For a very long time, people around me thought they knew what I was feeling or thinking. Nobody knew (not even me) that I was autistic. I honestly believed it was completely normal to study other people’s reactions just to respond in the “right” and consistent way to any situation.

What I didn’t realize was that this made me come across as someone with little emotion, cold, distant, detached.
Let’s bust that myth right away: that’s not true.

I’m not saying my way of feeling emotions is better or worse, but it definitely is VERY intense. The thing is, none of it shows on the outside. Ever. So, looking back, people weren’t wrong for thinking I was distant, they just couldn’t possibly know what that distance really was.

What I feel is not what I show. That means I need to have the courage to say my feelings out loud, which doesn’t come easy to me and also clashes with social norms. How many people actually say out loud, “I’m happy”? Most of the time we just smile, right? And how often do you hear someone clearly say, “I’m angry,” instead of just showing it?

For me, happiness turns into “stimming" (a strange word we’ll talk about later), a burning warmth in my chest, an unstoppable rush of emotions, the urge to hug someone (though I rarely do, because physical contact is tricky for me), and an explosion of colors and thoughts so huge it drowns out everything else.

At the same time, most of the time I’m completely unable to recognize what someone else in front of me is feeling. The gap between my inner world and the outside one makes it hard for me to understand emotions in others. Often, someone else’s happiness is invisible to me—let alone their anger. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed during heated arguments, just because I couldn’t grasp how strongly the other person was feeling. And sadness? Unless there are tears, I almost never realize that someone is truly not okay, unless they actually tell me what’s making them sad.