Surging, out of control, emotion

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I keep getting swamped, overwhelmed, by this deep out of control emotion - and I can't even get a grasp on the emotion I'm feeling, but I often feel like I'm drowning in it. I need a release for it, but I can't even describe/explain it through poetry or song or imagery.

Help! What does everyone else do to combat the emotion?

I know this emotion you speak of. I have no idea what it is but I know the feeling you described. As for dealing with it, I would like to know as well.

Its a horrible feeling isn't it? It feels like you're suffocating and there is no way to escape it.

you are lucky to have an abundance of energy in an area where i have none.

you sound like you are in a fertile emotional jungle. i am in an emotional desert.

maybe to be in a fertile emotional jungle would make me feel closed in and swamped.

in my desert i can see all the way to the horizon because there is nothing to see that blocks my vision from what is behind.
there is nothing behind anyway.

i think you have a good resource of energy that will be very beneficial to you when you finally find what to plug it into.

Sometimes it happens to me to, it feels like I lose control over myself and I'm extremely agitated, can't think clearly, I usually try to release it playing videogames, trying to concentrate on something. Idk what it is. Panic attack ?

Last edited by Rainbow-Squirrel on 18 Jul 2009, 9:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

Is it the same kind of emotion each time?

Does it coincide with particular events or triggers?

How long have you been experiencing it?

I'm curious.

I deal with overwhelming emotions by not resisting them. This works for me because accepting them decreases their intensity.

I feel like what you're describing and I am being medicated for it. In my case it's called anxiety. (They told me it was anxiety based on how I was behaving and the sensations and emotions I described. I didn't know that this was what anxiety felt like, I haven't used the word to describe myself before, although I felt like this a year ago too, during a difficult period.)

I am now on an SSRI (a type of medicine prescribed for anxiety disorders). My psychiatrist prescribed it, and it is keeping me more or less OK (I upped my dose). I expect I will go back to normal after a while. I am also seeing a psychologist, because there are specific relationship issues which tend to make my anxiety worse.

I went to my birthday party in a terrible state, still not fully recovered after a meltdown, and the next Monday at work was also very difficult. People noticed how strangely I was behaving when I made a speech at my party (normally I speak with ease). The feeling came over me like waves. It was then (that Monday) that I doubled the medication.

I recommend you see a psychiatrist who has a good knowledge of Asperger's Syndrome.

I know what you mean-- I know exactly what you mean. What I don't know is what to do about it. That I'm-going-to-explode-if-this-continues-and-nobody-knows-or-cares... and you try to express it, and you're told that you're being unreasonable, or manipulative, that you can't possibly be feeling so overwhelmed, you try to tell someone that you CAN'T live like this.. and it just doesn't matter.
I think maybe it's an anxious/agitated depression combined with an inability to properly communicate. It leads to it being dismissed and not getting proper help, so that when you feel it, it brings back this rush of helplessness, almost like a flashback, where you go through all those situations where you tried to tell someone that something was wrong,and either didn't get help or got in trouble for your effort to communicate. I hope I expressed that in a way that makes some sort of sense.. I think I know what I'm trying to say..






Thank you, thank you very much for totally invalidating another person's misery. I can see very clearly that you do, in fact, have no emotion.

Is this emotion anxiety? You seem to have a hard time explaining it, high states of anxiety can give you the feeling you're describing. I'll list what I use to combat anxiety.

1. Bubblegum

2. Cigarettes

3. Excerscise

4. MJ

5. Zoloft

6. Benadryl

7. Music

8. Walks

Not all of these work for me at once, sometimes I just have different needs, but in an anxious state, I can count on finding at least one of these things to help me. Reading doesn't help me at all when I experience anxiety.

I think maybe it's an anxious/agitated depression combined with an inability to properly communicate. It leads to it being dismissed and not getting proper help, so that when you feel it, it brings back this rush of helplessness, almost like a flashback, where you go through all those situations where you tried to tell someone that something was wrong,and either didn't get help or got in trouble for your effort to communicate. I hope I expressed that in a way that makes some sort of sense.. I think I know what I'm trying to say..

