• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

How can I stop being so emotional?

Stan Z.

Well-Known Member
All right, so here's some info about me. I'm 20, and I have ASD, ADHD, and depression. Throughout all of my life, every time I get extremely sad over someone yelling at me incessantly, calling me names, getting hit by people (like what my stepmom did last year over missing one spot after sweeping the floor), I often tear up. And sadly, I still do it today. I realize that, as a man, we're supposed to (usually) be the care-takers and protectors of society. We're supposed to be strong, steadfast, and muscular in order to protect other people (such as their wives, significant others, and/or loved ones), and here I am, an emotionally weak guy with a huge speech impediment and lack of conversation/social skills.

I also lost my mom back in 2014 and had to deal with an abusive stepmom, so that didn't help my depression.

How do I become more emotionally strong to people (and hopefully my future love interest)?
 
Greater overall health and wellbeing, changes things. Abuse and neglect leave a stain, it takes a while to fade away. How much you like yourself, is the diet right for you, what do you do for fun, artistic expression, great books all that seems to affect emotional stability. People are not supposed to hit each other over chores
..
 
"someone yelling at me incessantly, calling me names, getting hit by people (like what my stepmom did last year over missing one spot after sweeping the floor), I often tear up. And sadly, I still do it today. "

It's good you can still feel emotions, with all that on you like that. Mostly longterm abuse victims go grey inside, I'm glad you can still feel things it means that you can heal when you get away from the [ABUSER] and have a beautiful life somewhere safe. There is one cheesy song that could well be an anthem for us. I should look it up and post a link.
"Someday, I'll be, big enough that you can't hit me...."


I found it. Another artist sings it too, but Taylor Swift has a soothing voice to me. What does that do for you? It makes me cry a little. Well leak really, I'm not a sobbing, wailing sort of man


Love isn't hitting. Exploitation has lots of hitting and yelling involved
 
Last edited:
yuh, it's a body guard job, maybe do some self defense stuff? like how to defend against physical attacks.

The emotional thing, it lessens with age and the cruelty of life. But - to have a heart, to feel, to have empathy is normal, it's just that most people are stony hearted nowadays, so it seems normal, but it's not. I had a psycho with no empathy for my 'mother' and it was a natural birth.
 
Your feelings and response are understandable. You are living in an abusive situation.
What you are "supposed to do and be" is part of the toxic masculinity mind set which is actually very harmful to men.
I don't know enough about your situation as to what resources you have available to you but you need to get out of where you are living. If you are already in a supportive program utilize it. Contact social services agencies for guidence. If you are being treated for your depression talk to your health care provider. Seek their help in dealing with the abuse. Hitting you is assault and you can initiate legal action. Where is your father in all of this? No one should have to live the way you do.
The problem is not your emotions the problem is the abuse you are experienceing. As an adult you need to be proactive with your life and who is in it and not be focused on managing your emotions to endure the abuse. I hope you will seek out the options you have available to you.
This website is from British Columbia but it is a good source of information: Abuse_Disabil _Information.pdf (collegeofdirectsupport.com)
 
All right, so here's some info about me. I'm 20, and I have ASD, ADHD, and depression. Throughout all of my life, every time I get extremely sad over someone yelling at me incessantly, calling me names, getting hit by people (like what my stepmom did last year over missing one spot after sweeping the floor), I often tear up. And sadly, I still do it today. I realize that, as a man, we're supposed to (usually) be the care-takers and protectors of society. We're supposed to be strong, steadfast, and muscular in order to protect other people (such as their wives, significant others, and/or loved ones), and here I am, an emotionally weak guy with a huge speech impediment and lack of conversation/social skills.

I also lost my mom back in 2014 and had to deal with an abusive stepmom, so that didn't help my depression.

How do I become more emotionally strong to people (and hopefully my future love interest)?

You're still just a kid! Well, compared to me anyway. Have you considered going to Job Corps? I went there and it was amazing. I got airfare to fly for free to the center I chose. And then I got free room and board, a 100 dollar clothing allowance, a paycheck, and was taught two trades. They have everything from business, to nursing, to plastering, seamanship, landscaping, culinary arts, etc. And the education is all free.

I really would recommend it to any young person who's starting out and needs a new zip code and a job.

If you do culinary arts, it's really cool. After graduation, they send you to advanced training to learn to be a sous chef on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

And also you can go to college for free if you fully graduate and do really good.

Yes! I tried to get my son to enroll but he wouldn't.

Stan Z, if you still live with your stepmother, use Jobcorps as a way out. Pack your bags and and use the opportunity to free yourself from a situation that just makes everything more confusing and difficult. Jobcorps will help you learn life skills to like budgeting, shopping and cooking for yourself.
 
I am like that. I trained myself not to feel anything. Or get emotionally involved in anything. Life beat the rest of it out of me.
You are numb all the time. Everything is grey and expressionless. And you slowly lose feeling for both animals and people. You no longer care if they suffer or are in pain. You feel nothing for them. Just numbness. As if they aren't even there or real. That's what that's like.

And don't worry everyone. I'm getting better and allowing myself to feel more. Life without it just isn't life.
 
And sadly, I still do it today. I realize that, as a man, we're supposed to (usually) be the care-takers and protectors of society. We're supposed to be strong, steadfast, and muscular in order to protect other people (such as their wives, significant others, and/or loved ones), and here I am, an emotionally weak guy with a huge speech impediment and lack of conversation/social skills.
Societal gender norms are harmful BS. So many men commit suicide every single year because they're expected to just bottle up all of their emotions until they can't take it anymore. As an extremely emotional autistic male, I've contemplated and come very close to attempting suicide largely due to that.

