What does giddiness or joy or anger feel like? To a group of autistic adults participating in a Rutgers study, giddiness manifests like "bees"; small moments of joy are like "a nice coffee in the morning" that yields "a sense of elevation"; anger starts with a "body-tensing" boil, then headaches. Contrary to common perceptions and years of research that autistic people can't describe their emotions or often have muted emotional responses , a new Rutgers study published in The American Journal of Occupational Therapy concludes that many autistic adults are in fact acutely aware of their feelings and can label them in vivid, often colorful detail. "What if everything we know about autism is wrong?" said Aaron Dallman, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at the Rutgers School of Health Professions and the author of the study.
"We spend all this time problematizing autism, rather than doing the work to understand what it's like to be autistic," he said. "The popular idea that autistic people don't have rich, emotional lives is simply not true." To catalog how young autistic adults describe their emotions and navigate their interactions with others as well as identify potential strategies to bridge the emotional chasm between autistic and nonautistic people, Dallman conducted a series of focus groups designed to understand individual experiences.
Twenty-four autistic adults ages 18 to 35 participated in one of six video conference focus group interviews. Discussions wer.