Thank you, thank you very much for totally invalidating another person's misery. I can see very clearly that you do, in fact, have no emotion.[/quote]


i wish i had more input about controlling this, but i wanted to thank you for writing this. it's what i tend to go through before i self-injure, and i was having a hard time putting my finger on it.

it does seem like this overwhelming sense of not being able to express things, and a pile-up of the times i did express things and was invalidated or punished.

i hope the original poster finds some relief. i agree with what someone wrote before about anxiety. i take medication and get lots and lots of exercise; both seem to help.

i'm just finding it helpful to read these posts and know i'm not the only one, too. i hope that's helpful for you too.

The thing is like they tell you over and over that you can stop self-injuring because you can communicate, you can get help and not have to hurt yourself.. But it's not actually true. If you go to those same people and say that you're having those feelings and you need help with it, they won't help you. All that "Use your Voice" crap.. but in the end, for a lot of people, there is no healthy outlet.
I think self-injury means something very different in aspies than it does in other people. It's usually more associated with borderlines, and for them it's maybe more of an attention thing, or like a tantrum. It's not properly studied in aspies. I haven't hurt myself for awhile (thanks to the most wonderful man in the world who somehow keeps me semi-sane.. and actually listens to me, all the time) but when I did, it was really bad. I think it's only autistics that actually self-injure for the sake of the self-injury itself. Maybe for borderlines and such it's a communication thing, I think for us it's more internal.
Or also that what we try to express isn't understood.
Are you diagnosed with AS? Or seeing a general therapist/psychiatrist who is treating your self-injury in the same way they would treat a borderline's self-injury? They're just two COMPLETELY different things. I should have realized, when I looked into DBT, that obviously I don't have the disorder that it's designed to treat-- I could see it wasn't something that would be effective for me-- but it took me a long time to realize what the problem actually was.

I was telling someone just last week the very same thing. Trying to words to that amount of intensity and I couldn't do it. All I could say was "It feels like drowning."

You and I have always had a lot in common, and yet again, I know exactly what you're trying to describe. It's intense and it consumes me and it's like it's swallowing me up from the inside but all of my usual creative outlets...my writing, singing, playing....none of it flows. It's like it's blocked by this "thing", whatever the hell it is. I get so irritated. I don't like the surging and the out of control parts. The unpredictability of it all. Sometimes it's like a manic high but without the feeling of glory. Then I wait for the crash because it's sure to follow.

Sometimes I get lost in it because I feel human in a raw sort of way, but I can't make any good use of it because it doesn't come out in my writing or my music.

I'm still in the depths of it myself right now. Hugs to you, my friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

33 years old and only now getting better at dealing with it.

Maybe it is anxiety? I'm not sure, but that does seem the best explanation. To me it feels exactly as described; like emotion, but you don't know what emotion it is - except that it's dark, but at the same time it's not dull/depressive, and it's both good/bad/neither, it's just very strong.

I've been feeling it all my life, but there are times when it's stronger and more frequent than others. I used to sort of try to release it through poetry and music, but at those times I had other stuff going on in my life that provided the words. At the moment, I don't, and without the words there is no way to describe it, and thus no way to release it (except possibly self harm like some other posters have mentioned, but I will do everything I can to avoid going there).

Rinai describes it perfectly; "It feels like you're suffocating and there is no way to escape it."

I have been seeing a psychiatrist, and am supposed to be on a very small dosage of SSRi's to medicate depression, but because I haven't been feeling depressed lately I stopped taking them.

Emotions are how a lot of people experience the world, some people hang on to everything they hear, some people can remember everything they see, but I remember what's going on through emotions, so what you're saying makes sense. If the SSRi's helped, you might want to consider continuing the dosage, they're more helpful when you keep a steady blood level. What I do is break mine in half and take them twice a day, that way I have more controlled doses. Before I was prescribed anything, I would take st. john's wort, that used to help a lot.

I'm fairly certain I don't have Alexithymia, because I am a very imaginative person, and my dreams etc are extremely vivid and imaginative. What happens to me must be something else. I can see how having Alexithymia would be hard.

I think that wiki article is not accurate. Alexithymics can have good imagination and creativity, and yes they can have the most vivid of dreams .
They just have difficulty matching up a word to an emotion.
My theory is that it is a form of non-verbalness.

I have areas in my life where I am non-verbal. I dont have difficulty naming my emotions, but when I talk I always say way too much because my thoughts are really in pictures and words are a poor substitute for them.

In fact I am annoyed at the article now.. I almost feel like correcting it...