Dating Data

This article was about a 47-year old woman with autism. She writes about her experiences with support from studies on autism. She mentions several times that those who are autistic often have trouble understanding emotions. This causes a contrast to the fact that most of our actions are indirectly effected by our feelings. She looked at every experience in her life as an observer, a logical perspective on her actions rather than a person who has little idea of what they are REALLY thinking.

I consider myself as a fairly logical person, I feel that I think about my actions before I do something and analyze things around me level-headedly. But that does not exempt me from emotions. Often I am ruled by my emotions, and am only able to look at it impartially after the event. I find this rather annoying :) simply because it is uncomfortable for me to have no control over myself. Nonetheless, I have accepted my emotions as a part of who I am and rather than try to hide or prevent them, I spend more time trying to understand them. That way I know why I am doing something or feeling something, rather than trying to stop myself without knowing why. I think that those with autism must have to spend a lot of time doing that as well, but instead of trying to understand their own emotions, they have to understand everyone else's. To me that is one of the hardest things to do, simply because you usually don't have enough information to really know what a person is thinking. In that way I can sympathise with those with autism. To be completely logical in a world where everyone around you is ruled by complex emotions you cannot understand, I find that to be something truly difficult, but I think that we should all try to understand eachother better like those with autism have to. This is because I think that everyone has a reason for feeling some way, and if we can understand that, we can understand the person much better, which will help us know truly how we feel about that person and what type of person that really is. I think that we should look inward as well, because knowing yourself is probably the most important thing we can hope to achieve in our lives.