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Alexithymia -- Difficulty Feeling Emotions

Luftmentsch

Does anyone else have alexithymia (difficulty understanding and describing their own emotions)? I do have emotions, but I often struggle to understand or describe them, especially if they’re subtle or conflicted. This has arguably been a problem when trying to access mental health services or even being aware of my slides into depression.

Some emotions are powerful enough to make their presence felt, particularly the terrible trio of depression, anxiety and despair, but others can be harder to feel. Even strong positive emotions can be hard to find; sometimes I have to look for practical evidence to prove that I really do love my family, because I’m not sure what I feel. A lot of the time I feel rather numb and blank, sometimes with a faint undertone of mild depression or mild anxiety.

My main way of processing emotions is through writing. I’ve written a journal-type blog most days since 2006 (excluding an eighteen month period where I stopped) and that helps me process the events of the day, as well as get feedback from my small, but supportive readership. This probably sounds strange, but sometimes I don’t really know how I feel about things until I write them down. I’ve tried private journaling, but somehow I need a sense of an audience, even a very small one, to give me the impetus to communicate. If I can’t write on one day for some reason, I tend to carry around all the thoughts of that day with me and feel a need to offload.

I write fiction to try to understand bigger emotions, including ones that I haven’t personally experienced. I’ve always read a lot too and I think that’s probably an attempt to learn about emotions, on some level. I guess I get that from TV and film too, although I find modern TV and film overwhelming in its amplified display of emotions sometimes, at least what I see of it (which isn’t much).

I would be interested to hear of anyone else who struggles with this, as it feels quite isolating sometimes, something that even other autistic people don’t experience. I would also like to know if anyone has tips or coping mechanisms.

Parents

  • I was actually made aware of this around 26 by a therapist who noticed I had difficulty understanding my feelings. At the time I think he simply assumed it was due to a lack of parenting but I was only able to see him a few times due to finances.

    Since, I started to simply attempt to express what was actually happening. How am I?  The world is still in tact and no accidents have occurred. Ready for the rain. I've had 2 excellent coffees and will hopefully finish this project.

    Or I might use an analogy because I have all this vivid imagery in my head and have learned to extract from it: I feel like I'm falling into the sky with out a tree to hold onto. I feel like at any given minute everything around will turn to pixels and dissipate. 

    Life is not confined to one feeling though. I've done a bit of work on this as it occurred to me something was wrong with the phrase Emotion vs Logic and discovered this was a bastardisation of Nature vs Reason and was simply supposed to be a bit of fun for sci-fi. What is even more interesting is to think about the symbiotic nature of the Passions, Our Intellect and the Psyche. Freud was famous for hijacking Greek Myths and exhumed the story of Eros and Psyche as a groundwork to this.

    How are you feeling is a new bit of nuance in Western culture. And while it's used to affirm the individual experience, words aren't always how we express. There's a book for matters of relationships called the 5 Love Languages which help partners understand when they're being loved in other ways than words. Affirming that not everyone expresses a thing with words, which begs to question further expectations around understanding our emotions. It's not the only book, but as an example.

    Back to applying words to feelings. I rarely can. I'd prefer an Emotions Wheel with matters of impact: feeling unprotected or feeling like I've won.

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    It was a therapist who pointed out to me that I struggle to notice my emotions too. I also have the feeling that the world might dissipate, although I'm not sure if it means the same for me as it might for you...

    I have heard of the love languages, although I hadn't thought of applying it here.

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