Published on 12, July, 2020
Does anyone here struggle to understand how they feel?
I'm recently diagnosed, and since knowing that I'm autistic, I feel as though the symptoms of it are much clearer to me now. I know that I'm feeling either bad or good, but I can't necessarily pin point the reason why or the specific emotion attached to. Its as though I've gone through so many difficult times (not trauma or a specific bad event, just bad memories) that everything seems to trigger some emotions which are negative. It's extremely frustrating because it puts my day off massively, and no one can comfort me because I either don't tell them, or I can't even tell them what's wrong.
Welcome! There's a term for this. It's called Alexithymia, and most of us are like this. It's apparently to do with a struggle with interception, accessing vocabulary, and might just be part of feeling being too much all at once and/or with growing up with a difference in communication and not relating with others to the degree that they often misrepresent you.
I've managed to sort most of my feeling into a few categories as I've gotten older (starting with confused), but often just replace a 'feeling' or 'emotion' with what is actually happening, which often seems to suffice.
I researched this term and it's definitely useful to know that it's common amongst people with autism. I think I heard this term before and it sounded so awful to me when I was undiagnosed and I didn't even know that I didn't understand my feelings. I guess it's just experience that helps, when I get to understand myself better.