Alexithymia Examples

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hmm interesting topic.

I think my inability to identify emotional states in myself is fundamentally sensory disorder.

I understand that people have specific sensations (feelings) in their bodies when they are experiencing a particular emotion.
However, I have many sensations in my body that are not associated with emotional context, but with environmental stimuli.
It is hard for me to distinguish between "physical feelings" and "emotional feelings".

Currently I am developing a concept of "gears" to describe my state of being, similar to a vehicle's gears. Some gears represent a relaxed mind, and others an uptight mind. I can use this analogy to describe my general state to other people, without having to identify specific emotions at that time. This helps with communicating with others, and gives me time to process whatever is going on.

i scored 132 on the alexithymia test, but like someone else said, i didn't know how to answer the questions because i lack a point of reference. and though i understood the reasoning behind it, i was still amused that there was an "undecided" answer choice...seems like you'd be most likely to have alexithymia if you didn't know how to answer any of the questions. as in, i don't know how i feel about these answers! ok, must be alexithymia!

this discussion reminds me of when i started cognitive behavioral therapy and i wasn't always able to correctly identify what i was feeling--especially anger. when i was angry i would say i was frustrated, and my therapist had to tell me that i was naming the wrong emotion. i'm gotten better at that, but it still confuses me: if i said i felt frustration, did i not? couldn't anger cause frustration? does it matter what i call my emotions? or am i not feeling things correctly? it takes me a long time to process situations--especially when something upsetting happens, it takes me hours, and sometimes days, to figure out how i feel about it. for example, i'll immediately know i feel "wrong" and then i have to work out the emotion behind the wrongness.

my girlfriend has pointed out a couple of things to me regarding how i interpret emotions: i use the word upset to describe all bad feelings, and last night she told me that i say i'm uncomfortable a lot. lots of things make me uncomfortable, though now i have to wonder if my feelings of discomfort are actually some other, specific feeling(s) that i'm not able to identify. ha--i just realized that i'm made most uncomfortable by displays of emotion.

My word is "irritated". I'm always irritated about everything. And if I don't identify anything in particular that's causing it, I am "irritable". I'm either irritated/irritable or I'm not. That's the extent of it really. XD

Zen, I wrote this the other day on another board but your word "irritated" is exactly what I feel like most of the time. My first marriage dissolved into this irritated feeling as it was constant and without a definable source. I think I'm not only irritated by all the little things that most people ignore but also I have been constantly trying to get back to what I was doing. I wasn't diagnosed back then and had no basis for anything. I'm remarried and after working with my wife I think this defines my "irritation":

"The bad news is that when I am in this anxious state I get stressed out easily and when I get stressed I get more anxious to do my thing (whatever it is at the time) which makes me more stressed and then I get angry at little things and suddenly I have a meltdown and either seclude myself or lash out at people for silly things.

I feel like a magnet is constantly sucking me toward whatever is on my mind at the time and every time my attention wavers from the task at hand it immediately snaps back to my activity. I remember watching the Temple Grandin movie and seeing the scene on the stairs when her mother is trying to get her to look away from the chandelier but as soon as mom removes her hand, the little girl’s heads snaps back to it.

Anyway, this has caused massive stress in my marriage and at work and while visiting family or friends etc but tonight I only truly came to the realization that my problem is being pulled away from my interest topic is what causes this 'irritated', 'stressed', 'nervous' (whatever it is) feeling all the time. I'm not saying that I am entitled to spending all day playing on the computer or anything I'm just saying that this is a stressor and the stress makes social niceties even more tiresome and creates problems."

Irritation, yes, that would make sense, because of our sensory issues. Every sensation of every minute of every hour can feel irritating to us, this is why I recommend meditation so strongly for all of us, as it can help us observe our experience with precision, and then learn to process and integrate effectively.

There's something about the whole alexithymia cncept that doesn't sit right with me. By which I mean, as applied to myself, not necessarily as applied to anyone else.

I think it is, that in most of the instances I've found, it confuses not knowing the name of something with not knowing what that thing is. When those are two totally different issues.

