50 Moments in autism – my mother dies

 When my mother died, I returned to work almost immediately, I just needed to be distracted by daily routine, and my dad was doing the organisation work around the will and funeral. 

At the time I was working in a small office at the Institute of Psychiatry, and I told my small team, but didn’t make an announcement to the wider pool of colleagues. 

Over the next few days, no less than three people stopped me to say ‘You’re in a good mood’ today.  I had to explain that I was in fact not in a good mood as my mother had just died.  

My facial expression had completed failed to represent how I was feeling. This is by no means the only time this has happened to me, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told to ‘cheer up’ when I’ve been in a good mood. My facial reaction expression is just different, I’m happy and I know it, but not so happy that I really want to show it.  

More generally, autistic people’s faces don’t match the way neurotypicals expect us to look when showing emotion.  

Studies measuring facial muscle activity show that autistic people often activate facial muscles differently when showing emotional, especially the muscles used for smiling and mirroring other people’s expressions. They are also slightly slower, so it can lead to our response seeming mis-timed.