutral mood).
This week, I had a moment of emotional overwhelm... which would normally be bad... but it wasn't bad. It was just overwhelming, so I started leaking tears, but I wasn't angry or sad. I was sitting outside in the sunshine, on a nice day, with blue sky and puffy clouds. I mentally puzzled over it for a while, and decided that I was apparently experiencing joy. It was quite odd, because there was no actual pleasure or happy sensation, just the overwhelm. And the timing was extremely peculiar, because it was the first day of my period at the time, which usually makes me more miserable than usual.
My mental math was informed by a pair of Invisibilia episodes on emotions, which told me that apparently the sum total of human emotion can be plotted on two linear spectrums: wound up-calm, and pleasant-unpleasant. I ruled out the experience being unpleasant because the situation was pleasant, even if the overwhelm feeling wasn't really pleasant. Obviously the feeling was off the charts on the "wound up" side of things. In lieu of any other data, I picked "joy" because it was the most powerful "pleasant" feeling I could think of, and one that appropriately does sometimes move people to tears.
As is my tendency when odd things happen, I tried to pick apart the experience. Sunshine on my skin in small doses is a pleasant sensation; it's why I was outside in the first place. Perhaps the vitamin D was particularly essential? Or the remnants of the maca root managed to rebalance my hormones for a short time. Why didn't I feel the joy properly? Perhaps my brain is improperly wired for such positive experiences, after two decades or so of depression? Or perhaps the painkillers had some effect- positive or negative. The type I was on, a Midol-knockoff specifically for period pain, contain antihistamines.
When I mentioned this to my doctor/therapist, she noted that it can be very easy for anxiety- and depression-prone people to mistake good emotions for bad ones, so she was very pleased I'd noted the difference here. An easy example is excitement and anxiety. Excitement is being wound up over something good, looking forward to it. Anxiety is being wound up over something bad, dreading it. If you're very accustomed to feeling anxiety, it can be easy to mistake excitement related to say, your upcoming graduation, or birthday, for anxiety.
She suggested this phenomenon might be more common in my life than I think. I'm actually kind of dubious, since I did recognize the weirdness of the pseudo-joy, and in general feel like I have a good handle on my emotions. But it won't hurt me to keep an eye out.
I had a weird occurrence this last week. Usually my mood weather is mostly cloudy (lightly depressed), with occasional forays into cloudy (depressed) with thunderstorms (angry and depressed). Sometimes I have a better day and have partly cloudy weather (neutral mood).
This week, I had a moment of emotional overwhelm... which would normally be bad... but it wasn't bad. It was just overwhelming, so I started leaking tears, but I wasn't angry or sad. I was sitting outside in the sunshine, on a nice day, with blue sky and puffy clouds. I mentally puzzled over it for a while, and decided that I was apparently experiencing joy. It was quite odd, because there was no actual pleasure or happy sensation, just the overwhelm. And the timing was extremely peculiar, because it was the first day of my period at the time, which usually makes me more miserable than usual.
My mental math was informed by a pair of Invisibilia episodes on emotions, which told me that apparently the sum total of human emotion can be plotted on two linear spectrums: wound up-calm, and pleasant-unpleasant. I ruled out the experience being unpleasant because the situation was pleasant, even if the overwhelm feeling wasn't really pleasant. Obviously the feeling was off the charts on the "wound up" side of things. In lieu of any other data, I picked "joy" because it was the most powerful "pleasant" feeling I could think of, and one that appropriately does sometimes move people to tears.
As is my tendency when odd things happen, I tried to pick apart the experience. Sunshine on my skin in small doses is a pleasant sensation; it's why I was outside in the first place. Perhaps the vitamin D was particularly essential? Or the remnants of the maca root managed to rebalance my hormones for a short time. Why didn't I feel the joy properly? Perhaps my brain is improperly wired for such positive experiences, after two decades or so of depression? Or perhaps the painkillers had some effect- positive or negative. The type I was on, a Midol-knockoff specifically for period pain, contain antihistamines.
When I mentioned this to my doctor/therapist, she noted that it can be very easy for anxiety- and depression-prone people to mistake good emotions for bad ones, so she was very pleased I'd noted the difference here. An easy example is excitement and anxiety. Excitement is being wound up over something good, looking forward to it. Anxiety is being wound up over something bad, dreading it. If you're very accustomed to feeling anxiety, it can be easy to mistake excitement related to say, your upcoming graduation, or birthday, for anxiety.
She suggested this phenomenon might be more common in my life than I think. I'm actually kind of dubious, since I did recognize the weirdness of the pseudo-joy, and in general feel like I have a good handle on my emotions. But it won't hurt me to keep an eye out.
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