Autism vs. Alexithymia

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My dreams tend to be logical and, hmm. They look realistic, but often involve fantastic elements. Admittedly, those elements are directly from my hobbies.

I also frequently have dreams about things like moving, or going out to eat, and the like.

I seem to have alexithymia.

I don't understand the emotions [and feelings] I feel, and I have no hope in describing them properly to others. As far as I'm aware, they're the two big parts of it.

Alexithymia sounds like it's a step above Anhedonia which is usually caused by depression.

I had Alexithymia but it was more about not having a vast vocabulary for emotions than not feeling anything or having depression. I've had I suppose temporary Anhedonia when I have a shutdown or a seizure but I recover from it. So I do know what it (doesn't) feel like.

Thus I conclude my own Alexithymia was more to do with a lack of knowledge of emotions than not having them, which in a way was like my lack of knowledge about social rules. It was really confusing when I'd feel something and not put a name to it.

I have an imagination but it's limited to what I know. I need samples of imagery before I can form it in my imagination or draw it on a piece of paper. Also, my spatial skills are kind of incomplete. So I do have a highly visual imagination but there are limits.

From what I have read it appears more as a disorder that goes along with other disorders.

B

I think it hit home for me a bit more strongly when I had to explain how I'd know I was depressed, and it was all about the things I was doing and not describing anything I particularly felt. I have the emotions, but I don't experience them in ways that I think necessarily feels like emotions unless they get particularly intense. When that happens, it usually is heading toward a shutdown or meltdown.

I do feel emotions physically. This came up in another thread in which other people described anxiety as an almost purely mental thing for them, but for me it's very physical and the mental part is not always that strong. When I was having panic attacks, I didn't associate any emotions with them, just the physical elements.

I feel emotions (and not just physically like Verdandi), but even when I have the vocabulary, I can't match how I'm feeling to words. I can't identify how I feel even to myself in many cases, though if I am asked specific questions I can pull information out slowly. The feelings I have don't map to words cleanly, no matter how much of the emotions vocabulary I learn. It's like the feelings are entirely there, I feel them, but the discussing them part of me has been dissociated, rather than the feeling part.

The physical parts of emotions also confuse me. I have a really hard time identifying whether the feeling in my stomach is being upset or nervous somehow, or is hunger, or is my headache being bad enough to cause nausea.

Ok here is the actual definition:

Alexithymia is defined by:

1.difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
2.difficulty describing feelings to other people
3.constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a scarcity of fantasies
4.a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.

These definitions fit better with what I was trying to say than the ones I gave. I say stimming actually supports my argument, as the stimulation isn't really external, it's self generated, and the stimmer isn't always aware that they are stimming.