Do you have/suspect you have alexithymia?

[the_tortoise]

Just curious about its prevalence among people using this forum.

I have autism and do not have alexithymia.

 

[tree]

Medical Definition of ALEXITHYMIA

 

[the_tortoise]

Thanks for posting the definition, tree

 

[George Newman]

My inability to express my feelings on the fly (in spontaneous conversation) is often interpreted as unfeeling or as I just don’t care.

I tend to simply go silent as I agonize to piece how I feel together. I become overwhelmed.

Inside, I am about to burst because I recognize that I am expected to be able to spill my feelings out and when that expectation is not met I am regarded as uncaring. I am seen as someone I certainly am not.

During the conversation I can see in me multiple layers of feelings but am mute to spontaneously verbalize them. Words spoken can not be pulled back from the air. I do not want to incorrectly verbalize how I feel by just saying everything. I might even feel like I am stepping into a trap.

I go silent which causes frustration and resentment.

My feelings are a book made up of many chapters and not a couple sentences spoken in haste. Does that make sense?

This is central to why the most important relationship of my entire life seems to be failing. I did not know that a word existed that represents my challenge.

This is why I am an active member of this forum. Thank you.

 

[LucyPurrs]

My inability to express my feelings on the fly (in spontaneous conversation) is often interpreted as unfeeling or as I just don’t care. I tend to simply go silent as I agonize to piece how I feel together. I become overwhelmed. Inside, I am about to burst because I recognize that I am expected to be able to spill my feelings out and when that expectation is not met I am regarded as uncaring. I am seen as someone I certainly am not. During the conversation I can see in me multiple layers of feelings but am mute to spontaneously verbalize them. Words spoken can not be pulled back from the air. I do not want to incorrectly verbalize how I feel by just saying everything. I might even feel like I am stepping into a trap. I go silent which causes frustration and resentment. My feelings are a book made up of many chapters and not a couple centences spoken in haste. Does that make sense? This is central to why the most important relationship of my entire life seems to be failing. I did not know that a word existed that represents my challenge. This is why I am an active member of this forum. Thank you.

What if you just said that you have lots of complicated feelings but are having a hard time putting them into words without thinking about it for awhile. That might prevent others from mistaking you as unfeeling. Just a thought.

 

[LucyPurrs]

View attachment 44886
Medical Definition of ALEXITHYMIA

What's interesting is that no where does it say that alexithymics DO NOT feel but I think they are often portrayed as people who don't have feelings. The issue is identification and labelling.

 

[sidd851]

Just curious about its prevalence among people using this forum.

I have autism and do not have alexithymia.

Self-diagnosed ASD, No Alexithymia.
I will have to examine my childhood memories to determine whether I DID, though.
I vividly remember, however, NOT understanding emotion in others, esp. their acting on it almost exclusively, and being utterly confused, uneasy and fearful when confronted with a roomful of other children, 3, 4, and 5 year-olds, all of whom were "Emotives". As I have said previously, it is, in my memory, like a scene from the original Star Trek series... Everyone had gone stark, raving, mad.

 

[the_tortoise]

What's interesting is that no where does it say that alexithymics DO NOT feel but I think they are often portrayed as people who don't have feelings. The issue is identification and labelling.

I think identification of feelings and labelling of feelings can be very separate things....they seem to get muddied up together in the same way that people confuse words with thoughts (thinking that if you can't explain a concept in words then you can't possibly have the concept in your mind -- or that if you can't use language you can't have "higher level" thought or can't think abstractly). I wish definitions of alexithymia addressed this clearly (or maybe they do and I just don't see it?).

I can have trouble putting my feelings into words (and used to have tremendous difficulty with it) but it's not (and never was) an alexithymic sort of difficulty (I checked with my psychologist about this); It's part of a generic difficulty putting words to anything, not specific to emotions and totally separate from my awareness, identification, and understanding of emotions.

 

[Observant]

What's interesting is that no where does it say that alexithymics DO NOT feel but I think they are often portrayed as people who don't have feelings.

Yes. I can feel quite intensely, but I often express them through actions or not at all. Some of the more basic feelings can be identified, but the more complex ones (like bittersweet) I'll just respond with something like "huh..." or "I...." while I might feel that emotion on a physical level such as discomfort in the bridge of my nose and frontal pole of my brain. Once you ask me questions like how I am doing, I'll reflexively respond with something standard like "Good and you?". I'll also speak about events in such a way where my emotions would be out of the picture, for example: "My classmates would often take my belongings, which prevented me from doing my schoolwork". When my therapist would ask he how I felt, I would look around, tear up, then continue talking about past events, but more clinically than before.

While interacting with others, I try to get a frame of reference just to cross-check how I should feel by looking at other people. I've also been studying body language and microexpressions just to make sure I don't do something like keep someone in a conversation when in reality they want to be somewhere else. What helps me is I try to reciprocate what I'm given during the interaction, and after I'm done with the conversation I take a step back and ask myself (or more accurately my inner child since my alexithymia is sourced from a traumatic childhood) questions like: "How are you doing?" "Do you need a break?", "Would you like to take all this in?". As I start replaying everything in my head I can "feel at my own pace". I find that the more I do this the longer I can interact with people. and the quicker I can accurately feel.

This response may be a bit mangled, but it is somewhat difficult to talk about something I'm really trying to process myself, and maybe others with alexithymia could find something they can relate to.

