What does it mean?

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I just don't get it
Can anyone give a concrete example?

Thanks for raising the issue. Alexithymia is the inability to express both affective and somatic feelings verbally. It's the most challenging part of my autism - my feelings are *very* poorly integrated with my speech and executive functioning. I've learned over the years to talk about my "feelings" as if I had the same feelings as NTs, because of rejection, mocking, etc. I almost convinced myself that I had the same feelings as everyone else - you get smiles, pats on the back, and support if others relate to your feelings and what you're going through. Over the decades I convinced myself that my feelings were 'normal.' It took a series of personal crises for me to realize that callously pushing myself through events and situations that created lots of fear or overwhelm was not good for me. And that I have different feeling reactions than most folks to things like touch, bright light, social interactions, frustrations, changes in routine, etc. Accepting that I have different feelings than most folks has been humbling, but is also freeing.
At any given time, if someone asks how I'm feeling, well, it could be just about anything. I could be feeling optimistic or excited or scared or worried or bored or anything. And five seconds later I could be feeling something totally different. If someone asks how I'm feeling, I'll make up something that will make them happy. If I ask myself how I'm feeling, it's a long inner voyage to explore that. I most often become aware of affect - feelings - when I notice physical reactions - I'm trembling, or my mouth is dry, or my heart races, or my muscles all tense up. That's what the article you quoted seems to reference. Many NTs also have difficulty expressing affect because of psychological aversion (e.g. if a person has been abused as a child), and they can significantly improve with therapy. In my case, with a callosar defect, and generally with autism, there is a neurological component, beyond psychological aversion.
In my case, I'm also almost unable to identify when I'm sick or in pain. I've had quite a number of trips to the ER with problems that had advanced to where they were life-threatening, when I didn't know anything was wrong with me. I'm very lucky to have survived - the odds were against me. I can't get the somatosensory information over to my verbal and executive centers, literally. Thyroid failure, tuberculosis, pituitary adenoma - I had very little idea I was seriously sick until they flattened me.
I'm not that verbal to start with - nothing in my internal thoughts are really in words. Words are something I have to resort to, and translate my thoughts into, in order to respond to people. There are lots of things in my internal world (beautiful things ) that I have no idea how to translate into words - although I paint. I'm working on improving my internal communication in therapy. Specifically to be able to identify and process feelings and to express them - which is an area where pretending to be NT completely blocks me and has negatively influenced my life. I'd love to hear how other folks deal with this.

So what they saying is that my bodily sensations are things I am required to find words for so the academic NT world can put them into these pigeon holes they call feelings?

Now you got me wondering the difference between affective and somatic feelings...

Feelings are a subjective emotional state produced by the brain, not some arbitrary 'pigeon holes'. One small component of emotional experience is the physiological response to it - heart rate increase when scared or aroused, drop in heart rate when curious, increase in blood pressure when angry, etc.

For people with alexithymia, sometimes, the physiological response is the only component of emotion they are consciously aware of. From what I understand, alexithymics actually do feel emotions, but are not consciously aware of their emotions or have trouble processing them. So the emotions mostly show up in non-conscious forms, such as in behaviours or physiological responses.

There are also physiological responses that have nothing to do with emotional state, such as an increase in heart rate due to physical exertion, or a rise in blood pressure when moving to a more upright position (standing from sitting, etc). Medical issues can also affect physiological responses. So they aren't always indicative of emotion.

Feelings:
1. sadness
2. anxiety
3. embarrassment

Bodily sensations that may accompany these feelings:
1. hollowness in the chest
2. racing heart
3. warm face

An alexithymic person doesn't recognize when their bodily sensations are the result of their emotions. For example, if they feel their heart beating quickly, they might think that they are having a heart attack instead of simply feeling anxious.

So what is the greater part of 'the emotional experience' meant to be then?

I just don't get it

My bodily sensations are the precursor to my feelings. Feelings to me are the outcome.

The one that comes after the other is not necessarily the outcome of the other. If feelings were the outcome of bodily sensations, that would mean that our bodies create our feelings — the body controlling the mind. Maybe someone could make some sort of argument for that, but I'm sure that it doesn't match up with the experience of most people or the current state of psychology.

