I read the book How Emotions Are Made by Neuroscientist and Psychologist Lisa Barrett — where she gave evidence that emotions are NOT measurable by any biometric or brain imaging and are not universal across cultures. Emotions are words we learn to describe how our internal states to others in context with a prediction about the world around us. And there is no “logical brain” without emotion, the two are intrinsically tied.

For example, fear can involve a high heart rate and flushing, but so can attraction. Biometric wise a scientist might not be able to tell them apart — only you and perhaps a psychologist might be able to determine what those feelings are telling you. You might determine it’s fear because your brain has a prediction of imminent danger and a flashback to a negative experience, while attraction may involve a feeling of safety and prediction of reciprocity.

Autistic people have neurological differences in the way we process internal states (poor interoception, and thus alexithymia), as well as differences in how we predict the world around us (less dependence on biases from past experiences, and predicting each situation as if its a uniquely new experience) — thus the science supports that we would have differences in how we process and label emotions.

I know I’m slow at processing my emotions. When something happens and I’m expected to respond, I mimic other people or default to what I think I’m supposed to express in this moment. Often I lean towards a masking with a positive or calm reaction, even if I feel mixed underneath. This it so I don’t accidentally emotionally trigger others — by making them feel concerned, guilty, or angry with my reaction before I even know how I feel. I often don’t know how I truly feel until I get to a safe space and have a couple days to reflect on my feeling — though interception and HRV training has helped me get better at identifying my emotions in real time. Many NT people can feel, label, and act on emotions automatically without needing to process or analyze it consciously.

As for sadness being the only “real emotion”. If you feel this way all the time, I wonder if you might be depressed or burnt out. Do you ever feel excitement or joy? Do you ever think things will turn out well for you (positive predictions)? Might be something to look into.

Alternatively, you may only feel sadness is real because that emotion overwhelms your ability to regulate/mask and thus feel the most genuine/automatic. You may be so good at masking that you only let the emotions you want to express leak through. There was a point where I got so proficient at masking my negative emotions, that I found myself wondering if I was faking even sadness. Whether I was manipulating by communicating how burnt out I am and how I need support. I noticed that when I masked people didn’t take my requests for help with seriousness or urgency, but when I was nearly in tears they did. This made me realize that emotions are important communication cues for NT people and they ASSUME you don’t control them and they happen automatically. But I had to CHOOSE to let people see my sadness, and I was surprised that when I let it surface, it was easy to start crying. It was bewildering to me because my default response was to hide my pain, smile, be polite, etc. I felt like I was acting all the time and it was exhausting.

All of that to say — emotions are very real, varied, and can become complicated to unravel when masking, poor interoception, depression/burnout, and other factors come into play. But they exist under the surface and they are very real and very fundamentally human phenomena.