Do you ever feel that your feelings/emotions aren't real?

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Does anyone else here have a lot of trouble with identifying their own feelings and deciding whether they’re real – whether they’re what you’re really feeling, and would be valid in other people’s eyes?

I do. I feel like I can’t take myself seriously, and always feel that others won’t take me seriously – which has been true in the past when I’ve been unable to really express myself. At the moment I’ve just kind of completely shut down in my life and I have a family member telling me that she knows that this is because of something along the lines of anxiety/stress/depression and not just laziness or stupidity. But I don’t know. I’ve half convinced myself that I don’t feel as strongly as others; that I’m just a thousand times worse at handling what I do feel. That I just shut down for no reason.

I’m getting help soon but I’m almost sure already that I won’t be taken seriously and just end up feeling even more confused and rubbish about myself. Am I overthinking this? On one hand if they decide that what’s going on isn’t valid I’ll be left totally confused and hopeless; if they decide it is, I’ll end up feeling fake. Has anyone felt like this before? I’m sorry if it doesn’t make much sense.

I have a hard time identifying what I'm feeling too, there's a definite disconnect there. The technical term for it is alexithymia. The difference for me is that instead of looking for my experiences to be valid to other people, I just assume I'm not going to be understood and don't even try to express it. I've probably shot myself in the foot a lot because of that.

I often fear my own emotions and don't trust them; this has costed me many relationship and professional opportunities; if you can't trust yourself then you can't trust anything or anyone.

Yes, I think so anyway. Feelings are hard for me to label properly, I miss them entirely sometimes even though they're there. so, I seem to not be able to properly talk about them, in a way that gets the meaning across to another person. Because of this when I try to think about them they can feel fake and like I should discredit or distrust my assessment of them. Is this what you mean at all?
Edited to add, that this has really messed up my life in a lot of ways and still causes trouble every day.

I suppose more so now than before. I've been feeling like... I'm not sure how to explain it, but disconnected maybe, although in my case I think it is because of too much stress and overloading...

For me, trying to describe what I am feeling in words makes the emotion seem superficial and silly and then I don't know if I am feeling anything at all. I would rather keep all my feelings trapped inside a wordless universe where they are real and beautiful.

Yes, and sometimes I do not have any emotion/feeling when I am "supposed to." If it's not there, it's just not. Then, as Marybird so eloquently wrote, certain feelings are so private they are indescribable.









< insert the entire collection of emoticons here > Post script: I still need to hold the cursor over those emoticons to know what they mean.....

Yes. This sounds sort of like what my deal is that has lead me to consider disorders like AS and a few others in the first place.

My "self'' is...nor right.

This to me is better than taking your own feelings so seriously that you cannot possibly consider than anything could be worse than what you're currently feeling, but it can be very strange and it's caused me long term issues with my identity. And many aspects of my identity, took my YEARS to really accept that my own sexual orientation was even something "l" was feeling.

Also because of this l'm always re-evaluating relationships with people, even after l've been as "real" as l can be with them, l start to feel like they don't know "me" because there is no real me, so the feelings l've had for them can't be real either. This is why l have zero long term friendships.

it's cyclical for me...l've been repeating this since adolescence, l'm not sure what to tel you OP. You should still seek help for your problems but in my experiences, my sense of self has been flexible and some of the feelings l've had than l thought were real have been very transient.

Nott exactly, though similar. I can usually identify my emotions, my problem is that if I know what's wrong and it's in my head I feel like I should be able to fix it, and when i can't it leaves me feeling guilty and incompetent.

I'm not sure. I was in a relationship once that I was very in love with the person, then periodically for no known reason I would question whether I really was and what love meant and I felt sort of blank and cold about the person, as if they didn't matter. The rest of the time I would be so in love with them and so sure of it, but then this feeling would keep rearing up. I don't know if that's the same thing.

Also, when things become overwhelming, to a ridiculous point, like there are too many things to stress about, sometimes when this happens, I sort of go into this internal hysteria where I want to laugh at it all because it seems too ludicrous and that I switch off all feelings about it because it's too big for me to deal with.

Don't know if any of that is related to alexithemia.

A former female friend really was spot on (I used to help her deal with some emotional stuff). She said that I was more insightful than anyone she had ever met in what I expressed through words. But she also remarked on how I seemed out of touch with humanity. That kinda made me sad, because it's so true.

I've been feeling increasingly apathetic. I still act like I have emotions, though.

I've also been very self-aware emotionally/mentally for as long as I can remember. I didn't think that was an AS thing.