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One of the most tragic and most prevalent myths about autistics, is that they don't have feelings. I am not sure why NTs believe this, but I guess it is because many autistics do not respond with the same emotional expression that non-autistic people do. For example, when a family member dies, they may not react with sadness. I remember this experience with all of the three grandparents who died so far - at none of their funerals, I expressed any significant emotion. Now in my case, especially with my mother's mother and my father's father dying, this wasn't unusual, as neither did my father. I was, actually, kind of surprised and confused when my father made jokes at my grandmother's funeral. This was when I was 21 and had rationally learned the "correct" emotional response to such events as having a family member's funeral, so I was confused as my father was reacting contrary to that "correct" emotional response.

Now let me be very clear: autistics DO feel emotions, and sometimes very intensely. I will not go so far as to say that we have the same emotions in the same situations that NTs do. Actually, getting back to the funerals, I knew (at least with the last two, in 2003 and 2007) that I was supposed to be sad, but I really don't think I was. I seemed to approach the deaths rationally, realizing that my grandfather was severely demented and probably in serious pain, and my grandmother had herself chosen not to be treated for her illness. Consequently, I saw the deaths as an end to suffering, and didn't feel very sad.

Another thing that I've noticed when it comes to feeling emotions, is that I might focus on a detail present in a situation and respond emotionally to that detail. An example is when a fellow patient in the psychiatric hospital told us that he had incurable cancer and had only a few months to live. I did feel sad for this person, but still I laughed out loud when someone made a funny comment about an entirely unrelated situation.

Another problem with the concept of emotions, and the way autistics respond emotionally, is understanding the differences between emotions. Many psychologists believe there are about four basic emotions - happiness, sadness, anger and fear. I wish NTs would use these four basic emotions only instead of complicating things by using nuances like frustration, disappointment, distress etc. I myself use these words, but cannot be sure if they are used correctly, and, when needing to conceptualize them, use rather simple explanations. But, in my opinion, it generally really doesn't matter whether you use the "correct" nuance - at least, I've never gotten into a troubling situation for saying I was frustrated when I was expected to be disappointed, for instance.

What does get troubling, is when my non-verbal emotional expression is grossly different from the emotion I claim to be feeling. Usually, this leads to people around me not believing that I feel the way I say I feel, because it doesn't show itself in my body language. I had one particularly frustrating (if that's the "correct" word, hehe) experience with this while in the psychiatric hospital: in my perception, I was stressed out to the point of being unable to control myself. I went into the kitchen and broke a glass. As a nurse asked me why I did it, I said that I was in a meltdown. What I did not know, was that I had a smile on my face as I told him. The nurse responded that I didn't look stressed out as I had a smile on my face, and it was hard to convince him that I hadn't broken the glass because I thought it was funny.