 

[SusanLR]

I took two different on-line quiz tests on this since I wasn't sure what it truly meant.
I scored high on both. The last was a very simple test of how you allow others to help you
or do you shut them off and say everything is OK.
Do you open up when you have a problem to friends or others who might want to help.
If talking a problem out with someone do you allow yourself to cry or tough it out and try not to show
this type of emotion.
Simple questions like that.

It seems to be described as a type of emotional detaching from others.
Not comfortable with emotionally letting someone in.
Here is the result of the simple quiz I just took:

You have Alexithymia

Repression is a defense mechanism first described by Sigmund Freud, as a way that people keep unpleasant memories out of their conscious mind. Repression is a compensatory style that deals with threat and stress by blocking unpleasant emotional experiences that might bring up anxiety, distress and vulnerability. Being split off from feelings is called alexithymia. Repressors have a chronic inaccessible filter that keeps them from experiencing the world through their emotions. They feel attacked and then distance and isolate from others when they are stressed. They avoid talking about and rehashing unpleasant experiences as this adds to their stress. They become inaccessible to others when they feel the problem has been solved by their solution of dismissing it. They are conflict avoidant and cannot tolerate working things out to the satisfaction of their partner. They often deny that there is a problem and have a lack of insight about how their distancing bothers others.

 

[Gracey]

In the definition posted above, part of it stated “lack of imagination “
I have more imagination than words to describe it.

Over the years I found that when asked by a therapist “and how do you feel about that?”
Saying I didn’t feel anyway about ‘that’ wasn't acceptable.

It would be met with mild insistence that I was supposed to feel a certain way about an event or circumstance.
(When it had happened so long ago it was ‘water under the bridge’, done and dusted, I’d moved on.)

I made stuff up. My best guess at what a person might reasonably feel should they have been in my shoes, for fear of being labled as some sort of sociopath.

Over a span of time I’d picked up the message that I was supposed to feel a certain way about certain things. Therapists taught me that.

I do have feelings, some more intense than others, some completely overwhelming.
Putting them into words without a couple of days notice is the difficult part

 

[Progster]

Perhaps. I experience many emotions as the same, a kind of feeling at the pit of my stomach. Whether it be fear, anxiety, surprise, it's the same feeling. Joy is different because dopamine or endorphins are involved, I suppose. Anger and frustration are the same. Perhaps it's the physical change or brain chemistry I'm aware of and not the emotion itself? I often feel an emotion, but don't know what it is and tend to interpret it as anxiety, but it might not be. I sometimes get an emotion out of the blue and don't know what triggered it. Used to blame that on PMT - can't do that any more. If someone asks me what I am feeling, I tend to try to work out what the emotion must be logically according to context, for example, if it's a sudden change, then the emotion is surprise - it's a logical conclusion. But I don't know how people normally experience emotions, so how can I compare and say that what I'm experiencing is abnormal? I can't, so I really don't know if I have it or not.

 

[DCA]

I don't know if I have this, but I do sometimes have difficulty expressing what I'm feeling, or even knowing what I'm feeling. My ex GF used to always ask me "what is wrong?" interpreting something in my face or body language. And I would reply "I don't know" or have to think about it. That being said, powerful emotions (like sadness, grief) I know when I'm feeling. I also tend to be able to express my feelings more readily if I write them down rather than vocalize them.

 

[tducey]

Option 2. I don't have this.

 

[the_tortoise]

The last was a very simple test of how you allow others to help you
or do you shut them off and say everything is OK.
Do you open up when you have a problem to friends or others who might want to help.
If talking a problem out with someone do you allow yourself to cry or tough it out and try not to show
this type of emotion.

Interesting.

Those questions seem to assume a whole lot and could easily confuse stoicism with emotional suppression and/or with alexithymia (some people see emotional suppression as distinct from alexithymia, others see it as part of/causing alexithymia, apparently.....link: Constructs often confused with Alexithymia).

I nthink a person could know they are not okay (awareness), know how they are not okay (recognition/identification/understanding of feelings) and be able to describe that others but choose not to for all kinds of reasons.

 

[Shawn D]

Oh, yes. As a child, I could never tell if, when someone seemed angry, whether it was because of something I did or because of something unrelated to me. When I was in 3rd grade, I had weekly group therapies at school where we talked about “warm fuzzies” and “cold pricklies”. I was just a handful of students pulled from class to participate, so I can only guess that it’s because my Alexithymia was recognized early on. I didn’t, however, figure out I have ASD until a few years ago.
In 5th grade, we did a unit in class about space. At one point, we talked about the Challenger explosion and were tasked with writing about how we felt about it. I remember that I couldn’t do it. I told the teacher that I didn’t know how I felt about it.
As a teenager, I was a cutter, because I couldn’t interpret or recognize my own emotions and felt “numb”.

 

[Judge]

On some levels, it's possible in my own case. Though the term itself seems to potentially "cover a lot of ground".

"A marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relating."

 

[the_tortoise]

Though the term itself seems to potentially "cover a lot of ground".

Indeed. I find it very difficulty to sort out what does and does not qualify.

 

[Tom]

No, I didn't take Alexi's Thymia. Why do people always immediately look at Aspies whenever a Thymia comes up missing?

 

[GrownupGirl]

All my life I have had problems being *too* emotional. Or maybe I learned how to mimic and show fake emotions, or at least positive ones, at an early age and have tricked everyone into thinking I feel and express them, including myself.