Published on 12, July, 2020
I was talking earlier with someone elsewhere about how it is quite common for Autistic people not to recognise their feelings and it got me thinking! I normally say that my usual 'emotional state' is 'comfortably numb' that is, most of the time, I feel nothing. Right now, sitting here typing this, I feel nothing. I've previously wondered briefly about Alexithymia and I've even done the Alexithymia test online BUT Alexithymia is essentially not recognising one's emotions yet on the rare occasion when I do 'feel' something, I do know what I am feeling at that moment in time, in fact I've always thought that I'm quite good at understanding my own emotions, when I feel them. But the talk I was having earlier made me start to question if it's more that these 'rare occasions' of 'feeling' something are actually more rare occasions of me actually recognising what I am feeling. Am I feeling all of the time and just unaware of it, except on rare occasions? Is it even possible to feel and not be aware of feeling? Perhaps I am just being dumb/naive/overthinking? What are other people's views about this please?
A lot has already been said here that mirrors my own experience. But I doubt that I could add much without repetition. So I'll just say thanks yet again, Kitsune, for raising an issue which is essential to many of us. For the last 2+ years i have been investigating why it is worth me bothering about my diagnosis. I have come up with several good reasons, but this issue must be amongst the most important for late diagnosees and self-identifiers. I was just looking at a piece of photojournalism about the Czech 'soft' revolution of 1989. It brought out a huge amount of emotion (as also did the Czech Spring, when I was really quite young, circa 67) And yet the times when I have shown as much emotion about my own family can almost be counted on one hand. (But they do happen!) As the lyrics of a John Cale song once put it, "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine"; in other words, I constantly pay attention to what it is that draws out such strong emotions; or what seemingly doesn't. But, it doesn't make it any easier to discuss emotions F2F. I have attempted to tell some of my family before that this is the case, and I imagine they do actually have their own evidence; but they haven't really yet told me so. But at least, I now have some quite convincing evidence for myself, beyond the more frequently mentioned issues in the text books.
The more that I think about it the more I realise that I am absolutely clueless about my own emotions. There’s a lovely pretty emotion wheel in this link. ‘How’ is it even possible for humans to experience so many different emotions?!
www.simplemost.com/.../