Tolerance for Emotions

It has only recently come to my understanding that most people have very little tolerance for any emotions that are perceived in the slightest way as being negative or even not obviously positive.

Emotions come to all of us in many ways for many reasons every day, even every hour. Having a rich emotional experience is important to me. I am autistic. During my childhood and young adult years, I was not in touch with most of my emotions. I had anger. I had happy. Otherwise, I seemed to be in a dissociative state of working to push everything down. By the time I was a teen, I knew to smile, because when you smile, people are more likely to like you and to interact with you positively. Smiling wasn't exactly natural to me though.

I have noticed that if I express any minor negative emotion online, people want to help or fix me. But it is just part of the emotional landscape. Now, that I don't dissociate so much and am actively working not to mask, I welcome all of my emotions. I know how to let them wash over me. I know how to move from one thing to the next. I can't always catch them or name them, but I like feeling! And in general, I can handle my personal emotions pretty well as they arise.

Unfortunately, I am the type of autistic that is in tune heavily with other people's emotions, and those are a whole nother story. Other peoples emotions can feel like I'm being pounded. Even positive ones on occasion sink me with the overwhelm. When I am in intensely emotional situations with others, I work to separate myself by moving into another environment or actively dissociating until I can exit the situation. This can be hard for people to understand. This is a common trigger for meltdowns for me.

On the other hand, those same people who can exude waves of heavy emotions don't want me to ever feel anything negative. How can I have joy and gratitude for the good in the now if I haven't known the sad? How can I be motivated to fix problems if I haven't experienced righteous anger? How boring would life be if I was always walking around in a mild-mannered content. How exhausting life would be if unbridled ecstasy was the default.

I think we might all have better lives and relationships if we were more honest about our emotional landscapes and more tolerant of less-than-perfect happiness in ourselves and others.