I don't think much of anything can really be done about it, at least nothing that is at all healthy. Numbing yourself and burying your feelings is awful and will only hurt you more in the long run. I personally have just accepted myself for who I am. Autism is the result of a hyper-connected brain, which inherently leads to increased emotionality just as much as it leads to increased sensory sensitivity. We can no more change that, than we can grow a third eye.
 
Umm. After what you went through, there is no reason for you NOT to be emotional. Who said you should not be emotional, anyway? The brain responds to stimuli the way it does. Your prefrontal cortex tries to make sense of it and that part of the brain won't stop growing till age 25. So right now, you have to work a narrative around that abuse you sustained and make it one that will not trigger you over and over.

We are told things. You need to tell your brain whatever it is to stop the amygdala from eating you alive. Study some neuroscience and work to get the brain itself on an even keel.
 
I am like that. I trained myself not to feel anything. Or get emotionally involved in anything. Life beat the rest of it out of me.
You are numb all the time. Everything is grey and expressionless. And you slowly lose feeling for both animals and people. You no longer care if they suffer or are in pain. You feel nothing for them. Just numbness. As if they aren't even there or real. That's what that's like.

And don't worry everyone. I'm getting better and allowing myself to feel more. Life without it just isn't life.
It's like scar tissue that inhibits mobility, or calluses on your hands I think. Recovery from the grey abyss is about gratitude, and that leads to compassion. You can care about things and people again, but it's like Charlie Brown and Lucy on Peanuts. Lucy holds the football for Charlie to kick, but she pulls it away everytime at the last minute.
It's a form of bitterness I think, it's not stoicism, from repeated rejection and ridicule. From being excluded, which leads to a more solitary life. In an isolated life, the other people in the world seem less real. It's because even if you do get to talk to people sometimes, there is no meaningful connection. I used to look forward to shopping sometimes because then I could talk to people a bit. No one talks to me anymore. So they seem less real, like background scenery in a simulation. Then if I do talk to someone I always screw it up.
 
Last edited:
Umm. After what you went through, there is no reason for you NOT to be emotional. Who said you should not be emotional, anyway? The brain responds to stimuli the way it does. Your prefrontal cortex tries to make sense of it and that part of the brain won't stop growing till age 25. So right now, you have to work a narrative around that abuse you sustained and make it one that will not trigger you over and over.

We are told things. You need to tell your brain whatever it is to stop the amygdala from eating you alive. Study some neuroscience and work to get the brain itself on an even keel.
Can you post (or repost) some links to neuroscience articles please?
 
There's a lot of youtube vids on recovery from abusive parents. There's a whole lexicon of terms to describe their abuse, eg gaslighting, eggshells, invalidation etc, it's worth knowing some of these as it helps to avoid being triggered when you can identify the tactic used. It's mostly found under 'narcissistic abuse'.
 
There's a lot of youtube vids on recovery from abusive parents. There's a whole lexicon of terms to describe their abuse, eg gaslighting, eggshells, invalidation etc, it's worth knowing some of these as it helps to avoid being triggered when you can identify the tactic used. It's mostly found under 'narcissistic abuse'.

Do you have any favorites? I have seen some of those, I tried to find some I had seen before, but no joy on basics of abusive relationship dynamics, like to define basic terms. I know I watched a series, but I forget now what it was. This one is from MedCircle, they do interviews and encourage storytelling but its all pretty much lite, no physical/sexual abuse stories on MedCircle, at least not that I could find. Usually sex abuse and physical abuse are spoken of together, as they so often happen together to a victim. See if this one rings any bells

 
Last edited:
You are sensitive. That's beautiful. Please don't allow anybody else to abuse you in your lifetime. Abusers line up to take advantage of sensitive souls because nobody else will put up with that crap.

Don't you be that receptacle. You don't need to recycle the creeps just say no to emotional abuse.☺
 
Do you have any favorites? I have seen some of those, I tried to find some I had seen before, but no joy on basics of abusive relationship dynamics, like to define basic terms. I know I watched a series, but I forget now what it was. This one is from MedCircle, they do interviews and encourage storytelling but its all pretty much lite, no physical/sexual abuse stories on MedCircle, at least not that I could find. Usually sex abuse and physical abuse are spoken of together, as they so often happen together to a victim. See if this one rings any bells


oh I think I started with 'crappy childhood fairy' (it's a yt channel) cos of the catchy name and it threw up others in the genre.
 
We are emotional beings. It's perfectly natural.
My first thought on reading OP is get that stereotypical idea of what males are supposed to be like out
of your mind.
People somehow created that image and it keeps getting passed down.

Personally, I prefer a sensitive, caring man that can show his emotions.
Mr. Macho doesn't cut it with me.

I'm rather stuck in a controlling narcissistic relationship myself.
There are reasons I can't just take off from it.
But, if you don't have some reason holding you back, I agree with others that Jobcorps would be
a great way to go at your age.
 
There's a lot of youtube vids on recovery from abusive parents. There's a whole lexicon of terms to describe their abuse, eg gaslighting, eggshells, invalidation etc, it's worth knowing some of these as it helps to avoid being triggered when you can identify the tactic used. It's mostly found under 'narcissistic abuse'.

This is good advice. My two favorites are:
Crappy Childhood Fairy
Patrick Teahan

Patrick Teahan in particular resonates with me. He is also one of the few who offers actual theraputic exercises for overcoming your chilhood based trauma. And he does role playing so that you can see examples of narcississim in real life situations. These are wonderful because it can be hard to recognize emotional abuse as it is occurring.
 
You can’t stop being so emotional. What you can stop being is a man who has been brainwashed into thinking that men aren’t supposed to be emotional.
 

New Threads

Top Bottom