How Alexithymia feels

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I'm starting to think that Alexithymia might be my #1 most disabling symptom.

Here is why I have failed at everything I've ever tried to do in my life:

- I feel awful
- I don't know why
- I can't do what I'm supposed to do (school, work, socializing, etc.)
- I have no excuse
= I am a bad person

But now I'm learning to identify why I feel awful, and it helps me so much. For example, this is what I went through this morning:

- I feel awful
- I don't know why
- but I do know that I have alexithymia
- okay, let's try to figure this out
- where do I feel awful?
- in my chest
- am I having a heart attack?
- no
- is it anxiety?
- maybe
- what am I anxious about?
- I don't know
- is it emotional?
- maybe?
- is there a reason why I should be feeling emotionally upset right now?
- not that I can think of?
- is it a physical sensory issue?
- maybe?
- what might be bothering me?
- someone's mowing their lawn nearby
- actually it seems pretty loud and intense
- let me try putting in earplugs
- oh wow, that totally fixed it
- no more tight-chested feeling
= I was feeling sensory distress

Yes, it takes me that long just to identify what I'm feeling. And I seem to have trouble identifying physical sensory issues, the same as I do for emotions. (Sometimes it's obvious, like a flashing blinky picture on my computer screen = I cannot even begin to cope!) And some sounds are more obviously horrible than others. But the dull, constant background noise of a lawnmower is more insidious, and I don't necessarily realize how badly it's affecting me.

Anyway, understanding that I have alexithymia, and using process of elimination to try to identify what is making me feel 'awful', helps me to finally deal with my problems and work around them, rather than just being stopped in my tracks – not being able to function in life at all, because I just feel too 'awful' to face the big, horrible, scary world. (Which is not an excuse that society tends to accept!)

This describes me also and having been diagnosed a few months back I am going through the same learning process of trying to make myself sit back and work out exactly how I feel and why. It helps that my wife is much better with these things so she can often tell my how I feel and why - and usually seems to be spot on.

I agree it is an important and underdiscussed aspect of ASD and it was one of the biggest aha moments for me when I realised that that was why I am like this emotional.

I think there is an argument to be made that a lot of issues are at least partly a result of this. If you don't understand that you're becoming stressed, you cant regulate it and it leads to a complete meltdown. If you don't understand other people's emotions very well, of course you're going to have difficulty interacting socially and misread situations. Even stims seem like a subconcious automatic reaction to escelating stress that you are not dealing with any other way. I find it fascinating,

As an aside, my wife uses the traffic light system telling me when I think I am on an 'amber' or 'red' since I genuinely won't have any idea otherwise and, while feeling a little infantile, i have to admit it has helped.

This is interesting, I need to monitor this in myself. I often feel uncomfortable and on edge for no apparent reason.

That is great that your wife can help you to identify your emotions. And I find it interesting that she can actually see how you're feeling, when you don't realize it yourself.

One of my problems is I give off zero visual cues as to how I'm feeling. I'm either blank and expressionless (when alone), or faking a smile (in public). So other people can't tell my level of distress, any better than I can!

When I hit the breaking point, and just can't smile and pretend to be okay anymore, I tend to physically run away, in tears, and find a private place where I can cry. And if this starts happening to me too often, I end up quitting the activity that triggers it (school, work, social activities, etc.) – because I instinctively know that I just can't handle it, even though I never understood why.

I wonder if stimming in public would help me to cope with sensory overload. I was scolded for it so much as a child, that I've learned not to do it in front of other people (though I still stim constantly when I'm alone). But it's a recipe for failure, to put me in a situation where I will experience sensory overload, and forbid me to use any of my coping mechanisms to deal with it.

To identify what I am feeling I read psychology and self-help books (some of psychology or self-help books are good, despite many being subjective or psychoanalysis or nonsense or ideological or even mytical) and read about feelings and personality. When I do research on it there are lots of aha moments, and then I understand what I am feeling and why.
Well, that's how I understand anything anyway, I do research on it and read books about it.
I think many people autistic or not, even when not having alexythmia, don't actually understand what they are feeling and why, or don't dig deep enough or try to avoid recognizing their feelings.

^^

I think that is probably the case. I have a lot of facial expressions when I'm relaxed and happy, but when I'm in a social situation and (by definition) nervous, I tend to plaster a fake smile on my face (took me many, many years to learn to do that, and only because people kept asking me if I was upset about something).

My late (also Aspie) fiance tended to have no expression at all most of the time (except, like me, when he was relaxed and happy), but I could "read" him somehow anyway. His physical movements (and his voice) got a little erratic when he was tense. I learned a few things that would always calm him, and got very good at knowing when he needed some "petting" to de-stress him. He wasn't quite as good at reading me (but I learned how to be good at telling him I was stressed), and he discovered that the same techniques that I used to de-stress him would also work on me. Usually it was either some kind of soothing physical contact (hence why I called it "petting"), making him laugh, or a combination of the two.

I enjoyed reading the OP a lot, very insightful. Thank you for sharing.