When someone else holds the remote control to my emotions

When someone else holds the remote control#

There is a particular kind of helplessness in letting someone else control how you feel. It might be a partner, a friend, a boss, or a family member. Their mood becomes your weather. When they are warm, I am fine. When they are cold, angry, or silent, my whole system goes down with them.

This is hard for anyone. As an autistic person, I think it is harder for me, and I want to explain why.

My emotions do not announce themselves#

Many people seem able to notice a feeling building, name it, and decide what to do with it. For me it often goes from nothing to everything. I do not feel the feeling arrive. I am suddenly in the middle of it, and I only work out what it was afterwards, if I ever do.

I cannot really feel my emotions in the way people describe. They just happen to me.

When I am overwhelmed, the logical part of me switches off#

I am usually someone who thinks things through. In overwhelm, that part of me goes offline. I can know, in theory, that someone's reaction is not a verdict on my worth. In the moment I cannot reach that knowledge at all. All that is left is the feeling, and it is enormous.

I feel things harder than most people seem to#

Small things like a tone of voice, a change of plan, or a cold message can hit me like a wave. It leaves me exhausted, and I cannot always explain to other people why it was so big.

Why giving someone else control is dangerous for me#

If another person's reactions set my emotional state, I have no buffer. I cannot step back, reason, and regulate, because the part of me that does that is the part that goes offline. So I end up swinging with their moods while struggling to understand my own.

Sometimes I wish I were different#

There are days I wish I were neurotypical. I wish my feelings came with warnings. I wish I could shrug things off the way other people seem to. On the worst days that wish turns into feeling broken.

But I am learning that I am not broken. I am wired differently, in a world that mostly is not built for my wiring. Feeling intensely is not a flaw. It means I need different tools, different boundaries, and people around me who are safe.

What I am trying to do#

• Build in time before I respond to anything big. My logical brain needs time to come back online.
• Use my body as an early warning system, because I cannot always feel emotions directly. A tight chest, a racing heart, or going quiet all tell me something is happening.
• Choose people who do not use my sensitivity against me.
• Remember that I am allowed to take my emotional remote control back.

If you are reading this and recognise yourself, you are not broken either. You are someone who feels deeply and is learning how to protect that.