Skip to main content
Close Button
Donate
  • Replies 21 replies
  • Subscribers 102 subscribers
  • Views 3333 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Alexithymia

Ausomely Autistic
over 1 year ago

Hello fellow autistic people!

I found this brilliant, accurate and thought provoking description of alexithymia on social media (Instagram)!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CovdEQysj00/?igshid=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==

If you can’t access Instagram, here is the description:

Alexithymia 

’I have a theory about this term. What if it’s not that I don’t know what I’m feeling, it’s that I don’t know how to tell you. What if I feel it in such an extreme, primal and indescribable way that spoken language fails to encompass it? And instead of allowing to feel deeply you have pathologised my unique emotional experience?’

I completely relate to this, I feel emotions very intensely and it’s one of the things I love about being autistic! I particularly like how the description states that spoken language is insufficient to describe the depth of emotion we feel. This is why stimming is our natural means of communication and so cool.

Do you relate this description of alexithymia? What do you think about your autistic experience of emotions?

Parents
  • over 1 year ago

    I don't relate to that at all. I really don't know what I feel a lot of the time. I don't think I feel emotions intensely at all, except for a few negative ones: anxiety, loneliness, maybe depression and maybe not even those much of the time -- even though I struggled with depression for years when burnt out, most of the time I felt numb rather than intensely depressed and I've never had a general anxiety diagnosis although I do have (self-diagnosed) social anxiety. On my wedding a month ago I burst into tears of joy and couldn't stop crying, but that was a very rare exception. Tbh, I feel awkward when people talk about feeling things intensely being one of the best things about being autistic, as I really don't experience that.

    I also don't think that trying to understand something scientifically is pathologising it in some kind of negative sense, but I guess that's another topic.

Reply
  • over 1 year ago

    I don't relate to that at all. I really don't know what I feel a lot of the time. I don't think I feel emotions intensely at all, except for a few negative ones: anxiety, loneliness, maybe depression and maybe not even those much of the time -- even though I struggled with depression for years when burnt out, most of the time I felt numb rather than intensely depressed and I've never had a general anxiety diagnosis although I do have (self-diagnosed) social anxiety. On my wedding a month ago I burst into tears of joy and couldn't stop crying, but that was a very rare exception. Tbh, I feel awkward when people talk about feeling things intensely being one of the best things about being autistic, as I really don't experience that.

    I also don't think that trying to understand something scientifically is pathologising it in some kind of negative sense, but I guess that's another topic.

Children