#I'm the stoic insensitive type of sperg and that is not really discussed anymore

[soulvomit]

Reading ‘Aspergirls’ but I don’t relate to the emotional parts of the narrative. Nor do I relate to the emotional parts of the narrative in Highly Sensitive Person or many modern autism books. Sigh.

It helps me understand the emotional autists in my life better (new perspective on my ex husband), but... 

This is what my emotions have been like my whole life:

Default mode:  Robot Girl Then, here and there, with great frequency in childhood but diminishing frequency into my 30s: OMFGWTFBBQDIEDIEDIE SODIFJSDOFIJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SDOISDFOISODIFOSDIFJWOERUWEIRUWOERIUWOERIUAOSDIOSIDJOQIWeoqie!~!!!##$@#%)@#$(*@#%(*@)#%(*#%

Either Robot Girl, or GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Nothing in between. No setting between 1-11 for my emotions.

But...

As of my 40s...

it’s 

Robot Person, and sometimes I get a bit animated or a little mad. I even get amused sometimes. 

But I do not have strong emotions anymore.

It’s like something just burned right the fuck out.

My absolute overenthusiasm that I used to have about things I got enthusiastic about, is gone, too.

And... this actually superficially looks like I’ve “grown up” and gotten over so much of my autism, or something. Because it can pass as grown ass adult emotions. Being dead inside or something is considered socially appropriate at my age. I don’t feel like I’ve cried in about six years. 

But it’s actually in some ways got *different* failure modes, and one of them is that I can’t actually generate enough dopamine to DO ANYTHING much of the time. I wonder if an ADHD med would actually be helpful at this point in my life - perhaps at a lower dose than I took before - it dialed up the extremes EVEN MORE when I was on one 14 years ago.

But also - the way my sensory overload has manifested, has changed shape over my lifetime. I haven’t cried over it in a long time. I haven’t lost my shit over it in a long time. At some point, I just progressed to dissociation/shutdown. 

And then later, it became chronic pain and migraines. Like, what would cause a meltdown in the past, would cause a fibro flare or migraine now.

In fact, I don’t cry, I get migraines, and basically I have to get catharsis through a hard stim when I feel that coming on if I don’t want to be in my room with the light off for the rest of the day, or somehow find some trigger that will actually make me cry, which is harder and harder as I get older. 

But I am definitely not "sensitive”