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.
When I was a teenager I told someone I had no feelings. That is my earliest memory of what I now understand as inability to identify my emotions.
During counselling a few years back - as a 52 year old - I told the psychologist that I didn’t know how I felt. Later in the session I was sobbing and he pointed out that as evidence of sadness.
emotion:
a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.