Autistic adults experience complex emotions, a revelation that could shape better therapy for neurodivergent people. To a group of autistic adults, giddiness manifests like “bees”; small moments of joy like “a nice coffee in the morning”; anger starts with a “body-tensing” boil, then headaches.

I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://research.aota.org/ajot/article-abstract/78/4/7804205070/25222/Affective-Contact-in-Autism-A-Phenomenological

From the linked article:

Autistic adults experience complex emotions, a revelation that could shape better therapy strategies for neurodivergent people, says Rutgers researcher

What does giddiness or joy or anger feel like?

To a group of autistic adults participating in a Rutgers study, giddiness manifests like “bees”; small moments of joy are like “a nice coffee in the morning” that yields “a sense of elevation”; anger starts with a “body-tensing” boil, then headaches.

Contrary to common perceptions and years of research that autistic people can’t describe their emotions or often have muted emotional responses, a Rutgers study published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy concludes that many autistic adults are in fact acutely aware of their feelings and can label them in vivid, often colorful detail.

“What if everything we know about autism is wrong?” said Aaron Dallman, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at the Rutgers School of Health Professions and the author of the study.

“We spend all this time problematizing autism, rather than doing the work to understand what it’s like to be autistic,” he said. “The popular idea that autistic people don’t have rich, emotional lives is simply not true.”

The idea that autistic people can’t describe their emotions comes about because of alexithymia, which is the struggle to describe or identify your emotions. My own experiences with alexithymia are that I can describe and identify emotions but it can take sooooo long to process. So to most people, it comes across that I CAN’T identify and describe them when I actually CAN if you just give me time.

The idea that we have muted emotional responses probably comes about because we don’t always outwardly express emotions in the expected way. This has been interpreted as us not having the emotions; we have them, we just may communicate them differently.

I’m glad this research is being done but damn, does it suck that research is still at the point of “autistic people actually have feelings guys”.

What a wildly ableist study and article.