Hypofeeling?

[agenderbeing]

I struggle to pinpoint how I feel to someone if not in the moment. If I explain my past I don’t feel connected to it. It’s like foreign and I try to downplay it because I don’t like people judging it accurately despite me not focusing on it now. I just don’t like explaining traumas that led to my struggles. It feels like an excuse despite merely being an explanation. When I explain how I feel it’s more like a theory.. I don’t KNOW but I think I do. I analyze things in a way that might separate me from feeling it unintentionally due to wanting to understand.

I’ve always struggled to highlight important details due to importance being defined by society and the subjective teacher’s perspective which I don’t connect to. So, unless they outline what is important to them, I think everything is a valuable learning opportunity etc.

At the same time, I hyper focus on the small details. Perfectionism is an evil that hits far too much.

When someone asks me how I feel from 1 to 10 I don’t know! No matter if pain physical or mental. I don’t have all reference points and every single one of them is subjective to me. I don’t know how I felt in a moment in the same othwr’s do. I don’t remember last week or why or how I did something. My dissociative amnesia is like that? Or maybe compartmentalization.

Does anyone else relate to this or have some kind of explanation? Thanks!

 

[Jumpinbare]

Yeah, I always hated when my wife would out of the blue ask me how I feel. Most of thr time I don't feel except just a general low level background depression. And I don't keep an emotional memory log. I vividly remember breaking my arm at 2 years old. I know intellectually there was pain. I do not remember the pain. I remember sitting in the emergency room wearing just underpants or maybe a diaper, and my parents and the doctor stepping out in the hall and leaving me by myself in a strange room. I thought they were leaving me for good because I was broken. I don't remember any feelings associated with that. I would assume I was scared or sad, but I don't remember.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I struggle to pinpoint how I feel to someone if not in the moment. If I explain my past I don’t feel connected to it. It’s like foreign and I try to downplay it because I don’t like people judging it accurately despite me not focusing on it now. I just don’t like explaining traumas that led to my struggles. It feels like an excuse despite merely being an explanation. When I explain how I feel it’s more like a theory.. I don’t KNOW but I think I do. I analyze things in a way that might separate me from feeling it unintentionally due to wanting to understand.

I’ve always struggled to highlight important details due to importance being defined by society and the subjective teacher’s perspective which I don’t connect to. So, unless they outline what is important to them, I think everything is a valuable learning opportunity etc.

At the same time, I hyper focus on the small details. Perfectionism is an evil that hits far too much.

When someone asks me how I feel from 1 to 10 I don’t know! No matter if pain physical or mental. I don’t have all reference points and every single one of them is subjective to me. I don’t know how I felt in a moment in the same othwr’s do. I don’t remember last week or why or how I did something. My dissociative amnesia is like that? Or maybe compartmentalization.

Does anyone else relate to this or have some kind of explanation? Thanks!

Read up on alexithymia, a common condition associated with autism. I have it as well.

When it comes to identifying how I emotionally feel, my immediate response might be "nothing", but then if a certain situation or interaction is eating at me, I might later be able to describe and identify the emotion. However, this might take, minutes, hours, sometimes days.

There's been several, frankly, almost daily situations where I had an interaction or been involved with a situation and there has been zero emotional reaction when there probably should have been. My co-workers might say something like, "I would have been pissed." or "Doesn't that make you frustrated and angry?" and I might look at them clueless as if nothing ever happened. On the other hand, I also get the compliments like, "He just rolls with the punches and no matter the situation, is calm, cool, and collected." In other words, they are not understanding that I have an invisible disability and view it as an asset.

 

[jsilver256]

Yeah my coworkers called me Poker Face. Important to remember that the emotions are still there. I used to partially shut down until I could drink in the evening. Don't do that.

 

[Outdated]

Yeah my coworkers called me Poker Face.

Some people called me Mr Bean because the default relaxed position of my face is a dopey smile.

 

[marc_101]

@agenderbeing

It sounds like the issue I have: I not always can recognize, identify, or describe emotions (alexithymia). It seems to happen much more with anxiety. I can only tell that I was anxious after I'm not anxious. If you can't identify emotions at the moment, then your memories are not going to trigger specific emotions that you can recognize when remembering a memory. It's more likely that you had emotions, but they were not recognized/identified.

Or the other possibility is that, as a defense mechanism, you tried to suppress emotions when something bad was happening, so you don't attach the emotion to the episodic memory.

 

[agenderbeing]

@agenderbeing

It sounds like the issue I have: I not always can can recognize, identify, or describe emotions (alexithymia). It seems to happen much more with anxiety. I can only tell that I was anxious after I'm not anxious. If you can't identify emotions at the moment, then your memories are not going to trigger specific emotions that you can recognize when remembering a memory. It's more likely that you had emotions, but they were not recognized/identified.

Or the other possibility is that, as a defense mechanism, you tried to suppress emotions when something bad was happening, so you don't attach the emotion to the episodic memory.

First, thank you all for your responses. It is not only validating but informative into my own and other’s similar experiences. I do feel like I resonate on some level with both things you described.