Published on 12, July, 2020
I have been reading about alexithymia lately. Does anyone here know that they have this, and if so I am interested to know how you describe your feelings. I'm asking because I tend to describe my feelings in terms of an analogy rather than saying what the feeling is e.g. - 'I feel like a deflated bouncy castle.' Would a person with alexithymia be unable to do this?
Thanks
I’m not sure if I have it in the truest sense, but I have realised since my diagnosis last year that the way of describing burnout was no more than saying I felt ‘tired’. I had a fairly severe mental health blip this last few weeks, and I said to my boss that I was ‘in pain’, but I didn’t feel able to describe it any better than that. Does this count as Alexithymia? I’m not sure, but even though I would say I can describe how I feel, often it isn’t specific enough to convey to anyone actually how I feel.
Thank you for this. I also said to my boss that I was 'in pain' as that was the only way I could describe it.
‘In pain’ is a good catch-all term. Conveys distress in a way neurotypical scan understand, but not much help in terms of narrowing down the ‘how/ what/ when’ specifics.