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?
I think you're right. People say to me "you look happy" or "you look annoyed" or whatever, but I don't have a physical feeling of being any of those things, its comfortable "numb" I think you mention. So my guess is that we still are going through the emotions, but for whatever reason these aren't picked up by our consciousness unless its something truly monumental. There's a sort of "link" missing between our bodies experiencing the emotion and our consciousness registering it.
I agree! Unless it's something really big, we don't register feeling an emotion. How does one recognise emotions when one doesn't feel them? I'm sure that somewhere there is a nice little self help book that details exactly how to do this! But do I really want to be aware of everything that I am feeling? That's actually quite a scary thought!
I don't think there is an easy answer. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this myself recently and I've notice how "off kilter" my thoughts go if I'm stressed and I'm trying to draw the links at least for those negative emotions. But it is difficult to recognise this through thoughts alone, as how can you tell what is normal thoughts and what is your "self" trying to tell you something is wrong? I've also been looking in to meditation quite a lot recently and I'm going to start meditating in the hopes this improves things. What I've learnt about meditation is how thoughts are involuntary, but you can learn to react to thoughts or not. And it makes you more aware of the feelings and experiences within yourself. The way I've heard mediation described seems to correlate to what I already do to try and untangle my thoughts. I definitely think it's worth reading up about.
I tend to lose track of my thoughts if I’m stressed. For example Friday my 2 year old had a massive meltdown all while I was having to do the school run and go to Sainsbury’s so I was having to keep litlun contained in her buggy/car seat with my 5 year old who was alternating between being fed up with her sister screaming and laughing at her sister and navigating a busy school playground and then Sainsbury’s. I literally could not think straight for about an hour afterwards! To be fair I can usually identify when I am stressed out/irritated. That seems to be the extent of my emotion identification though, unless it’s extreme, then I’d extend it to happy/sad/angry.
I think that is the thing. Because we rely on our heads so much to interpret anything. We have to use our heads to understand our emotions rather than just feeling them and automatically knowing how we feel. It becomes a detective saga of sorts having to piece together various pieces of evidence such as physiological changes; behavioural changes etc to try to decipher how we are feeling! Many people seem to find meditation helpful. It’s been on my ‘to do’ list for several months now! I hope you find it helpful!