For example, say you are alone in the wilderness and come across a dangerous animal that might attack you. You see the animal, you think about what can happen to you — this is in your mind. As a response to your fear (the emotion), your heart might start beating faster and your muscles may tense up.

If feelings were the outcome of bodily sensations, first your heart would start beating faster and your muscles would tense up, then those sensations would cause your mind to experience fear.

Body and mind are one to me. I am and therefore I think. Descartes never made sense to me.

When I have a meltdown it's usually induced by some idiot in another car. As I am driving myself I need to stay alert and can not let the rage take over. It starts with a sharp jolt of a dull feeling in my belly area and causes an equally sharp dull jolt in my head. At the same time the adrenaline starts pumping and my body starts shaking.
Controlling my breathing helps, I usually manage to carry on driving but have had it where my clutch foot ends up shaking so much I have to pull over to allow my system to revert to homeostasis. Afterwards I usually am left with a heavy feeling in the head and totally worn out from the experience.

Control is mediated by neurochemicals. The enteric nervous system has its own independent reflex activity. In other words my guts can think for itself and through something called the HPA axis it communicates with my brain. Or vica versa.

Now I need to read up on alexithymia. I do not know what it means, but I do relate to much of what is being discussed here. My physical reactions are the biggest way I know if I am experiencing an emotion. Then I go back and review what was going on and 'insert correct emotion word'. I am also unable to adequately gauge internal pain and I very much relate to what was said about not noticing physical ailments then finding out had I waited any longer I would have died. I have had emergency surgery before because of this. Thank you for starting this topic.

I got a lousy imagination and the nearest I got to a wild animal was a herd of young bulls in a field in Wales. I antagonized them to the point I thought it wise to stop as they seemed to get ready to charge at the gate I was standing behind.
In that case I can feel the build-up. And on an almost subconscious level it's not my heart that makes me aware but more my head. I know my jolts of dull sharp pain very well

Antagonizing them bulls is kind of like testing my own neurological boundaries I suppose. At the time it was fun. I could have gotten angry about the fact them bulls were even there and that there was a famer so selfish and inconsiderate to graze these bulls on a field that had a bridleway running accross it !


I had every right to be angry at that point but it's not gonna get me anywhere so I made it into a game.

I did have a raging guard dog nip me in the bum once though. In that case I stood still and didn't move. Scared but I knew the woman would get him under control sooner or later. The reason I found myself in that predicament was work related. I was delivering and needed a signature. The dog had so fast come out of nowhere and I had no time to asses beyond fight or flight. But still I did. And it would have been my gut feeling that would have instintively chosen to stand still as neither fighting or flighting really was an option in the circumstances.

I'm not sure how that's relevant to my comment about bodies controlling minds. Do you mean that your body and mind are identical, or that they are each separate parts of some common superstructure? If they are identical, I don't see how you could differentiate between emotions and physical sensations, which you must do to determine that one is the outcome of the other.


I fail to see how that's a tenable position. If thinking is a necessary consequence of being, rocks and dirt also think.


Ok, you said that your emotions are the outcome of your bodily sensations. Does that mean that the rage you feel is the outcome of the sharp pain, shaking, adrenaline, and/or the dull sensations in your head and belly?

By being I am able to think.
If I wasn't I would not be able to think.
That's my logic.
Thinking is an inevitable outcome of being.
As for rocks and dirt I stay clear from morphic resonance as this is about ME ME ME and not some greater philosophical debate

That is an unjustifiable assumption, not a logical conclusion.
If you only focus on yourself as evidence, you have no way of knowing that non-existence would prevent you from thinking, because you do exist and have no personal experience with non-existence and have rejected as evidence the existence or non-existence of other things.

Even if you had not existed at some point, not being able to think in that state would have prevented you from having collected any cognitive experience from which you could reason in your current state of existence.

You are contradicting yourself. "Thinking is an inevitable outcome of being" is a universal statement, yet you say that you only apply it to yourself, at least in this discussion. "My thinking is an inevitable outcome of my being" would be more appropriate.

I fail to see what morphic resonance has to do with this.

You brought it into the conversation. Google Rupert Sheldrake.

I'm not very good at this quoting thing or even putting my thoughts into words and really want to get back to some of the other people that replied too AND I am sharing this pc with a World of Tanks fanatic so will leave it at that for now.