This might as well have been written by me. I would only add that sometimes to hide it from others I usually inspect the situation that has happened to me then I imagine what would be some one's response to the same situation then I concoct a description of what I am feeling which is actually just a supposition of what I might be feeling.

I actually think is funny that before I knew what alexithymia was, I used to get all hyper when I managed to get a grasp of what I was feeling and I would be all proud and go "Look, look I just felt really exited, look at what I wrote to describe how I felt" , the weird thing is that those epiphanies came weeks to months later from the moment it happened and I still didn't grasp the fact that is not how things are supposed to be.

I took the test and scored 137. Ironically, I am not sure how I feel about that. I suppose it should not be a surprise given how well I seem to fit with the other typical AS traits. Just wish I could get a diagnosis sooner than the 3 months I am expected to wait. I find this whole being in diagnostic limbo thing difficult.

I have no problem with abstract thought, and a real breakthrough for me was when I studied Hobbs in college. I realized that almost all emotions are varying combinations of pain, pleasure, memory or anticipation, a recognition of a source of the pain or pleasure and modal conditions (could, would, should, ought, etc.), taken in combinations.

Hope: Anticipation of pleasure, often with a plan.
Fear: Anticipation of pain, often from experience.
Happiness: Hope with a plan.
Avoidance: Fear with a plan.
Sadness: Memory of lost hope.
Joy: Memory of lost fear.
Like: Hope caused by a person, animal or thing.
Dislike: Fear of a person, animal or thing.
Love: Continuing like.
Hate: Continuing dislike.
Anger: Fear, with a plan based on coercion (oughts).
Selfishness: Fear of losing resources, usually with a plan.
Greed: Hope of gaining resources, usually with a plan.
Sorrow or depression: Continuing fear, usually without a plan.
Acceptance, or wistfulness: Memory of hope, but no plan could work.
etc. etc. etc.

I think that many alexithymists just avoid identifying all the complications, because they never had a way or reason to practice.
My parents fought a lot, and there was nothing for me to do about that, so I became a very passive little kid, and had a lot of trouble labeling anything I felt.

It was a shock when I started to realize that there were more things I could do, if I could identify more situations.
Identifying the complications enables more coping methods.

Instead of just enduring or avoiding a situation, one can forgive (just let people get away with it, with no expectations at all; This works really well if you have to avoid them. Then you don't have to think about them, either.), bargain (you have to keep the bargains, or people will figure you're a liar. It's good to check prices.), beg (works surprisingly well, especially for small things or with people who are very rich in some resource that they don't value), be generous (give gifts for no reason, feed beggars, etc.), bribe (give gifts for a reason; this can be very fun for small things. People love to play at corruption when the amounts are too small to be morally important), gamble (again, small amounts can be very fun. Think playing "spin the bottle." or "Kick the can."), persuade (use logic starting from shared values), reframe (pointing out how a person's plan(s) will go off the rails), mock (pointing out the absurdity of a person's values compared to society), etc.

And, you can do all these to yourself, as well, which might actually be the most valuable use of these things.

I totally agree about novels. I learned a lot from really high quality romance novels, like "The Grand Sophy" by Georgette Heyer. The best ones show people with genius EQs negotiating social mine fields of which I was barely aware.

I had an incident at work about two years ago where I started going into meltdown and I didn't even realize I was in one till I had to look back at things the next day because I was in the boss's office getting scolded (my thursday work routine was interrupted and I made a few choice comments to person responsible). That night I was teetering on the edge of the cliff for about 10 hours until I took a powerful sleep aid to knock me out.

14 years ago I suffered through a three month long major depressive episode brought on by several failures on my part socially along with... surprise surprise! Major interruptions to my routine at work causing me extreme stress. This was pre-discovery for me and I remember struggling to make sense of it all. Everybody around me could sense it expect me. Our three golden retrievers my parents had at the time would smother me with attention like they never had before when I got home from work each night and that would lift my mood somewhat. The people at work got me a get better soon birthday card for my 23rd birthday and they all signed it and gave me their best wishes, something that hasn't happened before or since. It was a short time after that about a month into the episode that I was finally able to put the pieces together and figure out after looking online that I was suffering with depression. That episode finally cleared up on it own when the spring semester of college started up.