Where are my emotions

As an introduction to this article, I want write a few simple sentences. If you want to feel the essence of the autism spectrum — go to Autscape. This event is extraordinary. Organized by autistic people, for... everyone. As a rule, Autscape space is primarily friendly to people on the autism spectrum. But non-autistic people are also invited and... they visit Autscape. Personally, I think that everyone who works with autistic people should be on Autscape at least once in their life!

This year, I had the opportunity to be at Autscape for the second time. Many thanks to everyone who made this possible. Chen Gershuni, who invited me for the first time a year ago — thank you. Martijn Dekker, who together with the team trusted me and allowed me to perform for the first time, one year ago - thank you. Asia, Tomek - it wouldn't be possible without you - thank you! Kosma, if it wasn't for your logistics skills, I would never reach Autscape - thank you and congratulations on a fantastic lecture this year :-) Dear friends from the Prodeste Foundation... Thank you for your trust and support!

And now, I want to thank everyone who went to my workshop “Where are my emotions?” this year. Thank you for your wonderful presence, discussions and understanding for my bad English. Thank you for the reviews you wrote for me, and for motivating me to write this article... in English ;-)

Where are my emotions? About the connection between body, sensory feeling and emotions…

Usually the expression of human emotions is comparable. It is expressed by facial expressions, gestures, body posture, prosody, volume of voice, etc. About expression and coding of emotions in the body and behavior - I could write a book. I am not able to present everything in a short article. 

What is the most important?

It’s how people (whether autistic or not) build their first emotional codes. 

When we are born, we don't have many resources. We are small creatures that have only their bodies and senses. I don't know what it looks like in other countries, but in Poland it was only about twenty years ago that the sensory situation of the newborn began to be looked at. In this time, discovery was made, that it is not good for a newborn to be born in a brightly lit operating room. It was found that it is not good for a newborn when, immediately after birth, it is brutally detached from the mother to bathe, measure and examine life parameters. It was found that such a tiny person needs special sensory conditions, so that coming into the world does not become his first trauma. These ideas have been implemented to protect the delicate sensory structure of non-autistic babies. This indicates that people can understand what sensory sensitivity is in the first days of life. 

I can guarantee that none of the originators thought about children with autism! 

At the same time - one child in a hundred comes into the world with a special sensory composition. One child per hundred... is not similar to others. One per hundred is lonely since first days. Emotionally lonely. This loneliness results from the lack of an adequate emotional response of the environment. 

Every child, whether autistic or not - builds their emotional codes based on his sensory sensitivity. When you are autistic - your sensitivity is special. Perhaps what is pleasant for other children is harmful to you. Perhaps what is sufficient for other children is not enough for you. It starts with the fact that your reactions to the environmental stimuli are not the same as other children. 

Maybe the voice of an amused mother is painful? Maybe you don't like to be stroked? Maybe you need more rocking? Maybe bathing and feeding is a trauma, not relaxation. When your behavior as a baby is different from that of the most children - the people become confused. And yet nobody has any influence on his own behavior in the earliest childhood! Confused parents do not know how to react to the unusual behavior of their child. They have in their minds what they have read in parental magazines and on parenting portals. Something bad is going on in their opinion. They are scared. When their child reacts with fear to their joy - they are afraid. When their child reacts by flapping their hands because is happy - parents are distressed. And when their child walks on their toes because of happiness - they are frozen. In this way, the child does not receive proper emotional feedback. 

When a typical child is happy, it hears from his parents: "hey, you are happy!". When it cries, it hears: "You are sad now!" When a typical child is helpless, it hears: “you really don't know what to do now.” Because autistic children show their emotions differently  - they often don't receive similar information. They see and feel the fear of their parents. In this way, day by day, year by year, they are getting further from their emotions. Extremely often, adults in the autism spectrum are unable to identify their emotions so much, that they are diagnosed with alexithymia. However, this is not due to autism! If a non-autistic child would have been transferred into a group that cannot respond to his emotions, it will probably also develop alexithymia. How can you name your emotions if no one called them before? 

Unfortunately, the consequences are very serious.
First of all - a person without an emotional response is detached from their emotions. Emotional instability is the simplest result. When human doesn't know what he feels, it can't control emotions. Most often, such a person feels only the intensity of emotions. When there are too many of them - it explodes. It explodes because of sadness, anger, excitement, happiness, jealousy, love... It just explodes because what it feels is too strong. Or inversely - it freezes. It freezes, stays idle, stops responding at all. Because what I feel is too strong to say or to do anything.

Let's go further…

What happens to a person, who not only does not receive an answer to his emotional behavior, but is punished for it? You know what I mean. The boy is happy and flapping his arms and someone is holding his hands and shouting "peaceful hands!”. The girl is thoughtful and murmurs and someone screams at her "calm mouth!”. Someone is nervous and jump, sway... What do they hear? "Sit still! Calm down!”. You know it. What happens with such human being? The trauma. PTSD. Permanent personality disorder. It can't end well! A person whose emotions are suppressed cannot grow healthy.

Emotions begin in the body and are expressed in the body. Imagine a person who fell in love. Imagine a person who does not know that it fell in love. Imagine this pain. Every day this person feel stomach ache, its cheeks are red, feels dizzy, its hands are shaking, and its legs are like cotton wool. Can you feel it? This is not a condition that you can interpret as pleasant. Is there anything strange if this person being to react violently? And what happens if that person knows how they feel? Will he be able to express his feelings differently?

Please, remember:

• Recognize your emotional codes
• stimming is not just about sensory needs
• your sensory needs have shaped your emotional codes since early childhood
• help explain to the world what autistics emotional codes are
• show people that when you flap your hands, f.e., it is not because you are autistic, but because you are happy (fascinated, nervous, excited, tired, etc…)
• Let people around you talk to you. Let them tell you: "when you behave like that, you feel …" 

And if have autistic person in your family, please - respect individual emotional codes. Help an autistic person understand the emotions she/he/it is experiencing. Name them, don't discriminate. Forget about "quiet hands, feet and mouths"

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* Marek Stankiewicz https://aspiphotography.wordpress.com/ dziękuję za pomoc :-) 

** Czytelników polskojęzycznych zapraszam na webinar "Gdzie są moje emocje" https://prodeste.pl/produkt/emocje/