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Alexithymia

Peter

Hypotheses. Alexithymia is not a symptom of autism. It’s a symptom of long term depression associated with autism.

When I was on antidepressants one of the first things I noticed about my mood change was that everything felt blunted. It wasn’t so much that my mood improved, it's almost like the antidepressants had made me feel slightly disconnected and disassociated from my own feelings. If you had asked me how I felt when on antidepressants I might have said I don’t know or I’m not sure a lot more than usual.

This was part of the function of the antidepressants. It allowed me to function.

It’s been suggested that a symptom of autism can be alexithymia. That something about the autistic makeup makes us less likely to be able to recognise our own feelings. I’m skeptical of this interpretation.

Have you ever heard about boiling a live frog? Bring the water up to boil quickly and the frog jumps out. Do it gradually and the frog will sit there and boil. Or people who live in houses with gas leaks who ignore it. How they become blind to the smell over time.  

I suggest that alexithymia in autism is the same kind of thing. When people have experienced negative emotion, depresion, anxiety, constantly over years, to the point where they’ve developed a learned helplessness around the situations that evoke these feelings. That this can lead to alexithymia as a form of coping strategy. That this dissociation from one’s own feelings is infact a form of emotional numbness, a form of traumatic response to long term, situation linked, anxiety and depression.

Parents

  • The thing is, alexithymia doesn't stop you from feeling things.  You still have the emotional responses and they can affect your behaviour and physical signs of emotion without you being in touch with the feeling.  So it's not the same thing as an antidepressant which numbs you.

    When I get stressed, for example, I still get headaches and snap at my family.  When I'm anxious I still develop a stronger than usual inertia.  I'm now learning how to interpret those "symptoms" to uncover my feelings and where they come from.  My partner can often tell my emotional state by interacting with me before I can.

    And the problem is that not picking up on my emotional state only means that I ignore my own needs until I reach the point of overwhelm.  And then I definitely suffer.  So in my case at least, it would be counter productive as a coping strategy. 

    I've also had enough trauma that I've learned to mask feelings and keep things hidden, but that seems like a seperate issue to the inability to read my emotional state unless it's particularly heightened.  

    I think it is possible that bring autistic and expressing emotions in different ways means that we don't develop the same language and awareness  of our feelings.  You teach a baby the word ball by showing the ball and saying ball a lot as you play.  You teach them happy and angry in a similar way, by naming the feelings when you see them expressing that kind of emotion.  But if we laugh when we're stressed and keep a straight face when we're happy, then we're not getting the same signals and the vocabulary to identify the feelings.  

    But I also think that there's a link to sensory processing.  Like I don't notice when I'm thirsty and thus end up dehydrated because I forget to drink.  I don't notice the physical sensations associated with anger until I realise that I'm shouting.  This makes a lot if sense to me.

  • in reply to Glitter

    The thing is from a research study point of view how do you differentiate between not being able to easily describe your emotional state because you feel disconnected from your emotions (as if observing them from a long way off) and not being able to describe your emotional state because you don't recognise the emotions that feel very close to you? I humbly suggest that when studies on Alexithymia in autism are done the former may be picked up by testing and labeled as the later.

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  • in reply to Glitter

    The thing is from a research study point of view how do you differentiate between not being able to easily describe your emotional state because you feel disconnected from your emotions (as if observing them from a long way off) and not being able to describe your emotional state because you don't recognise the emotions that feel very close to you? I humbly suggest that when studies on Alexithymia in autism are done the former may be picked up by testing and labeled as the later.

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