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Use For Feeling

I am analytical.  I can seem emotionless.  I'm not preoccupied with emotion.  There are more interesting things to think about than how I feel.

My approach to emotion is practical.  I have thought about it a lot.  Emotions have a narrow range of functions.  The most important ones are to support our social structures and to motivate us toward necessary resolutions.  Beyond all that, I find that my private feelings can usually be ignored.  Emotion isn't very useful for analysis.  Feelings can obstruct reason.  It's natural and easy for me to think like this.  Any intellectualizing I do about how my emotions work is unnecessary for them to work that way.

I do have strong emotions.  I don't  consciously suppress my feelings.  I often feel lonely and I have anxiety problems that significantly affect my ability to function.  I'm too sensitive to criticism  and I am also fearful. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.   And I have compassion, love, pity.  I can't manipulate my emotions any better than anyone else can but I'm pretty good at making sure they don't manipulate me.  I am conscientious about how I rely on my feelings.  Aiding me in this is the fact that my emotions are limited.  I can look past them without much trouble.  Even when they are intense.  I find my head well and I am able to process my emotions quickly.  Then I dismiss them.  They're just tools.

This mechanical way of thinking is typical of me.  Sometimes being emotionally detached is helpful.  Sometimes it isn't.  I don't have a great deal of emotional intelligence.  When I believed I was neurotypical, I thought everyone was just like me.  It has been very difficult to adjust to the idea that they aren't.  That emotion is bigger in other people's lives.  That others necessarily expect me to engage with their emotions in ways that are hopelessly and essentially unimportant to me.  More often than others I fail to guess how people feel or to anticipate their feelings and I dont have any idea how to respond to others' emotional outbursts.  Or at least I have no confidence I can do so in an appropriate way.  My emotional immaturity creates predictable complications in my relationships. The briefness of my emotional reactions makes it seem like I don't have feelings.  So even if I have a sound intellectual understanding of feeling.  Even if I'm good at remaining dispassionate.  For all of that I can seem less human.

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