Published on 12, July, 2020
So, today, is a crying day for me. For no reason at all, I feel tearful. I can carry on with my daily stuff, but at intervals, I stop and have a good weep. I guess it's depression and anxiety, but I wonder if it's to do with my autistic brain rather than classic depression. I feel alone and lonely, unlovable, unloved and unloving. This makes me even more prone to tears. I'm not suicidal. I never want to take my own life. I love being alive. It might be that I am overwhelmed by emotions from the previous day or thoughts and emotions about an upcoming event, and maybe this is my way of releasing tension.
**update**Since posting, I've found some useful information about a possible explanation. "Autistic people who have trouble identifying their emotions, a condition known as alexithymia, are likely to have anxiety, depression and problems with social communication, according to a new study. Roughly half of autistic people experience alexithymia, which translates to ‘no words for emotions’ and is characterised by difficulties with identifying and describing one’s own feelings." This is more complicated than it seems. It doesn't mean that I don't have a vocabulary for my emotions, for me, at least, it's about not paying proper attention to my internal emotional states until they are too strong to ignore, and then I get confused by the sensations.https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/difficulty-identifying-emotions-linked-to-poor-mental-health-in-autistic-people/I hope this can help someone else too.
Thank you for posting the update on alexithymia, EggFriendRice, and I hope you're feeling better today.
As it happens this one has been driving me a little nuts of late. I've always thought of myself as someone easily able to engage in conversation on emotion. However, to listen to MH Services, apparently I am completely unwilling to do that, whilst I think I was doing nothing but that - the two views don't seem to fit, do they? It was like they never wanted the answers I was working very hard to give and I've no idea what answers they did want. At any rate, I didn't have answers to the questions other than I gave. I am mystified and that's disturbing my whole view of myself.
But as I dig around the potential of autism, I realise I analyse my way to knowing what I feel and what other people feel. It's hard work, but I've always thought I was pretty good at that stuff. I hadn't the smallest idea that there was any other way to know, let alone that the rest of the population apparently might have a quicker, more efficient way of going about it or that it might have something to do with body sensations (which I try hard to suppress because they frighten me). All I can conclude is that something did not meet expectation here and I'm not sure what.
As I've searched for my answers I have encountered concepts like alexithymia and the emotion wheel. Has any body else come across this?
I've become a bit obsessed by it. None of us can ever exactly know exactly what things feel like to other people, I guess, and therefore how do we tell whether what we feel and how we feel it is is the same or different to the rest of humanity? Does the rest of humanity also analyse based on the circumstances causing the feeling, past experience of the circumstances and knowledge about what matters to that individual, or what that individual actually verbalises?
...But I kind of need to quantify it to know if I've got a problem or not. I'm talking about this wheel to my very accommodating private counsellor, who at least isn't trying to squeeze me into boxes I don't fit in. I'm trying to analyse the wheel itself. Many of the supposed "emotions", don't seem like emotions at all to me, but rather personal attributes or mental states. I certainly can't associate any physical responses to most of them. How the hell does any one FEEL "delightful?". I can see that a person might be delightful; we mean they were sweet natured and good company, but how do you feel delightful?
There's only one thing to do - I compiled a spreadsheet with yes/no answers to some basic questions and calculated as a % of total adjectives:
Has anyone else encountered this wheel? How did you respond to it? Am perceiving problems in myself that don't actually exist here, or is there really some other response I "ought" to have in relation to these adjectives?
I also note that the obvious one LOVE is conspicuous by it's absence in that centre ring.
Thank you for sharing all this, Dawn. I hadn't looked at it this way - that I might be analysing to get to the feeling of knowing. That would explain a lot for me. I've been discouraged by family and people around me for "over analysing" all my life, so I wouldn't be surprised if I hide this as well, even from myself, thinking I'm doing this in a natural way as everyone else does.
I've come across the wheel and I love it! I'm actually really happy you shared it because I remember trying to re-find it years ago and I never succeeded. As far as I know (which is limited!) emotions can be more complex than the wheel shows, but it is such a wonderful place to start and has so much to offer on its own. I find starting can be the hardest bit.
I used to use a tool called 'tapping' (EFT, emotional freedom techniques) and it helped me tune into feelings slowly. I'm not convinced that this is the only tool that can help do this - I am sure many other approaches can work. For me, the tapping on my body in a rhythmical way calmed me and gave my anxious brain something to do while I explored the physical sensations of a feeling and asked it questions - slowly, with time - as guided by a therapist at first. I later trained in this technique, but I don't think that's necessary to do this in order to gain benefits. I just ... well... it was my 'special interest' at the time hehe! I do love mindset techniques - maybe BECAUSE of all of this - the difficulties in identifying and handling emotions. Again, what you shared helps me make sense of this, too.