Difficulty in Recognizing Emotion

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I have trouble recognizing emotions in myself. I often don't know how I feel. But I'm pretty good at knowing what others are feeling. Can any of you relate?

There's a little piece that I frequently play on the piano because it perfectly reflects my almost constant emotional state that I can't really describe. I asked my cousin what emotion she thought was behind it, and she said that it was sadness. I was diagnosed a couple years ago with chronic mild depression.

It sort of has me wondering why I have trouble identifying a basic emotion in myself that I could readily see in others.

You might have Alexithymia, which is quite common in people on the autistic Spectrum. You can find out more about it here...

Alexithymia: “Does My Partner Feel Anything?”

Towards the end of the article there is a link to an online test for Alexithymia that you can take.

I don't think I have alexithymia because I have a lot of empathy and imagination. I just can't recognize emotions in myself.

I relate. I have a hard time understanding what I am feeling, or if I am feeling. My heart rate is the best tool I have at my disposal to know if I am feeling something or not. From there, I might think about the situation at hand and then insert the most fitting and appropriate emotion word to express what I may have been feeling. But was I really feeling that? I dunno. The only emotions I seem to know from the get go for me are amused, pissed off, and calm. Maybe I should add confused to the mix though...

I'm not so great at knowing what others are feeling... mostly. If I look at a person who is just sitting there, unless I have known the person for a long time I would not know if they were bored, tired, sad, content, whatever. They would have to be screaming before I guessed angry or crying before I guessed sad. Or some kind of extreme expression.

I do better at guessing the emotions of people I have known for a long time though as they seem to have repeating emotion/situation patterns I can recognize. Also if I am very familiar with someone, I'll get to know their 'angry face', for example. Most of the time people have tells, it seems.

Not sure if that is what you mean, but I do understand not being good at knowing ones own feelings.

I have a cousin who is better at reading my emotions better than I am. Like he will bring me some cookies and give me a hug and say he could tell I'm feeling sad and I'm like I am? And then I realize it. For me it has to with lacking self awarenes and being preoccupied with something. Not aware that I look sad or angry.

I'm wondering if, sometimes, emotions within autism are so strong that the person, unconsciously, seeks to suppress them so that the person maintains his/her equilibrium.

Definitely this has been an issue and still is somewhat for me; I've made a lot of progress with a lot of work. Connecting the sensations was more cognitive sometimes at first for some emotions but it got more automatic. My earlier work on this kind of thing was in therapy; many people have trouble recognizing/dealing with hard emotions if their childhood environment was particularly unhelpful for that, so luckily for me a therapist helped me with this in spite of no ASD diagnosis until recently.

I think the time scale of the work was years for me, but it was very much worth it. (Still working on some other emotions/ responses... Life is a journey, or something?)