My little brother is severely autistic. He can't tell you whether he's happy, excited, aroused, or neutral - he truly lacks the ability to identify and classify his emotions, although he experiences the emotions - I've seen him excited, sad, etc. His responses (physically) to his emotions are usually WAY overblown - if he's excited about buying a new CD, he might jump up and down, laughing uncontrollably, biting his hand or hitting his head for hours. When he exhibits sadness (crying, sobbing), it never seems to be in relation to anything that's happening in his environment - it just seems random and sporadic, and he appears so terribly miserable, and these episodes can last for hours too. He can't tell you why he's crying - and he couldn't even tell you that he's sad. His automatic response, now, is to say he's sad - but he's parroting what those around him have said his whole life.
All that to say - he absolutely lacks the ability to discern, describe, or understand his emotions.
I don't experience many highs or lows emotionally. I'm never excited or overjoyed, and I don't identify with those feelings naturally - it makes me uncomfortable when people around me are over-emotional. I have experienced sadness, sometimes extreme (and inappropriate) but it's always been fleeting, and I return to neutral pretty easily.
I believe I understand most of my emotions, what I'm experiencing when (although I agree they are not always socially acceptable or expected emotions, as they are usually fairly close to neutral), but I'm not real good at TALKING about them with people. Where I'm relatively uninhibited with normal conversation (discussing something of interest, or someone else's life with them), when the subject of my emotions comes up (rare), my speech becomes a bit halting, I may stutter or take ages to get my thoughts out - I can't access words to describe my feelings, perhaps because I'm not completely in tune with what they are - or, probably more accurately, how to communicate them.
I know when something's "off" - meaning, I'm straying from neutral. Sometimes I put a little too much emphasis on the feelings I experience, thinking they're more pertinent than they are. This could explain my relationship problems - a mild feeling of rejection (unfounded usually) I might experience so strongly that I go down the wrong road with it, becoming more frustrated as I go along.
So, for me, I know I have some issues communicating and perhaps classifying my emotions consistently, but I don't feel that I'm out of touch with them - just that I'm most comfortable and at home when I'm pretty dead neutral, and swaying too far above or below my comfort zone puts me in danger of inappropriately identifying what I'm feeling and acting on my poor interpretations.
I hope I said what I meant to say. I'm a little lost in this subject
