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Testing for Alexithymia

Polaris302

Hi,

I'm very good at recognising the feelings of others, but I've always had difficulty identifying my own feelings.  I know when I'm feeling a strong emotion like anger, sadness or happiness, but most of the time I can't really tell what I'm feeling, or when I feel something and spend time trying to figure out what it is I'm experiencing.  I've seen blog posts mentioning Alexithymia, and I was wondering if there is a  test I could take online to confirm if I have it.

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  • in reply to Tears_before_bedtime

    I've just taken the Toronto Alexithymia Scale test on the embrace autism website. I found it really difficult to answer a lot of the questions as I hadn't even thought about what they were asking. For example:

    1. "I am often confused about what emotion I am feeling" - I could say no as I don't feel confused, but that would suggest I am aware all the time of my feelings which I'm not. Most of the time I just feel neutral, if you asked what emotion I was feeling I'd say "none", I'm just ok. So I answered "neither agree or disagree"

    2. "It is difficult for me to find the right words for my feelings" - nobody ever asks me and I don't think about it, so I tried to remember when I've been upset and I would just say I felt upset or felt bad. So answered answered "agree"

    8. "I prefer to just let things happen rather than to understand why they turned out that way" - I don't understand this statement. I sometimes think about what actions led to a bad outcome, but my assessment doesn't consider emotions. "Neither agree or disagree"

     My result was a total of 68 which means alexithymia present, so perhaps that's why I don't understand some of the questions! My subtotal scores are:

    Difficulty describing feelings: 18

    Difficulty identifying feelings: 21

    Externally oriented thinking: 29

    (Externally oriented thinking is when someone focusses their energy on external events and tends to avoid focussing on internal experiences)

  • in reply to Tears_before_bedtime

     Thanks for the link !

    I've only been reading about Autism for past 5-6 weeks and several times have come across Alexithymia which seemed to fit me.  It wasn't specifically covered in my recent assessment, but I just got 72 on that test